TheCanary Islands have been known since antiquity. Indigenous population ofAmazigh origin from North Africa lived in these islands until theSpanish colonization, between 1402 and 1496.
The islands were visited by thePhoenicians, the Greeks and theCarthaginians. According to the 1st century CE Roman author and philosopherPliny the Elder, the archipelago was found to be uninhabited, but ruins of great buildings were seen.[1] This story may suggest that the islands were inhabited by other peoples prior to the Guanches.
At the time of medieval European engagement, the Canary Islands were inhabited by a variety of indigenous communities. The pre-colonial population of the Canaries is generically referred to asGuanches, although, strictly speaking, Guanches were originally the inhabitants ofTenerife. According to the chronicles, the inhabitants ofFuerteventura andLanzarote were referred to asMaxos,Gran Canaria was inhabited by theCanarii,El Hierro by theBimbaches,La Palma by theAuaritas andLa Gomera by theGomeros. Evidence does seem to suggest that inter-insular interaction was relatively low and each island was populated by its own distinct socio-cultural groups who lived in relative isolation separated from each other.
The origins of the Canarian indigenous people remain the subject of debate. Numerous theories have achieved varying degrees of acceptance. The excavation work has provided an ample series of radio-carbon dates. According to archaeology professor Pablo Atoche, "human colonization of the Canary Islands started to somewhere close to the change from the II to the I millennium BC."[2] Canary Island proto-history started with the initial colonization ofPhoenicia -circa 10th to 6th centuries BC.[2]
VariousMediterranean civilizations in antiquity knew of the islands' existence and established contact with them. Visitors includedPhoenicians,Greeks andCarthaginians. According toPliny the Elder, an expedition of Mauretanians sent by KingJuba II (d. 23 CE) to thearchipelago visited the islands, finding them uninhabited, but noting ruins of great buildings.[1] When King Juba, the Roman protégé, dispatched a contingent to re-open the dye production facility atMogador (historical name of Essaouira, Morocco) in the early 1st century,[3] Juba's naval force was subsequently sent on an exploration of the Canary Islands, using Mogador as their mission base.
The highest point ofFuerteventura can be seen on clear days from the African coast. TheCarthaginian captainHanno the Navigator may have visited the islands during his voyage of exploration along the African coast. The Phoenicians may have arrived seeking the precious redorchil dye extracted from lichen – if the Canaries representPliny the Elder'sPurple Isles or theHesperides of legend. Although no evidence has survived of any permanent Roman settlements, in 1964 Romanamphorae were discovered in waters offLanzarote. Discoveries made in the 1990s have demonstrated in more definite detail that the Romans traded with the indigenous inhabitants. Excavations of a settlement at El Bebedero on Lanzarote, made by a team under Pablo Atoche Peña of theUniversity of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Juan Ángel Paz Peralta of theUniversity of Zaragoza, yielded about a hundred Romanpotsherds, nine pieces of metal and one piece of glass at the site, in strata dated between the 1st and 4th centuries. Analysis of the clay indicated origins inCampania,Hispania Baetica and theprovince of Africa (modernTunisia).
The Romans named each of the islands:Ninguaria orNivaria (Tenerife),Canaria (Gran Canaria),Pluvialia orInvale (Lanzarote),Ombrion (La Palma),Planasia (Fuerteventura),Iunonia orJunonia (El Hierro) andCapraria (La Gomera).
From the 14th century onward, sailors fromMallorca,Portugal andGenoa made numerous visits.Lancelotto Malocello settled on the island of Lanzarote in 1312. TheMayorcans established amission with a bishop that lasted from 1350 to 1400. It is from this mission that the various paintings and statues of theVirgin Mary that are currently venerated in the island were preserved. European disembarkations of Genovese,Castilian and Portuguese missionaries and pirates on Canarian shores became relatively common and the prehispanic populations experienced a long and ongoing process of Westernisation before formal colonization took place.
A variety of theories regarding the origins of pre-colonial Canarians explain them by the hypothesis of a more recent immigration. Some scholars (mainly from theUniversity of La Laguna, in Tenerife) defend the theory that the Canarian populations arePunic-Phoenician in origin. Professor D. Juan Álvarez Delgado, on the other hand, argued that the Canaries remained uninhabited until 100BCE, when Greek and Roman sailors began to explore the area. In the second half of the 1st century BCE, KingJuba II ofNumidia abandonedNorth African prisoners on the islands, who eventually became the pre-Hispanic Canarians.[citation needed] If the first inhabitants were abandoned prisoners, this explains, according to Álvarez Delgado, their lack of navigational acumen.
Genetic analysis usingmitochondrial DNA points to the MoroccanBerbers as the African population most closely related to the Guanches.[4]
Archaeology suggests that the original settlers arrived by sea, importingdomestic animals such asgoats,sheep,pigs anddogs andgrains such aswheat,barley andlentils. They also brought with them a set of well-defined socio-cultural practices that seem to have originated and been in use for a long period of time elsewhere.
Today,archaeological andethnographic studies have led most scholars to accept the view that the pre-colonial population of the Canaries shared common origins with NorthAfricanBerber tribes from theAtlas Mountains region who began to arrive in the Canaries by sea around 1000 BCE or earlier. However, there is no archaeological or historical evidence to prove that either the Berber tribes of the Atlas Mountains or the Canarian pre-colonial population had knowledge or made use of navigation techniques.[5] The peak ofTenerife is visible from the African coast on the very clearest of days, but the currents around the islands tend to lead the boats southwest and west, past the archipelago and into theAtlantic Ocean.
Most scholars[who?] would now agree that the earliest reliable dates related to permanent human occupation can be traced back to about 1000 BCE, but different absolute dating technologies such ascarbon-14 andthermoluminescence have provided variable results. Inadequate methodologies and an insufficient number of absolute datings carried out throughout the archipelago have yielded inconsistencies and information gaps.[6]
According to a 2024 study by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, there is archaeological evidence that the Romans were the first to colonise the islands, during the period from the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE. There was no overlap with the occupation by the people who were inhabiting the islands at the time of the Spanish conquest, who had first arrived sometime between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE.[7][8]
Studies of precolonial Canarian society illustrate both agricultural and pastoral ways of life in the Canaries.[9]Archeological research in Gran Canaria has found a relatively high prevalence ofauricular exostosis among Pre-Hispanic craniums, reaching 34.35% in coastal burial places.Not all coastal craniums presented exostosis but there were no differences between sexes.Researchers thus proposed a socialdivision of work among the Canarii, with certain individuals,male or female, specializing in fishing by immersion and swimming.[10]
A 2003 genetics research article by Nicole Maca-Meyer et al. published in theEuropean Journal of Human Genetics comparedmitochondrial DNA (mtDNA, inheritedmatrilineally) from aboriginal Guanche (collected from Canarian archaeological sites) to mtDNA of today's Canarians and concluded that, "despite the continuous changes suffered by the population (Spanish colonisation, slave trade), aboriginal mtDNA lineages constitute a considerable proportion [42 – 73%] of the Canarian gene pool. Although theBerbers are the most probable ancestors of the Guanches, it is deduced that important human movements [e.g., the Islamic-Arabic conquest of the Berbers] have reshaped Northwest Africa after the migratory wave to the Canary Islands" and the "results support, from a maternal perspective, the supposition that since the end of the 16th century, at least, two-thirds of the Canarian population had an indigenous substrate, as was previously inferred from historical and anthropological data."[11] mtDNA haplogroup U subcladeU6b1 is Canarian-specific[12] and is the most common mtDNA haplogroup found in aboriginal Guanche archaeological burial sites.[11]
Lineages ofY-DNA (inheritedpatrilineally) were analysed in a later study by Rosa Fregel and colleagues published inBMC Evolutionary Biology. Y-DNA was extracted from the same aboriginal Guanche samples used by Nicole Maca-Meyer et al., and compared to samples from 17th-18th century remains post-dating the Spanish conquest of the islands, and samples from the present population. They foundBerber Y-chromosome lineages (E-M81, E-M78 and J-M267) prominent in the indigenous remains, confirming the North West African origin for the Guanches deduced Nicole Maca-Meyer et al. from mitochondrial DNA results. "However, in contrast with their female lineages, which have survived in the present-day population since the conquest with only a moderate decline, the male indigenous lineages have dropped constantly being substituted by European lineages." They conclude that the European colonization of the Canary Islands changed the local gene-pool most dramatically in the male line.[13]
Although denied by certain scholars (cf. Abreu Galindo 1977: 297),specialisation of labour and ahierarchy system seem to have governed the social structures of the Canarian precolonial populations. InTenerife the highest figure was known as theMencey, although, by the time the first Spanish incursions in the Canaries took place, Tenerife had already been divided into ninemenceyatos (i.e. separate regions of the island controlled by its own Mencey),[14] namelyAnaga, Tegueste, Tacoronte, Taoro, Icod, Daute, Adeje, Abona and Güimar. Despite the fact that allMenceys were independent and absolute owners of their territory within the island, it was theMencey of Taoro who acted, according to the chronicles, asprimus inter pares.Gran Canaria, on the other hand, appears to have been divided into twoguanartematos (i.e. functionally, politically and structurally differentiated regions):Telde andGáldar, each governed by aGuanarteme.
Little information has survived regarding the religious and cosmological beliefs of the Guanches. Indigenous Canarian people often performed their religious practices in places marked by particular striking geographical features or types ofvegetation. Certain sites containing architectonic remains andcave paintings have been identified as sanctuaries.
| History |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Languages | ||
| Mythology | ||
| Historic sites | ||
| Museums and galleries |
| |
| Cuisine | ||
| Musical instruments | ||
| Traditions | ||
| Sports | ||
| Symbols places of the Canary Islands | ||
Territories with limitedRoman Empire occupation and contact | ||
|---|---|---|
| Occupied partially or temporarily |  | |
| Contacts & explorations | ||
| See also | ||
