Paragraph: (History-Anthropology/oanc-Algarve-History-1.txt)
Sent 1: Little is known of the earliest Stone Age inhabitants of Europe's southwestern extremity.
Sent 2: The ancient Greeks called them the Cynetes (or Cunetes).
Sent 3: Whatever their origins, their culture evolved under the pressure and influence of foreign forces.
Sent 4: Among the many invading armies that settled here and contributed to nascent Portuguese culture were Phoenicians, who settled in the area around 1,000 b.c., followed by the Celts, Iberians, Greeks, and Carthaginians.
Sent 5: But it was the Romans, who arrived late in the third century b.c., who most greatly influenced all of Iberia.
Sent 6: They built towns, industries, roads, and bridges, developed agriculture, and bequeathed the Latin language, of which Portuguese is a direct descendant.
Sent 7: The Romans named the southwestern province of the peninsula Lusitania, oddly enough for one of the Celtiberian tribes they defeated, and by the third century a.d.
Sent 8: had introduced Christianity.
Sent 9: By the beginning of the fourth century the Algarve had a bishop in place, based in Faro.
Sent 10: But Rome had already fallen into decay, and soon hordes of northern tribesmen took over the empire.
Sent 11: The Algarve fell to the Visigoths in the mid-fifth century.
Sent 12: Under Moorish Rule In a.d.
Sent 13: 711, the Moors brought powerful armies from North Africa and launched a devastating attack on the Iberian peninsula, conquering much of what would become Spain and Portugal.
Sent 14: They imposed Islam and left an indelible influence on the countryside and the population of the Algarve.
Sent 15: The Moorish legacy can still be seen in the form of wells and waterwheels, squat white houses, the dark complexions of the people, and in the very name given the region — taken from Al-Gharb, which means "country of the west" (when the Moors conquered the territory, it was the most westerly in the known world).
Sent 16: The Moors governed their Iberian kingdoms from across the border in Seville, but the Algarve had its own regional capital and huge, invulnerable fortress.
Sent 17: The capital was Chelb (or Xelb), and it was bigger and better defended than Lisbon.
Sent 18: Today the town, known as Silves, is a provincial outpost whose only besiegers are busloads of tourists who climb the narrow streets up to the old Moorish ramparts.