THE EARLY HUNTER-GATHERERS

The beginnings of a human presence in what is now Portugal are lost in the mists of time, but probably go back at least 500,000 years. The first inhabitants were Lower Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers whose simple stone tools have been found in a number of sites, particularly in the central coastal region. They possessed a lithic culture then common throughout western Europe which was associated with homo erectus, a hominid predecessor of modern humans. Many millennia later, probably about 100,000 years before the present, there appeared in Portugal the human sub-species commonly known as Neanderthal. A people of heavy muscular build, the Neanderthals hunted in small groups, and their artefacts now lie scattered in various Portuguese sites. A Neanderthal tooth found at Nova da Columbeira cave in Estremadura is the oldest human fossil so far discovered in Portugal.

Modern humans – the sub-species homo sapiens sapiens – arrived in Portugal about 35,000 years ago and spread rapidly throughout the country. They completely supplanted the Neanderthals who, as elsewhere in Europe, became extinct. How and why this happened are teasing questions. Did the Neanderthals, unable to compete, slowly succumb over many generations – or were they deliberately and systematically slaughtered? Was there mixing between the two sub-species, and were the Neanderthals perhaps gradually absorbed into the communities of their rivals? Near Leiria in 1998 a 24,500-year-old child's skeleton was discovered which some scholars believe, on the basis of morphological analysis, is that of a Neanderthal-modern hybrid.