Tenerife The Guanches

Tenerife Travel Itinerary

The Guanches

Despite relatively frequent European contact throughout the fourteenth century, the first accounts of the native islanders, known as Guanches , stem from the fifteenth cetntury. These describe tall, powerfully built Scandinavian-looking people with blue eyes and long fair hair. The Guanches in the south of Tenerife were said to have been dark-skinned, while those in the north considerably paler. While accounts describe a comparatively uncivilized people with Stone Age technology dressed in animal hide and living in caves, visitors also seemed remarkably impressed by the natives. At a time when the concept of the "noble savage" was becoming fashionable, observers could not resist ascribing legendary abilities to the handsome race. Their agility and prowess was described in detail, their ability to be consistently accurate with lances at ten paces and stones at a hundred commended. Guanches were said to be able to run over rough ground catching a goat by its hind legs, and many giants were reported among them, including one individual allegedly fourteen feet high with eighty teeth.

Archeologists have since drawn a clearer picture of the Guanches, who were indeed tall by the standards of time - men around 1.70m, women 1.57m - with a life expectancy of around 32 years, and common malformations resulting from a small genetic stock. The natives were technologically primitive , with no knowledge of the wheel or metallurgy. In fact, by standards of most Stone Age cultures, even stone appears to have been poorly crafted and little developed and horns and animal bones were more commonly used to make tools. The ancient Canarians subsisted largely by hunting and gathering , occasionally fishing, and engaging in a little farming - growing barley, wheat and pulses - but without the aid of a plough. They had domesticated dogs and pigs as well as goats and sheep. At the time of conquest, there were estimated to be around 200,000 sheep, but the Guanches had no knowledge of using their wool for weaving, dressing instead in a tamarco , a large goatskin fastened with fish bones and thorns -

fashioned to cover a woman's chest and feet - which was also used as a shroud after death.

But probably the most intriguing feature of the Guanches' culture is that they had virtually no knowledge of seafaring and virtually no contact with other islands in the archipelago, let alone the African or European mainland. Not only is this a retarded state of development for an island race, but also a puzzling one, since presumably the natives must have arrived from somewhere by boat.

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