Paleo-Geography of the Gulf of Cadiz in SW Iberia during the Second Millennium BCE

Abstract

A remarkable feature of the geomorphological processes at work on the coasts of the Gulf of Cadiz in SW Iberia is the estuarine mouths of a number of large-flowing rivers: Guadiana, Piedras, Tinto-Odiel, Guadalete and Guadalquivir. These mouths exhibit sandy barriers and marshlands. Over the most recent millennia these five estuaries have been conditioned by fluvial-marine dynamics, climate change, neo-tectonics and anthropogenic activity. The systems of sandy littoral barriers and marshlands built up during phases of progradation and aggradation, which were interrupted at intervals in the course of the Holocene by erosional phases of “Extreme wave events” or EWEs (storm surges or tsunamis) and subsidence. A multidisciplinary study from a number of cores drilled in the Guadalquivir paleo-estuary has made it possible to identify evidence of as many as three EWEs in the area in the 2nd millennium BCE: A (~2000 cal yr BCE), B (~1550 cal yr BCE) and C (~1150 cal yr BCE). Evidence of these three events has been recognized elsewhere along the Iberian coasts of the Gulf. The three events caused significant geographical changes, which may have affected human settlements established in the area during the Neolithic and Copper Age periods, as well as during the subsequent Middle Bronze Age. They may have affected, for instance, the site where the city of Cadiz now stands. In the Middle Bronze Age, which EWE C probably terminated, the present-day peninsula of Cadiz was divided into at least three islands, one of them being “Erýtheia,” mentioned by Greek geographer and ethnologist Strabo of Amasia around AD 1 in connection with the legend of Geryon or Geryones, king of Tartessus. This legend is intertwined with that of Bronze Age Greek hero Heracles. A large temple dedicated to this character (the Herákleion) on one of the islands, arguably Erýtheia, made Cadiz famous in Antiquity. Strabo also mentions a settlement by the name of “Port of Menestheus” as well as an oracle by the name of “Oracle of Menestheus” upon the shores of the Gulf of Cadiz. In all likelihood, this “Menestheus” was the same as the Athenian leader Menestheus who fought in the Trojan War, according to Homer in The Iliad.