Canary Islands in Pre-colonial times

The Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

have been known since antiquity

Ancient history

Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history to the Early Middle Ages. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, with Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing, from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC...

. Until the Spanish colonization

Spanish Empire

The Spanish Empire comprised territories and colonies administered directly by Spain in Europe, in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It originated during the Age of Exploration and was therefore one of the first global empires. At the time of Habsburgs, Spain reached the peak of its world power....

between 1402 and 1496, the Canaries were populated by an indigenous population called the Guanches

Guanches

Guanches is the name given to the aboriginal Berber inhabitants of the Canary Islands. It is believed that they migrated to the archipelago sometime between 1000 BCE and 100 BCE or perhaps earlier...

, whose origin is still the subject of discussion among historians and linguists.

The islands were visited by the Phoenicians, the Greeks

Greeks

The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

and the Carthaginians. According to the 1st century AD Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

author and philosopher Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

, the archipelago

Archipelago

An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...

was found to be uninhabited when visited by the Carthaginians under Hanno the Navigator

Hanno the Navigator

Hanno the Navigator was a Carthaginian explorer c. 500 BC, best known for his naval exploration of the African coast...

, but that they saw ruins of great buildings. This story may suggest that the islands were inhabited by other peoples prior to the Guanches.

At the time of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an 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

Guanches

Guanches is the name given to the aboriginal Berber inhabitants of the Canary Islands. It is believed that they migrated to the archipelago sometime between 1000 BCE and 100 BCE or perhaps earlier...

, although, strictly speaking, Guanches were originally the inhabitants of Tenerife

Tenerife

Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...

. According to the chronicles, the inhabitants of Fuerteventura

Fuerteventura

Fuerteventura , a Spanish island, is one of the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. It is situated at 28°20' north, 14°00' west. At 1,660 km² it is the second largest of the Canary Islands, after Tenerife...

and Lanzarote

Lanzarote

Lanzarote , a Spanish island, is the easternmost of the autonomous Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 125 km off the coast of Africa and 1,000 km from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering 845.9 km2, it stands as the fourth largest of the islands...

were referred to as Maxos, Gran Canaria

Gran Canaria

Gran Canaria is the second most populous island of the Canary Islands, with a population of 838,397 which constitutes approximately 40% of the population of the archipelago...

was inhabited by the Canarians, El Hierro

El Hierro

El Hierro, nicknamed Isla del Meridiano , is the smallest and farthest south and west of the Canary Islands , in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, with a population of 10,162 .- Name :The name El Hierro, although phonetically identical to the Spanish word for 'iron', is generally thought...

by the Bimbaches, La Palma

La Palma

La Palma is the most north-westerly of the Canary Islands. La Palma has an area of 706 km2 making it the fifth largest of the seven main Canary Islands...

by the Auaritas and La Gomera

La Gomera

La Gomera is one of Spain's Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. In area, it is the second-smallest of the seven main islands of this group.- Political organization :...

by the Gomeros. 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.

Historical background

The origins of the Canarian indigenous people —the Guanches

Guanches

Guanches is the name given to the aboriginal Berber inhabitants of the Canary Islands. It is believed that they migrated to the archipelago sometime between 1000 BCE and 100 BCE or perhaps earlier...

— are still the subject of debate. Numerous theories have been put forward, achieving varying degrees of acceptance.

There is evidence to prove that various Mediterranean civilization

History of the Mediterranean region

The history of the Mediterranean region is the history of the interaction of the cultures and people of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea —the central superhighway of transport, trade and cultural exchange between diverse peoples...

s in antiquity knew of the islands' existence and established contact with them. The islands were visited by the Phoenicians, the Greeks

Greeks

and the Carthaginians. According to Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

, an expedition of Mauretanians sent by Juba II

Juba II

Juba II or Juba II of Numidia was a king of Numidia and then later moved to Mauretania. His first wife was Cleopatra Selene II, daughter to Greek Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and Roman triumvir Mark Antony.-Early life:Juba II was a prince of Berber descent from North Africa...

to the archipelago

Archipelago

visited the islands, finding them to be uninhabited, but that there were ruins of great buildings. When King Juba, the Roman protegee, dispatched a contingent to re-open the dye production facility at Mogador (historical name of Essaouira, Morocco) in the early 1st century AD, Juba's naval force was subsequently sent on an exploration of the Canary Islands, using Mogador as their mission base.

The peak of Teide

Teide

Mount Teide , is a volcano on Tenerife, Canary Islands. Its summit is the highest point in Spain, the highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic, and it is the third highest volcano in the world measured from its base on the ocean floor, after Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea located in...

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

Carthage

Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...

captain Hanno the Navigator

Hanno the Navigator

Hanno the Navigator was a Carthaginian explorer c. 500 BC, best known for his naval exploration of the African coast...

in his voyage of exploration along the African coast. The islands may have been visited by the Phoenicians seeking the precious red dye extracted from the orchil, if the Canaries represent The Purple Isles of legend or the Hesperides

Hesperides

In Greek mythology, the Hesperides are nymphs who tend a blissful garden in a far western corner of the world, located near the Atlas mountains in North Africa at the edge of the encircling Oceanus, the world-ocean....

. Although there is no evidence that Romans established permanent settlements, in 1964 Roman amphora

Amphora

An amphora is a type of vase-shaped, usually ceramic container with two handles and a long neck narrower than the body...

e were discovered in waters off Lanzarote

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 University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Juan Ángel Paz Peralta of the University of Zaragoza

University of Zaragoza

The University of Zaragoza or sometimes Saragossa University is a university located in Zaragoza, in the Aragon region of Spain...

, yielded about a hundred Roman potsherds, nine pieces of metal, and one piece of glass at the site, in strata dated between the 1st and 4th centuries AD. Analysis of the clay indicated origins in Campania

Campania

Campania is a region in southern Italy. The region has a population of around 5.8 million people, making it the second-most-populous region of Italy; its total area of 13,590 km² makes it the most densely populated region in the country...

, Hispania Baetica

Hispania Baetica

Hispania Baetica was one of three Imperial Roman provinces in Hispania, . Hispania Baetica was bordered to the west by Lusitania, and to the northeast by Hispania Tarraconensis. Baetica was part of Al-Andalus under the Moors in the 8th century and approximately corresponds to modern Andalucia...

and the province of Africa (modern Tunisia

Tunisia

Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...

).

During the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

, the islands were visited by Arab

Arab

Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

s including Muslim navigator Ibn Farrukh

Ibn Farrukh

Ibn Farrukh was a Muslim navigator from Granada. He sailed from Kadesh in February 999 CE into the Atlantic, landed in Gando visiting King Guanariga, and continued westward where he saw and named two islands, Capraria and Pluitana. He arrived back in Spain in May 999 CE...

, from Granada

Granada

Granada is a city and the capital of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of three rivers, the Beiro, the Darro and the Genil. It sits at an elevation of 738 metres above sea...

under the Umayyads, who is said to have landed in "Gando" (Gran Canaria) in February 999, visiting a king named Guanarigato. From the 14th century onward, numerous visits were made by sailors from Mallorca

Mallorca

Majorca or Mallorca is an island located in the Mediterranean Sea, one of the Balearic Islands.The capital of the island, Palma, is also the capital of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands. The Cabrera Archipelago is administratively grouped with Majorca...

, Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

, and Genoa

Genoa

Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....

. Lancelotto Malocello

Lancelotto Malocello

Lancelotto Malocello was a Genoese navigator , who gave his name to the island of Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands....

settled on the island of Lanzarote in 1312. The Mayorcans established a mission

Missionary

A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

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

Castilian people

The Castilian people are the inhabitants of those regions in Spain where most people identify themselves as Castilian. They include Castile-La Mancha, Madrid, and the major part of Castile and León. However, not all regions of the medieval Kingdom of Castile think of themselves as 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 formal colonization took place.

There still exists, however, a variety of theories regarding the origins of pre-colonial Canarians explaining them by the hypothesis of a more recent immigration. Some scholars (mainly from the University of La Laguna

University of La Laguna

The University of San Fernando de La Laguna, also known as the ULL is situated in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, on the island of Tenerife. It is the oldest university in the Canary Islands, and has the highest student population of any university in these islands. It is also considered the most...

, in Tenerife) defend the theory that the Canarian populations are Punic-Phoenician in origin. 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 1st century BCE, King Juba II

Juba II

of Numidia

Numidia

Numidia was an ancient Berber kingdom in part of present-day Eastern Algeria and Western Tunisia in North Africa. It is known today as the Chawi-land, the land of the Chawi people , the direct descendants of the historical Numidians or the Massyles The kingdom began as a sovereign state and later...

abandoned North Africa

North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...

n prisoners on the islands, who eventually became the pre-Hispanic Canarians. The fact that the first inhabitants were abandoned prisoners thus explains, according to Álvarez Delgado, their lack of navigational acumen.

Genetic analysis using mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA located in organelles called mitochondria, structures within eukaryotic cells that convert the chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, adenosine triphosphate...

supports the Moroccan Berbers

Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...

as the African population most closely related to the Guanches.

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

suggests that the original settlers arrived by sea, importing domestic animals such as goat

Goat

The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of...

s, sheep, pig

Pig

A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig, its ancestor the wild boar, and several other wild relatives...

s and dog

Dog

The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...

s and cereal

Cereal

Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...

s such as wheat

Wheat

Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice...

, barley

Barley

Barley is a major cereal grain, a member of the grass family. It serves as a major animal fodder, as a base malt for beer and certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various health foods...

and lentil

Lentil

The lentil is an edible pulse. It is a bushy annual plant of the legume family, grown for its lens-shaped seeds...

s. 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

Archaeology

and ethnographic

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

studies have led most scholars to accept the view that the pre-colonial population of the Canaries shared common origins with North Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

n Berber

Berber people

tribes from the Atlas Mountains

Atlas Mountains

The Atlas Mountains is a mountain range across a northern stretch of Africa extending about through Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The highest peak is Toubkal, with an elevation of in southwestern Morocco. The Atlas ranges separate the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines from the Sahara Desert...

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. The peak of Tenerife

Tenerife

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 the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

.

Most scholars 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 as ¹⁴C

Carbon-14

Carbon-14, 14C, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with a nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and colleagues , to date archaeological, geological, and hydrogeological...

and thermoluminescence

Thermoluminescence

Thermoluminescence is a form of luminescence that is exhibited by certain crystalline materials, such as some minerals, when previously absorbed energy from electromagnetic radiation or other ionizing radiation is re-emitted as light upon heating of the material...

have provided variable results. Inadequate methodologies and an insufficient number of absolute datings carried out throughout the archipelago have yielded inconsistencies and information gaps.

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

Population Genetics

A 2003 genetics research article by Nicole Maca-Meyer et al. published in the European Journal of Human Genetics

European Journal of Human Genetics

The European Journal of Human Genetics is the official journal of the European Society of Human Genetics. It focuses on human genetics, and is published monthly by the Nature Publishing Group...

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. Although the Berbers

Berber people

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." mtDNA haplogroup U subclade U6b1

Haplogroup U (mtDNA)

In human mitochondrial genetics, Haplogroup U is a human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup.-Origins:Haplogroup U descends from a woman in the Haplogroup R branch of the phylogenetic tree, who lived around 55,000 years ago...

is Canarian-specific and is the most common mtDNA haplogroup found in aboriginal Guanche archaeological burial sites.

Y-DNA, or Y-chromosomal, (direct paternal) lineages were analysed in a later study by Rosa Fregel and colleagues published in BMC 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 found Berber

Berber people

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.

Society

Although denied by certain scholars (cf. Abreu Galindo 1977: 297), specialisation of labour

Division of labour

Division of labour is the specialisation of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and likeroles. Historically an increasingly complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialisation...

and a hierarchy

Hierarchy

A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...

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.

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

Vegetation

Vegetation is a general term for the plant life of a region; it refers to the ground cover provided by plants. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic characteristics. It is broader...

. Certain sites containing architectonic remains and cave paintings have been identified as sanctuaries.

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