About Ibiza

Travel & LeisureTravel Spot

  • Author Art Daco
  • Published August 22, 2010
  • Word count 794

Ibiza is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and part of the Autonomous Community of the Balearic Islands, Spain. It has a length of 570 km ² and a population of 125,053 inhabitants (INE 2008). Its length is 210 km coastline, where small boulders alternate. The maximum distance of the island is 41 kilometers from north to south and 15 kilometers from east to west.

It has a very irregular morphology formed by several mountains of which the highest is Sa Talaia, located in the municipality of San José 475 meters.

The island is very famous worldwide for its festivals and nightclubs, which attract many tourists. Among the most famous clubs include Space, Pacha, Privilege Ibiza, Amnesia, DC10, El Divino, Café del Mar or Es Paradis of Ibiza port area also attracts many tourists for its nightlife.

Deposits have been found dating from the Bronze Age, both on the island of Ibiza (drawings on the cover of Ses Fontanelles) and her younger sister Formentera (megalithic monuments in Ca na Costa) to prove its population from 2000 to 1600 BC. The island of Ibiza preserves archaeological Phoenicians and Carthaginians, it was an important commercial area within the nautical culture of this town. Both the route from east to west and vice versa, the island was suitable crossing point for sailors from the prevailing winds and currents of the Mediterranean Sea. Approximately half of the eighth century BCE C. founded the first settlement was stable in the SW area, the site of Sa Caleta, who will be responsible until the end of the century that will be abandoned. It is unknown the fate of the settlers who might find these Phoenician sailors, but all the effects disappear as its own entity.

About the same time it begins to develop the city of Ibiza, in the same location as the current city, mainly due to its great port, much larger than the present and the situation on a small hill about 100 m above sea level. Between the seventh century C. and an indeterminate time, the island will remain within the orbit of the polis Canaanite Middle East until its conquest by the Assyrians and Qart Hadasht (Carthage), then to its destruction by the Romans in the year 146 BC C.

The extensive occupation of the island will grow its production and wealth of products to be appointed by the Roman historians for their wool, figs, wine and salt. Proof of economic boom are the own coinage made on the island since the late fourth century C. the symbol of the island, the god Bes, who is the name of 'island of Bes', syncretism of the god of fertility Egyptian fraternal. It is also good example of this boom foundation in Mallorca in a series of financial settlements in the south near the salt for its use, as well as economic relations with the islanders talayótica culture. Ibiza appear already during the Second Punic War besieged and ravaged by Scipio brothers after his victory in Cesse. Abandoned, without being taken the city by the Romans who believe that a Carthaginian fleet this way. Appears again mentioned as the last city loyal to Carthage Carthaginian general Mago when she flees after being rejected by Gadir / Cadiz. Mago is reset in Ibiza and Menorca to march and to recruit mercenaries and found Mahon. Ibiza is soon to be pragmatic and freely surrendered to the Romans, which allows it to maintain its social systems and culture well into the Punic Roman principality. It is at this time when Ibiza is also known as "Augusta Insula" in continuation of his sacred name Phoenician Island of Bes. Do not take to get the status of a Roman town which gives it greater rights. This however could not stop the slow decline of the port and island. After the election of Tarraco / Tarragona as the capital of the province of Tarraconesis, marine traffic changes and begins to take a route closer to the newly conquered Mallorca (123 BC).

The Romans also traded with the Balearic Islands, which had some wealth as salt, figs or extraction of minerals was the name given by the Phoenicians, and its adaptation to Latin Ebusus. Next to Formentera island called Formentera, due to the abundance of pine trees in three different classes. While tribes inhabiting the major islands and underdeveloped culturally barbaric traditions in the eyes of the Hellenistic culture, where people lived Pitiusas Semitic tradition, descendants of immigrants from the Middle East, or polis Hadasht Qart Semitic South Iberian Peninsula . The reason for putting this name to the islands could only be to not call "islands of the Canaanites, which would mark the membership of this orbit, as pine trees, which tradition claims the name, there are as many or more in Mallorca Menorca as in the Balearic Islands.

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