The Crisis of the 6th Century BCE in the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula and the Possible Relationship with Malaria Falciparum: The Case of the Tierra Llana (“Flat Land”) of Huelva

Abstract

The general goal of the present work is the reconstruction of the historical process of the society that inhabited the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula throughout the Second Iron Age by looking at the diachronic evolution of the territory. This has been achieved by carrying out an analysis at three distinct levels: the micro-level, that is, the study of each of the settlements from a diachronic point of view; the meso-level, focused on the region known as Tierra Llana of Huelva; and the macro-level, with the establishment of parallelisms in the study of Turdetania. One of the main topics is the new hypothesis that would explain the so-called “crisis of the 6th century BCE”, based on the effects of an epidemic outbreak of falciparum malaria, since all the necessary conditions for the propagation of such an outbreak were met in the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula: ideal environmental factors, existence of vector and host, an important ploughing of the soil in immediately preceding moments, demographic increase followed by a high immigration rate, and poor health conditions. The reasons above could explain the dissimilar impact in the different areas, regardless of their economic activity or their location, since that would depend on the level of development of the disease. The recovery from these types of outbreaks in about 50 years coincided in time with the changes that took place in the Southwest of the Peninsula in the 6th century BCE. However, it should be added the presence of a genetic mutation, called thalassemia, the propagation of which is related to malaria outbreaks or epidemics, to which it is immune. We can further determine the expansion of thalassemia if we focus on the Sardinian area in the 6th century BCE, which matches, chronologically speaking, the evidence compatible with the beta thalassemia of the osseous remains that were found in a grave in the necropolis of Gadir.