When Farming Reached Iberia - the Neolithic transition

Neolithic decorated clay vessel (c. 5500–3500 BC) from the Cueva del Higuerón near Rincón de la Victoria (Málaga), now displayed in the Museo de Málaga. Hand-made and decorated with impressed patterns, pots like this belong to the earliest farming communities of the Iberian Peninsula.

Around 7,500–5,500 years ago, life on the Iberian Peninsula began to change in a profound way. For thousands of years people had lived as hunter-gatherers, moving through landscapes rich in animals, plants and marine resources. But during the sixth millennium BC, new communities appeared along the Mediterranean coast bringing something revolutionary: farming and herding.

Archaeologists call this moment the Neolithic transition.

The Arrival of the First Farmers

The first Neolithic communities of Iberia cultivated crops such as wheat and barley and kept sheep and goats. They used polished stone tools, flint sickles for harvesting, and—perhaps most visibly—ceramic vessels. These early farming groups did not appear everywhere at once. The earliest sites are often found along the Mediterranean coast, especially in caves and rock shelters. From these coastal footholds, farming gradually spread inland.

Archaeologists believe these communities likely arrived by sea from other parts of the western Mediterranean, possibly from the Italian or Ligurian coasts. Another possibility, still debated, is that some groups reached southern Iberia from North Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar. Wherever they came from, their arrival created one of the most important cultural encounters in European prehistory: the meeting between incoming farmers and local hunter-gatherers.

A Landscape of Caves and Coasts

Southern Iberia—especially the coast of Málaga and Granada—is rich in caves that preserve traces of this transition. These caves were often occupied repeatedly for thousands of years.

At sites along the Andalusian coast, archaeological layers show the gradual shift from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to Early Neolithic farmers, including pottery fragments, stone tools, shell ornaments, and remains of domesticated animals.

Even after farming arrived, people continued to exploit the sea. Shellfish, fish, and other marine resources remained important in daily life along the Mediterranean coast.

In other words, the Neolithic did not replace earlier traditions overnight—it blended with them.

A Pot from the Beginning of Farming

A quiet witness to this transformation can be seen today in the Museo de Málaga. The clay vessel shown here was found in the Cueva del Higuerón, a cave near Rincón de la Victoria, just east of Málaga. It dates to the Neolithic period between about 7,500 and 5,500 years ago. At first glance it may look simple: a hand-made clay pot with decorative impressions along its rim. But this object tells an important story. Pottery like this is one of the clearest signs that a community had entered the Neolithic world. Clay vessels allowed people to store grain, cook food, and transport liquids, making them closely connected to farming life.

Unlike modern ceramics, Neolithic pots were made without a potter’s wheel. The clay was shaped by hand, decorated with simple impressions or incised patterns, and fired in basic kilns or open hearths. Each pot was therefore unique. The decorative band around the rim of this vessel—made by pressing tools or cords into the wet clay—was not strictly necessary. It was a human touch: a moment where utility became design.

A Quiet Revolution

When we look at objects like this pot, we are seeing the material traces of one of the biggest revolutions in human history.

The introduction of farming meant:

• more permanent settlements

• new technologies such as pottery

• domesticated animals and crops

• new social structures and ways of organizing land.

Within a few centuries, these early farmers transformed landscapes across the Iberian Peninsula.

Yet the people who made this vessel were still close to older traditions. They lived in caves near the sea, gathered shellfish, hunted animals, and moved through familiar territories that had been used by hunter-gatherers long before them.

This clay pot, now resting in a museum display case, therefore stands at the meeting point of two worlds: the last hunter-gatherers and the first farmers of Iberia.

The Four Troublesome Heads by Georges Méliès

While visiting the Museo Picasso Málaga, we unexpectedly encountered a small piece of film history: Un Homme de Tête (1898) by the French filmmaker and magician Georges Méliès.

The film lasts barely a minute. Méliès sits at a table, removes his own head, places it on the table, and then calmly grows a new one. Soon several identical heads are singing and moving next to each other like a strange little choir.

For audiences in 1898, this must have looked like pure magic. In reality Méliès used simple but ingenious techniques such as multiple exposures and stop-camera editing—methods that made the camera itself a magician’s tool.

Seeing this playful experiment in the Picasso Museum makes sense in an unexpected way. Artists of the early twentieth century were fascinated by new ways of showing reality. Just as Méliès multiplied his own head on screen, Pablo Picasso would later fragment faces and perspectives in his paintings.

Different media, but the same spirit: curiosity, experimentation, and the joy of discovering what images can do.

And all of it captured in a film that lasts barely a minute.

A Necklace from 5000 Years Ago

Shell necklace from the Early Copper Age (c. 3000 BC), made from pierced seashells and discovered in the dolmen of Cuesta de los Almendrillos near Alozaina (Málaga). Now displayed in the Museo de Málaga.

In a quiet display case in the Museo de Málaga lies something unexpectedly familiar: a necklace made entirely of small seashells. At first glance it looks almost modern — the kind of necklace you might see today in a seaside market.

Yet this one is about 5,000 years old.

The necklace was found in the dolmen of Cuesta de los Almendrillos, near Alozaina, and dates to the Early Copper Age. Each shell was carefully pierced and strung together into a long loop. Some are smooth, some still show their fine natural ridges, but together they form something unmistakable: jewelry.

And that is the first surprise.

When we look at this necklace, we are not looking at something strange from a distant prehistoric world. We are looking at something that would not feel out of place today. Walk through a coastal market anywhere around the Mediterranean and you will find shell necklaces that look remarkably similar.

Five thousand years have passed — yet the idea is exactly the same.

A Necklace Worn in Life

Objects like this often come from megalithic tombs, collective burial monuments built by early farming communities across Iberia. The dolmen at Cuesta de los Almendrillos was one such place. People were buried there together with objects that mattered to them: tools, pottery, and sometimes personal ornaments.

But a necklace like this was almost certainly not made for the tomb. It was worn in life.

Someone once gathered these shells, pierced them one by one, and threaded them onto a cord. Someone wore this around their neck — perhaps daily, perhaps on special occasions. Shells also hint at connections: they come from the sea, and inland communities often valued them precisely because they traveled from elsewhere.

The Familiarity of the Past

Standing in front of the display in the Museo de Málaga, the realization slowly settles in.

Humans still collect beautiful things from the sea.
We still pierce them.
We still string them together.
We still wear them.

Materials change — gold, silver, glass, plastic — but the impulse is identical. Jewelry is one of the most persistent human habits, appearing in cultures across the world and deep in the archaeological record.

This simple necklace reminds us that the people of the Copper Age were not so different from us.

Five thousand years ago, somewhere in southern Iberia, someone held a handful of shells and had the same simple thought many people have had since:

These would make a beautiful necklace.

El Cenachero — The Man Who Carried the Sea into Málaga (Spain)

El Cenachero (Malaga, Spain).

At the edge of Málaga’s harbour, where cruise ships now glide in and out and tourists sip cocktails in the sun, stands a bronze figure with bare chest, strong shoulders and two baskets of fish hanging from a wooden yoke. His name is El Cenachero — and he is one of the most recognisable symbols of the city.

Long before Málaga became a destination of beach clubs and boutique hotels, it was a working port. Every morning, fishing boats landed their catch on the sand. From there, men known as cenacheros carried the fish into the city, balancing two wicker baskets (cenachos) on their shoulders and walking from street to street selling the day’s harvest.

They were not merchants in shops. They were moving markets.

With loud voices they announced their arrival:
“Boquerones frescos!”
“Sardinas vivas!”

The cenachero walked barefoot or in worn sandals through the heat, his skin darkened by the sun and the sea. His work was hard, his pay modest, but his role essential. Without him, Málaga did not eat.

The statue near the port is not a monument to a general or a king. It is a tribute to labour. To the men who turned the sea into daily bread. To a city that once lived by nets and boats, not by hotels and terraces.

In the 1960s, when tourism began to transform Málaga forever, El Cenachero became a reminder of the old city — a link to the fishermen, the beaches where boats were pulled ashore, and the voices that once echoed through the narrow streets.

Today, visitors photograph him before boarding cruise ships or strolling along Muelle Uno. Few realise they are standing next to a worker who once fed an entire city.

El Cenachero is Málaga in bronze: salt, sun, sweat — and dignity.