ASIANOVERLAND.NET LONDON TO SYDNEY DAY 260: CARCASSONNE, FRANCE TO PALAFRUGELL, CATALONIA, SPAIN

Palafrugell is in the Mediterranean Costa Brava, near Palamós in the province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. Several coastal and interior towns, Llafranc, Calella de Palafrugell, Tamariu and Llofriu, belong to Palafrugell, where we stay in 1992 for the Barcelona Olympic Games because it is impossible to find accommodation in Barcelona.

The first known human settlements in what is now Catalonia were in the beginning of the Middle Paleolithic. The oldest known trace of human occupation is a pre-Neanderthal, 200,000 years old mandible, found in Banyoles. From the next prehistoric era, the Mesolithic, important remains survive, mostly dated between 8000 and 5000 BC, such as those of Sant Gregori (Falset) and el Filador (Margalef de Montsant).

The Neolithic era began in Catalonia around 5000 BC, although the population was slower to develop fixed settlements than in other places, thanks to the abundance of woods, which allowed the continuation of a fundamentally hunter-gatherer culture. An example of such settlements is La Draga at Banyoles, an "early Neolithic village which dates from the end of the 6th millennium BC."

The Chalcolithic period began in Catalonia between 2500 and 1800 BC, with the construction of copper objects. The Bronze Age occurred between 1800 and 700 BC and coincided with the arrival of the Indo-Europeans through the Urnfield Culture, whose successive waves of migration began around 1200 BC, and included the first proto-urban settlements. Around the middle of the 7th century BC, the Iron Age arrived in Catalonia.

The name "Catalonia" (Catalan: Catalunya), began to be the homeland of the Catalans (Cathalanenses) in the late 11th century.

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