La Bastida: Western Europe's Oldest City?

In southeastern Spain is a fortified hilltop settlement known as La Bastida. Recent excavations have shown that the oldest stone building on the site dates to around 2200 BCE. The culture is called the Argaric, and it developed from previous Neolithic cultures of the same region. Several fortified towns of this culture are known. The construction of the walls and buildings resembles, say the excavators, construction at Troy and other sites of similar date Anatolia. They are certainly among the most impressive European settlements of this early date.

 Pots recovered from the site.

Some of the stone foundations. The site seems to have had large public buildings as well as many small private houses. Burials suggest that the elite saw themselves as warriors.

The Argaric culture endured until around 1500 BCE, when the towns were abandoned. Some archaeologists think an ecological catastrophe, at least partly caused by overgrazing, forest clearing, and too much farming on steep slopes, was responsible for this collapse.