Canary Islands in pre-colonial times

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The Canary Islands have been known since antiquity. Some accounts estimate the islands to be 30 million years old.^[1] They had an indigenous population called the Guanches whose origin is still the subject of discussion among historians and linguists.

The islands were presumably visited by the Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Carthaginians. According to Pliny the Elder, the 1st century AD Roman author and philosopher, when visited by the Carthaginians under Hanno the Navigator the archipelago was found to be uninhabited, but that they saw ruins of great buildings.^[2] This may suggest that the islands were inhabited by other peoples prior to the Guanches.

In the Middle Ages the islands were visited by Arab and European sailors.

Contents 1 Population origins 2 Links in ancient times 3 Middle Ages 4 References and notes

[edit] Population origins

The origins of the Canarian indigenous people, known as Guanches, are still the subject of debate. Numerous theories have been put forward achieving varying degrees of acceptance.

Since this is a group of islands, the first settlers must have arrived by sea, and archaeology suggests that, when they did so, they imported, not only domestic animals such as goats, sheep, pigs and dogs and cereals such as wheat, barley and lentils, but also a set of well defined socio-cultural practices that seem to have originated and been in use for a long period of time elsewhere.

Although the maritime currents surrounding the Canaries flow in a south-westerly and westerly direction (thus leading boats away into the Atlantic Ocean), there is enough evidence to prove that various Mediterranean civilisations in antiquity did know of the islands' existence and established contact with them (mainly Romans, Greeks and Phoenicians). The indigenous population of the Canaries, therefore, did not develop in complete isolation.

Today, archaeological and ethnographic studies have led most scholars to accept the view that the pre-colonial population of the Canaries were descendants of North African Berber tribes who lived in the Atlas region and started arriving in the Canaries by sea from about 1000 BCE. Two main problems remain to be solved in this field, though. First, 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 any knowledge or made any use whatsoever of navigation techniques. This is particularly problematic considering that only the peak of Tenerife is visible from the African coast on the very clearest of days and the currents around the islands tend to lead the boats southwest and west, past the archipelago and into the Atlantic Ocean.

The second problem concerns absolute dating. Despite the fact that most scholars would now agree that the earliest reliable dates can be traced back to about 1000 BCE, different absolute dating technologies such as ¹⁴C and thermoluminescence have provided the most variable results. Poor methodological practices in the past and an insufficient number of absolute datings carried out throughout the archipelago are mostly responsible for this sort of inconsistency and lack of information.

There still exists, however, a relatively large variety of theories regarding the origin of pre-colonial Canarians. For instance, a group of scholars (mainly from the University of La Laguna, in Tenerife) are presently defending the theory that the origins of the Canarian populations are Punic-Phoenician. Professor D. Juan Álvarez Delgado, on the other hand, argued that the Canaries were uninhabited until 100 BCE, when they were gradually discovered by Greek and Roman sailors. In the second half of the first century BCE, King Juba II of Numidia abandoned North African prisoners on the islands, who eventually became the prehispanic Canarians. The fact that the first inhabitants were abandoned prisoners thus explains, according to Álvarez Delgado, their lack of navigational acumen.

Although denied by certain scholars (cf. Abreu Galindo 1977: 297), specialisation of labour and a hierarchy system seem to have governed the social structures of the Canarian precolonial populations. In Tenerife the highest figure was known as the Mencey, although, by the time the first Spanish incursions in the Canaries took place, Tenerife had already been divided into nine menceyatos (i.e. separate regions of the island controlled by its own Mencey), namely Anaga, Tegueste, Tacoronte, Taoro, Icod, Daute, Adeje, Abona and Güimar. Despite the fact that all Menceys were independent and absolute owners of their territory within the island, it was the Mencey of Taoro who acted, according to the chronicles, as primus inter pares. Gran Canaria, on the other hand, appears to have been divided into two guanartematos (i.e. functionally, politically and structurally differentiated regions): Telde and Gáldar, each governed by a Guanarteme.

Studies of precolonial Canarian society indentify both agricultural and pastoral ways of life in the Canaries (cf. Diego Cuscoy 1963: 44; González Antón & Tejera Gaspar 1990: 78).

At the time of European engagement, the Canary Islands were inhabited by a variety of indigenous communities. The pre-colonial population of the Canaries is generically referred to as Guanches, although, strictly speaking, Guanches were originally the inhabitants of Tenerife. According to the chronicles, the inhabitants of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote were referred to as Maxos, Gran Canaria was inhabited by the Canarii, El Hierro by the Bimbaches, La Palma by the Auaritas and La Gomera by the Gomeros. Despite the fact that inter-insular relations among the indigenous communities cannot be conclusively denied, evidence does seem to suggest that the interaction was relatively low and each island was populated by its own distinct socio-cultural groups.

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 of vegetation, and certain sites containing architectonic remains and cave paintings have been identified as sanctuaries.

[edit] Links in ancient times

The peak of Teide on Tenerife can be seen on clear days from the African coast. It is possible that the islands were among those visited by the Carthaginian captain Hanno the Navigator in his voyage of exploration along the African coast. It has also been suggested that the islands were visited by the Phoenicians seeking the precious red dye extracted from the orchilla, if the Canaries are considered to be The Purple Isles, alternatively identified with the Hesperides. Although there is no evidence that Romans actually settled, in 1964 a Roman amphora was discovered in waters off Lanzarote. Discoveries made in the 1990s have demonstrated in more secure 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 the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Juan Ángel Paz Peralta of the Universidad de Zaragoza, yielded about a hundred Roman potsherds, nine pieces of metal, and one piece of glass at the site, in strata dated between the first and fourth centuries A.D. Analysis of the clay indicated origins in Campania, Hispania Baetica and the province of Africa (modern Tunisia).

Legendary islands in the Western Ocean that recur in European traditions are often linked with the Canaries, even the legendary voyage of Saint Brendan.

[edit] Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, the islands were visited by the Arabs for commercial purposes. From the 14th century onward numerous visits were made by sailors from Mallorca, Portugal, and Genoa. Lancelotto Malocello settled on the island of Lanzarote in 1312. The Mayorcans established a mission with a bishop in the islands that lasted from 1350 to 1400. It is from this mission that the various paintings and statues of the Virgin 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 were subjected to a long, continuous process of Westernisation before the colonisations.

[edit] References and notes