We do not know precisely when the first humans came to our land, but we have found evidence going back more than 450,000 years. From the Lower Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, we can follow the trail shaping the human condition: making tools, controlling fire, capacity for communication and the conception of a cosmology to explain life and death.

The nomadic groups of hunter-gatherers who lived in caves have left us their paintings and engravings. With the spread of agriculture and stock farming, the first settlements appeared, evolving by the dawning of the Bronze Age to become complex societies. It was a long period full of episodes fundamental for the human race, but we still have much to discover about it.

During the late Bronze Age (1,250-700 BC), the communities settled on Catalan territory began a period of great social, economic and cultural transformation. These changes were related to waves of migration from central Europe and the establishment of trading networks between the communities on either side of the Pyrenees.

After the beginning of the Iron Age (700-550 BC), contacts with the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean area (Phoenicians and Greeks) promoted and stimulated the economic, technological and cultural development of the indigenous groups. The development that occurred during this time was decisive in consolidating the Iberian culture.

The Iberian culture developed from the 6^th century in a huge region in the western Mediterranean. The Iberians were a set of diverse peoples sharing a series of common cultural features. Like the Greeks and Etruscans, they were a complex, developed civilisation with urban and trade networks, minting coins and using their own writing system applied to their native language.

The knowledge we have of the Iberian civilisation has been continually growing in the last few years. The archaeological sites we find in Catalonia, like the one at Ullastret, show us a complex society that had mastered ironwork and maintained trading contacts with other Mediterranean peoples, especially the Carthaginians and the Greeks. These contacts intensified when, in about 580 BC, Greeks from Masalia (Marseille) founded the colony of Empúries on the Catalan coast.

In 218 BC, during the Second Punic War, the Roman army disembarked in the allied city of Empúries. Once they had defeated the Carthaginians, their great rivals in the western Mediterranean, the Romans established themselves in the Iberian Peninsula, beginning a long period of domination. The various rebellions of the native people were repressed and Iberian society gradually assimilated Romanisation.

The Romans structured the territory into provinces and build roads connecting the main settlements. Tarraco became the most important city in Hispania. Many colonists from the Italian Peninsula and the Hellenistic Mediterranean settled there. The Latin language and culture took root and mixed with the local cultures, laying the basis for a new society.

In the 3^rd and 4^th centuries, the borders of the Roman Empire were no longer secure and there were frequent economic and social crises. Christianity, a monotheistic religion of Eastern origin, displaced the traditional beliefs. After an attempt at repression, the Emperor Constantine made it legal to practise the religion and, in 380, Theodosius I (the Great) proclaimed Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The Catholic Christians’ solid organisational structure survived the fall of the Roman Empire and became an essential support for the new Germanic kingdoms. Over the centuries the Visigoths, who were Arians when they established themselves in the Iberian Peninsula, eventually adopted Catholicism as their official religion.