Changes

[[File:Enelaboracion.jpg|right|thumb|none|200px|Image:The Bull from Costix. Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid

In the Second Millennium BC, population growth created a greater demand for raw materials and subsistence products, causing agricultural and livestock farming (and its by-products) to become more widespread. This still Neolithic society had already mastered metallurgical techniques and had discovered bronze, a strong alloy of copper and tin. Bronze arrived on the Peninsula through the Pyrenees in the Third Millennium BC and was used along with copper to make tools and objects, according to stratigraphic studies of the Bauma del Serrat del Pont site (Girona).

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The use of this new metal technology, which required furnaces capable of reaching extremely high temperatures, did not spread homogenously throughout the Peninsula. Iron-making first began on the coastline in the middle of the 8th century BC by such predominant protohistoric cultures as the Tartessos while inland civilisations continued to work with bronze and were slower to adopt this new technology. These diverse regional differences (evident at some archaeological sites) led to transformations in how these societies were organised throughout the territory, signalling that the Iberian people were entering into a new era (known as ancient history) and leaving Prehistory behind.