The earliest records of an aboriginal past in the Iberian Peninsula are Paleolithic cave paintings, found in the region of the Bay of Biscay and the western Pyrenees, which exhibit a remarkable degree of animation and skill. Distinctly different from this development in the north was the later Neolithic Almerian culture (3000? bc) of southeastern Spain, which was akin to that of prehistoric Africa. The southern region became the first invasion point for the Iberians, originally a North African people, who, about 1000 bc, became the most prominent ethnologic element in the peninsula and gave it its name. The second most important people in the peninsula were the Celts, who entered it in a mass migration from France. The Celts almost completely absorbed the indigenous inhabitants of the central region and, to a lesser extent, those of the northern mountains. A subsequent intermingling of Celts and Iberians formed the so-called Celtiberians, living chiefly in the central region, the west, and along the northern coast.

The oldest human fossils in Spain belong to Homo sapiens, more specifically, an early form of Neanderthal and precursor of modern humans. Bones of several individuals in the Cueva Mayor (“Main Cave” at Atapuerca, Burgos) come from Middle Pleistocene sediments that are at least 280,000 years old. Other important sites were at Torralba and Ambrona (Soria), where elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) had been trapped accidentally in marshy ground, and their remains scavenged. From these sites were excavated shouldered points fashioned from young elephant tusks, as well as hundreds of stone implements (hand axes, cleavers, and scrapers on flakes, made from chalcedony, quartzite, quartz, and even limestone) and wooden objects. Pieces of charcoal show that fire was known and used. But humans were already living in Spain in the Early Pleistocene, as proved by stone tools from beaches in the Algarve (Mirouço), Huelva (Punta Umbria), and Cadiz (Algeciras) and the terraces of the lower Guadalquivir, Tagus, Manzanares, and Ter rivers. Choppers, angular balls, and flakes from the terraces of the Jabalón River (Ciudad Real) are older than 700,000 years and perhaps more than 1,000,000 years.

The Umayyad dynasty had ruled Muslim Spain for about three centuries. The greatest of its rulers was Abd-ar-Rahman III, who in 929 proclaimed himself caliph. His capital, Córdoba, became the most splendid city in Europe except for Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), and Spanish civilization during the Moorish supremacy was far in advance of that of the rest of the continent. Numerous schools were built, many of them free and for the education of the poor. At the great Muslim universities medicine, mathematics, philosophy, and literature were cultivated; the work of Greek philosopher Aristotle was studied there long before it was well known to Christian Europe. An extensive literature developed, the caliphs themselves being poets and authors of note, and art and architecture flourished.