GUANCHES, ANCIENT NATIVES OF THE CANARY ISLANDS

Joseph de Ca'th Lon with the Guanches, Tenerife

Today, The Grandma and her friends continue resting after the night of Carnival in Tenerife. The Grandma and John de Ca'th Lon are very interested in the Canarian History and especially in the ancient native inhabitants known as the Guanches.

Joseph de Ca'th Lon has gone to the public library in Santa Cruz de Tenerife to search some information about the Guanches and the latest studies about their DNA while The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 22).

More information: Reason and Result

Guanches were the aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Islands. In 2017, the first genome-wide data from the Guanches confirmed a North African origin and that they were genetically most similar to modern North African Berber peoples of the nearby North African mainland. It is believed that they migrated to the archipelago around 1000 BC or perhaps earlier.

The Guanches were the only native people known to have lived in the Macaronesian region before the arrival of Europeans, as there is no evidence that the other Macaronesian archipelagos (Azores, Cape Verde, Madeira) were inhabited before Europeans arrived.

After the Spanish conquest of the Canaries they were ethnically and culturally absorbed by Spanish settlers, although elements of their culture survive to this day, intermixed within Canarian customs and traditions such as Silbo, the whistled language of La Gomera Island.

Statue of a Guanche, Tenerife

The native term guanchinet literally translated means person of Tenerife, from Guan = person and Chinet = Tenerife. It was modified, according to Juan Núñez de la Peña, by the Castilians into Guanchos. 

Though etymologically being an ancient, Tenerife-specific, term, the word Guanche is now mostly used to refer to the pre-Hispanic aboriginal inhabitants of the entire archipelago.

Roman author and military officer Pliny the Elder, drawing upon the accounts of Juba II, king of Mauretania, stated that a Mauretanian expedition to the islands around 50 BC found the ruins of great buildings, but otherwise no population to speak of. If this account is accurate, it may suggest that the Guanches were not the only inhabitants, or the first ones; or that the expedition simply did not explore the islands thoroughly.

More information: Web Tenerife

Tenerife, specifically the archaeological site of the Cave of the Guanches in Icod de los Vinos, has provided habitation dates dating back to the 6th century BC, according to analysis carried out on ceramics that were found inside the cave.

Strictly speaking, the Guanches were the indigenous peoples of Tenerife. The population seems to have lived in relative isolation up to the time of the Castilian conquest, around the 14th century, though Genoese, Portuguese, and Castilians may have visited there from the second half of the 8th century onwards. The name came to be applied to the indigenous populations of all the seven Canary Islands, those of Tenerife being the most important or powerful.

What remains of their language, Guanche –a few expressions, vocabulary words and the proper names of ancient chieftains still borne by certain families– exhibits positive similarities with the Berber languages. The first reliable account of the Guanche language was provided by the Genoese explorer Nicoloso da Recco in 1341, with a translation of numbers used by the islanders.

Statue of a Guanche, Tenerife

According to European chroniclers, the Guanches did not possess a system of writing at the time of conquest; the writing system may have fallen into disuse or aspects of it were simply overlooked by the colonizers. Inscriptions, glyphs and rock paintings and carvings are quite abundant throughout the islands. In 1878 Dr. René Verneau discovered rock carvings in the ravines of Las Balos that resemble Libyan or Numidian writing dating from the time of Roman occupation or earlier. In other locations, Libyco-Berber script has been identified.

During the 14th century, the Guanches are presumed to have had other contacts with Balearic seafarers, suggested by the presence of Balearic artifacts found on several of the Canary Islands.

More information: Ancient Origins

The Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands began in 1402, with the expedition of Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de la Salle to the island of Lanzarote. Gadifer would invade Lanzarote and Fuerteventura with ease since many of the aboriginals, faced with issues of starvation and poor agriculture, would surrender to Spanish rule.

The other five islands fought back. El Hierro and the Bimbache population were the next to fall, then La Gomera, Gran Canaria, La Palma and in 1496, Tenerife.

In the First Battle of Acentejo (31 May 1494), called La Matanza (the slaughter), Guanches ambushed the Castilians in a valley and killed many. Only one in five of the Castilians survived, including the leader of the expedition, Alonso Fernandez de Lugo.

More information: StMu History Media

Lugo would return later to the island with the alliance of the kings of the southern part of the island, and defeated the Guanches in the Battle of Aguere. The northern Menceyatos or provinces fell after the Second Battle of Acentejo with the defeat of the successor of Bencomo, Bentor, Mencey of Taoro –what is now the Orotava Valley– in 1496.

Mencey Pelinor

Genetic evidence shows that northern African peoples, possibly descendants of the Capsian culture, made a significant contribution to the aboriginal population of the Canaries following desertification of the Sahara at some point after 6000 BC.

Linguistic evidence suggests ties between the Guanche language and the Berber languages of North Africa, particularly when comparing numeral systems. Research into the genetics of the Guanche population have led to the conclusion that they share an ancestry with Berber peoples.

The islands were visited by a number of peoples within recorded history. The Numidians, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians knew of the islands and made frequent visits, including expeditions dispatched from Mogador by Juba. The Romans occupied northern Africa and visited the Canaries between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, judging from Roman artifacts found on and near the island of Lanzarote. These show that Romans did trade with the Canaries, though there is no evidence of them ever settling there. Archaeology of the Canaries seems to reflect diverse levels of technology, some differing from the Neolithic culture that was encountered at the time of conquest.

More information: Owlcation

It is thought that the arrival of the aborigines to the archipelago led to the extinction of some big reptiles and insular mammals, for example, the giant lizard Gallotia goliath, which managed to reach up to a meter in length, and Canariomys bravoi, the giant rat of Tenerife.

A 2003 genetics research article by Nicole Maca-Meyer et al. published in the European Journal of Human Genetics compared aboriginal Guanche mtDNA, collected from Canarian archaeological sites, to that of today's Canarians and concluded that, despite the continuous changes suffered by the population -Spanish colonisation, slave trade-, aboriginal mtDNA, direct maternal, lineages constitute a considerable proportion (42 – 73%) of the Canarian gene pool.

The genetics thus suggests the native men were sharply reduced in numbers due to the war, large numbers of Spaniard men stayed in the islands and married the local women, the Canarians adopted Spanish names, language, and religion, and in this way, the Canarians were Hispanicized.

A simulation of a Guanche

An autosomal study in 2011 found an average Northwest African influence of about 17% in Canary Islanders with a wide interindividual variation ranging from 0% to 96%. 

According to the authors, the substantial Northwest African ancestry found for Canary Islanders supports that, despite the aggressive conquest by the Spanish in the 15th century and the subsequent immigration, genetic footprints of the first settlers of the Canary Islands persist in the current inhabitants. Paralleling mtDNA findings, the largest average Northwest African contribution was found for the samples from La Gomera.

According to an international investigation whose results were given in 2017, a small part of the Guanches aborigines had as relatives the first European farmers from Anatolia, present-day Turkey. This data has been discovered thanks to the analysis of the genome which also confirms that the vast majority of Canarian aborigines come from North Africa but were also related to the first European farmers, whose genetics were introduced into Europe from Anatolia through the migrations of farmers during the Neolithic expansion, around 7,000 years ago. 

More information: Atlan

Little is known of the religion of the Guanches. There was a general belief in a supreme being, called Achamán in Tenerife, Acoran in Gran Canaria, Eraoranhan in Hierro, and Abora in La Palma. The women of Hierro worshipped a goddess called Moneiba. According to tradition, the male and female gods lived in mountains, from which they descended to hear the prayers of the people.

On other islands, the natives venerated the sun, moon, earth and stars. A belief in an evil spirit was general. The demon of Tenerife was called Guayota and lived at the peak of Teide volcano, which was the hell called Echeyde; in Tenerife and Gran Canaria, the minor demons took the form of wild black woolly dogs called Jucanchas in the first and Tibicenas in the latter, which lived in deep caves of the mountains, emerging at night to attack livestock and human beings.

Statue of a Guanche, Tenerife

In Tenerife, Magec (god of the Sun) and Chaxiraxi (the goddess mother) were also worshipped. In times of drought, the Guanches drove their flocks to consecrated grounds, where the lambs were separated from their mothers in the belief that their plaintive bleating would melt the heart of the Great Spirit. During the religious feasts, hostilities were held in abeyance, from war to personal quarrels. Idols have been found in the islands, including the Idol of Tara and the Guatimac but many more figures have been found in the rest of the archipelago.

Most researchers agree that the Guanches performed their worship in the open, under sacred trees such as pine or drago, or near sacred mountains such as Mount Teide, which was believed to be the abode of the devil Guayota.  

Mount Teide was sacred to the aboriginal Guanches and since 2007 is a World Heritage Site. 

More information: Biblioteca Pleyades

Mummification was practiced throughout the islands and was highly developed on Tenerife in particular. In La Palma, the elderly were left to die alone at their own wish. The Guanches embalmed their dead. In Tenerife and Gran Canaria, the corpse was simply wrapped up in goat and sheep skins, while in other islands a resinous substance was used to preserve the body, which was then placed in a cave difficult to access, or buried under a tumulus. The work of embalming was reserved for a special class, with women tending to female corpses, and men for the male ones. Embalming seems not to have been universal, and bodies were often simply hidden in caves or buried.

In 1933, the largest Guanche necropolis of the Canary Islands was found, at Uchova in the municipality of San Miguel de Abona in the south of the island of Tenerife. This cemetery was almost completely looted; it is estimated to have contained between 60 and 74 mummies.

Although little is known about this practice among the aboriginals, it has been shown that they performed both animal sacrifices and human sacrifices.

Guanches in Gran Canaria, 15th Century

In Tenerife during the summer solstice, the Guanches were accustomed to kill livestock and throw them into a fire as an offering to the gods. 

As for human sacrifices, in Tenerife it was the custom to throw the Punta de Rasca a living child at sunrise at the summer solstice. Sometimes these children came from all parts of the island, even from remote areas of Punta de Rasca. It follows that it was a common custom of the island. On this island sacrificing other human victims associated with the death of the king, where adult men rushed to the sea are also known. Embalmers who produced the Guanche mummies, also had a habit of throwing into the sea one year after the king's death.

Bones of children mixed with lambs and kids were found in Gran Canaria, and in Tenerife amphorae have been found with remains of children inside. This suggests a different kind of ritual infanticide to those who were thrown overboard.

More information: Holidway

Child sacrifice has been seen in other cultures, especially in the Mediterranean -Carthage (now Tunisia), Ugarit in the current Syria, Cyprus and Crete.

The political and social institutions of the Guanches varied. In some islands like Gran Canaria, hereditary autocracy by matrilineality prevailed, in others the government was elective. In Tenerife all the land belonged to the kings who leased it to their subjects. In Gran Canaria, suicide was regarded as honourable, and whenever a new king was installed, one of his subjects willingly honoured the occasion by throwing himself over a precipice. In some islands, polyandry was practised; in others they were monogamous. Insult of a woman by an armed man was allegedly a capital offense. Anyone who had been accused of a crime, had to attend a public trial in Tagoror, a public court where those being prosecuted were sentenced after a trial.

The Grandma contemplates the Guanches statues

The island of Tenerife was divided into nine small kingdoms or menceyatos, each ruled by a king or Mencey. The Mencey was the ultimate ruler of the kingdom, and at times, meetings were held between the various kings. When the Castilians invaded the Canary Islands, the southern kingdoms joined the Castilian invaders on the promise of the richer lands of the north; the Castilians betrayed them after ultimately securing victory at the Battles of Aguere and Acentejo.

Guanches wore garments made from goat skins or woven from plant fibers called Tamarcos, which have been found in the tombs of Tenerife. They had a taste for ornaments and necklaces of wood, bone and shells, worked in different designs. Beads of baked earth, cylindrical and of all shapes, with smooth or polished surfaces, mostly colored black and red, were fairly common. 

More information: Web Tenerife

Guanche weapons adapted to the insular environment -using wood, bone, obsidian and stone as primary materials-, with later influences from medieval European weaponry. Basic armaments in several of the islands included javelins of 1 to 2 m in length, known as Banot on Tenerife; round, polished stones; spears; maces -common in Gran Canaria and Tenerife, and known as Magado and Sunta, respectively.

After the arrival of the Europeans, Guanche nobility from Gran Canaria were known to wield large wooden swords, larger than the European two-handed type, called Magido, which were said to be very effective against both infantrymen and cavalry. Weaponry made of wood was hardened with fire. These armaments were commonly complemented with an obsidian knife known as Tabona.

Dwellings were situated in natural or artificial caves in the mountains. In areas where cave dwellings were not feasible, they built small round houses and, according to the Castilians, practiced crude fortification.

More information: Nature

The ancient codes were doubtless originally suggested

by the discovery and diffusion of the art of writing.

Henry James Sumner Maine