#iberians

A detailed map of the Punic wars in Spain

In the 6th century BCE, the city of Tartessos disappeared.  Historians have proposed several explanations.  In one theory, the city was destroyed by the Carthaginians, economically powerful traders centred in North Africa near the modern city of Tunis.  According to this view, they attacked Tartessos in order to take over its lucrative trade routes. Another theory states that other cultures, such as the Iberians, from whom Tartessos obtained metals for its trade with the Greeks and Phoenicians, began selling their metals directly to foreign markets.  As its profitable trade failed, Tartessos ceased to be an economic power and eventually disappeared. In addition, Tartessos may have been weakened by a natural disaster.  Greek texts say that the city once lay between the two mouths of a river, though today there is only one river mouth.  It may be that the delta of the Guadalquivir was gradually blocked off by a sandbar, burying ancient Tartessos under the shifting wetlands that have replaced the ancient estuaries behind the dunes as the river's mouth. But perhaps the most intriguing theory for what happened to Tartessos identifies the ancient city with Atlantis, the fabled civilization described by Plato.  German physicist Rainer Kühne contents that satellite photos of southern Spain, taken in 2004, show rectangular structures and concentric circles that match well with Plato's description of the palaces and temples of Atlantis.  In Plato's account the gods unleashed earthquakes and floods on the kingdom, sinking it into the sea in a single day.  Kühne concurs, suggesting that Tartessos/Atlantis was destroyed by a flood that occurred between 800 and 500 BCE.