Subsequently, the western part of Tarraconensis was split off, initially as Hispania Nova, which was later renamed "Callaecia" (or Gallaecia, whence modern Galicia).

[6] This was revived for instance by the etymologist Eric Partridge (in his work Origins) who felt that this might strongly hint at an ancient name for the country of *Hispa, presumably an Iberian or Celtic root whose meaning is now lost.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Jesuits scholars like Larramendi and José Francisco de Isla tied the name to the Basque word ezpain 'lip', but also 'border, edge', thus meaning the farthest area or place.

[9][10] During Antiquity and Middle Ages, the literary texts derive the term Hispania from an eponymous hero named Hispan, who is mentioned for the first time in the work of the Roman historian Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus, in the 1st century BC.

In the 40th millennium BC, during the Upper Paleolithic and the last ice age, the first large settlement of Europe by modern humans occurred.

In the millennia that followed, the Neanderthals became extinct and local modern human cultures thrived, producing pre-historic art such as that found in L'Arbreda Cave and in the Côa Valley.

The Neolithic brought changes to the human landscape of Iberia (from the 5th millennium BC onwards), with the development of agriculture and the beginning of the European Megalith Culture.

More importantly, Hispania was for 500 years part of a cosmopolitan world empire bound together by law, language, and the Roman road.

Hispania served as a granary and a major source of metals for the Roman market, and its harbors exported gold, tin, silver, lead, wool, wheat, olive oil, wine, fish, and garum.

The long wars of conquest lasted two centuries, and only by the time of Augustus did Rome manage to control Hispania Ulterior.

In the 4th century, Latinius Pacatus Drepanius, a Gallic rhetorician, dedicated part of his work to the depiction of the geography, climate and inhabitants of the peninsula, writing: This Hispania produces tough soldiers, very skilled captains, prolific speakers, luminous bards.

Some heretical sects emerged in Hispania, most notably Priscillianism, but overall the local bishops remained subordinate to the Pope.

After three years of depredation and wandering about northern and western Gaul, the Germanic Buri, Suevi and Vandals, together with the Sarmatian Alans moved into Iberia in September or October 409 at the request of Gerontius, a Roman usurper.

In an effort to retrieve the region, the Western Roman emperor, Honorius (r. 395–423), promised the Visigoths a home in southwest Gaul if they destroyed the invaders in Spain.

The Vandals and Alans crossed over to North Africa in 429, an event which is considered to have been decisive in hastening the decline of the Western Roman Empire.

Roman rule which had survived in the eastern quadrant was restored over most of Iberia until the Sueves occupied Mérida in 439, a move which coincides to the Vandal occupation of Carthage late the same year.

Successive Visigothic kings ruled Hispania as patricians who held imperial commissions to govern in the name of the Roman emperor.

This short-lived reconquest recovered only a small strip of land along the Mediterranean coast roughly corresponding to the ancient province of Baetica, known as Spania.

Under the Visigoths, culture was not as highly developed as it had been under Roman rule, when a goal of higher education had been to prepare gentlemen to take their places in municipal and imperial administration.

The clergy, for the most part, emerged as the qualified personnel to manage higher administration in concert with local powerful notables who gradually displaced the old town councils.

[14] Religion was the most persistent source of friction between the Chalcedonian (Catholic) native Hispano-Romans and their Arian Visigothic overlords, whom the former considered heretical.

At times this tension invited open rebellion, and restive factions within the Visigothic aristocracy exploited it to weaken the monarchy.

Still, civil war, royal assassinations, and usurpation were commonplace, and warlords and great landholders assumed wide discretionary powers.

In the absence of a well-defined hereditary system of succession to the throne, rival factions encouraged foreign intervention by the Greeks, the Franks, and finally the Muslims in internal disputes and in royal elections.

According to Isidore of Seville, it is with the Visigothic domination of Iberia that the idea of a peninsular unity is sought after, and the phrase Mother Hispania is first spoken.

The diocese, with its capital at Emerita Augusta (modern Mérida), comprised: Before the Punic Wars, Hispania was a land with much untapped mineral and agricultural wealth, limited by the primitive subsistence economies of its native peoples outside of a few trading ports along the Mediterranean.

Occupation by the Carthaginians and then by the Romans for its abundant silver deposits developed Hispania into a thriving multifaceted economy.

Several metals, olives, oil from Baetica, salted fish and garum, and wines were some of the goods produced in Hispania and traded throughout the Empire.

This activity is attested in archaeological sites as Las Médulas (Spain) and Casais (Ponte de Lima, Portugal).