The Balearic Islands are an archipelago in the western Mediterranean, consists of four main islands (Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera) and several islets. They are recognized as national historic and currently constituted as an autonomous community of Spain. With 1,094,972 inhabitants distributed in Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and islanders, representing 7.7% of the total population speaking territories.
The name of the Balearic Islands comes from the Greek Βαλλιαρεῖς, name by which were known from classical antiquity. The authors Greeks and Romans derived the name of the people of their ability to pitchers (baleareis, βαλεαρεῖς, dance, βάλλω), although Strabo considered the origin of the name was Phoenician. In fact, the root has a bal-Phoenician origin, perhaps the islands were consecrated to the god Baal, the similarity with the Greek root ΒΑΛ (in βάλλω), and employment of people could be the basis of the assimilation of this designation in Greek. That its origin is not Greek, has been inferred from the fact that the most common Greek name for the islands is not βαλεαρεῖς, but Γυμνησίαι (Gymnesiae) to refer to the islands of Menorca and Mallorca. However, Carthaginians and Romans chose the name for Menorca and Mallorca Islands. Ibiza and Formentera were called for all islands.
Although for a long time thought that “Islands” Balle come from Greek meaning “throw”, recently changed his mind and seems ruled the Hellenic origin. The source then it would be Greek but Punic. Come from the plural “ba ‘Le yaroh.” The noun “ba” le “means” those who exercise the profession “and acts as subject of the verb” yaroh “which means” throwing stones “. However, the end would mean something like “the master of the launch.” And these teachers are nothing more than launch the slingers of the islands. Thus Islands means “slingers”.
This reputation and possibly over-population in the end of the period Talayotic resulted in many of these islanders slingers finish feeding the Carthaginian armies and later Roman. The first express mention of the Balearic Islands in the Carthaginian army (fighting with the Greeks of Sicily) makes Diodorus of Sicily (XIII, 80), referring to 406 BC. It seems that the habit of using the sling to the island did not stop the crowd from the field until well into the twentieth century. In fact, the “Sling”, a word of uncertain origin, but possibly pre-Roman, that is, the contemporary slingers who gave name to the Islands. In Menorca, explain biographical and Francesc de Borja Moll and Casasnovas, there was a tradition that until recently, to join the guild bassetgers the applicant had to hit the stone with a sling and no err head shot of a barrier barrerons the 9 or the 8 areas between bar and bar (Fields, 1921).
Prehistory
The population in the Balearic Islands is very old, like the famous talayots testify in Mallorca and Menorca, large stacking of stones, from 3 to 6 feet tall. The population from the very beginning is quite different to the Gimnesias and islands. In the first, the appearance of man is more remote (V millennium BC) and becomes more intense (first isolated in caves and houses and then populated urban structure). The colonization protohistòriques (Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans) are weak or late. In the second, the emergence of modern man is (millennium BC) and is not so intense (will not be sedentary populations, but rather sporadic, casual or seasonal). So the invasion of the great Mediterranean civilizations are early and prominent cause of the first stable settlement on the islands. This difference lies in the different paleogeographic history that has affected different ecosystems, very poor for humans in the case of islands, and more usable resources in the case of Gimnesias.
The Phoenicians settled in Ibiza S. VIII BC and 654 BC founded the city of Ibiza. During the Second Punic War, Rome agrees with the island a capitulation that allows you to retain political and economic autonomy. The Carthaginian general Mago attempts to enter the island, and not allow him the Ibiza, attempts landed in Mallorca. In the failed attempt landed in Mallorca, Menorca decides to set sail, which down temporarily, and is traditionally said that Mao founded (now it is there). The slingers Menorcans join the Carthaginian armies. After the Punic War, the Romans try to put Mallorca several times, but fail until 123 BC, when Quintus Caecilius Metellus so called the “Balearic” conquer the island and founded the cities of Palma and Pollentia (Alcúdia). The Romans created the province of the Balearic Islands, Balearic islands joining.
With the fall of Rome, the islands of the western Mediterranean are in the hands of vandals, who established his kingdom in North Africa. At the time of Justinian I, Byzantine Empire conquers the Vandal kingdom and the islands are under their control. In the late eighth century, in 799, the continuous attacks against Muslims in the Balearic Islands embassies sent to the court of Charlemagne to provide the submission of the Carolingian Islands in return for aid, the which was accepted. It documents the continuation of this submission, but it seems that this dependence could be maintained once initiated Frankish civil wars (830-840) and in any case after the submission of renewal of the treaty with the emir of Cordoba ‘Abd al-Rahman II in 848. [2] These episodes, along with the Norman expedition of 859, show the Balearic Islands had to face these difficulties alone and that if there was a dependency of Byzantium This was purely formal until the invasion of the Arabs, 902. The fall and dismemberment of the Caliphate of Cordoba left the Islands in the Taifa of Denia. Later, the islands became independent and formed a Taifa itself, which lasts until the Catalan conquest.