In the first millennium BC, Tartessian culture emerged in southwestern Iberia (modern Andalusia and beyond). Tartessos is now generally considered a civilization formed froma mixture of local Iberian people and Phoenician (and possibly Greek) colonizers. Flourishingroughly between the 9th and 5th centuries BC, it developed distinctive art and one of the earliest writing systems in Iberia (the Tartessian language). Abundant metal resources (copper, gold, tin) made Tartessos wealthy, enabling a thriving trade network across the Mediterranean.

Genetically, the Tartessian population was predominantly indigenous Iberian with an influx of eastern Mediterranean ancestry due to Phoenician colonization. Historical and genetic evidence suggests that Levantine settlers (the Phoenicians) introduced some Middle Easternand North African gene flow into southwestern Iberia. Over time, Tartessian communities intermingled with neighboring Iberian and Celtic groups, and later became absorbed into theRoman era population. The Tartessian legacy—both cultural and genetic—survives in southern Iberia, where a minor Eastern Mediterranean trace remains detectable in modern DNA alongside the Iberian base.