Page 560 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

HISTORY

Sicily has a richer and more eventful past than any other Mediterranean island.
Its strategic importance made it the constant prey of conquerors, many of whom,
while contributing a rich artistic heritage, also turned Sicily into one of the most

desolate war zones in Europe, their greed utterly transforming its ecology and
heaping misery onto the vast majority of its inhabitants.

Prehistoric Sicily

Numerous remains survive of the earliest human settlements in Sicily. The most
interesting of these are the cave paintings in the Grotta del Genovese, on Lévanzo in
the Egadi Islands, which give a graphic insight into late Ice Age Paleolithic culture

between 20,000 and 10,000 BC.

During the later Neolithic period, between 4000 and 3000 BC, a wave of settlers
arrived from the eastern Mediterranean, landing on Sicily’s east coast and in the
Aeolian Islands. Examples of their relatively advanced culture – incised and patterned
pottery and simple tools – are displayed in the museum on the Aeolian island of
Lipari. Agricultural advances, the use of ceramics and the domestication of animals,

as well as the new techniques of metalworking imported by later waves of Aegean
immigrants in the Copper Age (3000–2000 BC), permitted the establishment of fixed
farms and villages. In turn, this caused an expansion of trade, and promoted greater
contact with far-flung Mediterranean cultures. The presence of Mycenaean ware from

the Greek mainland became more noticeable during the Bronze Age (2000–1000 BC),
an era to which the sites of Capo Graziano and Punta Milazzese on the Aeolian Islands
belong. In about 1250 BC, further population movements took place, this time
originating from the Italian mainland: the Ausonians settled in the Aeolians and the
Sikels in eastern Sicily, pushing the indigenous tribes inland. It was the Sikels, from
whom Sicily takes its name, who are thought to have first dug the vast necropolis of

Pantalica, near Siracusa. At about the same time, the Sicans, a people believed to
have originated in North Africa, occupied the western half of the island, as did the
Elymians, who claimed descent from Trojan refugees: their chief city, Segesta, was
alleged to have been founded by Aeneas’ companion, Acestes.

The Carthaginians and the Greeks

After about 900 BC, Mycenaean and Aegean trading contacts began to be replaced by

Carthaginian ones from North Africa, particularly in the west of the island. The
Carthaginians – originally Phoenicians from the eastern Mediterranean – first settled
at Panormus (modern Palermo), Solus (Solunto) and Motya (Mozia) during the eighth