Extinction of the Guanches of the Canary Islands

[Said Mohammad]

In 1341 the King of Portugal, Afonso IV, declared the Canaries to be within Portugal's domain and dispatched a slave-raiding expedition to the archipelago. In the decades that followed, Europeans of many nationalities joined forces to raid the Canary Islands for captives.

Europe was desperately short of labour at the time, the Black Death (1347-51) and its aftermath having swept away more than one-third of its agricultural workforce, thus creating a ready market for slaves. Demand was especially high in southern Europe ;nowhere more so than in the sugar plantations. Europeans had learned about sugar cultivation and processsing from Muslims during the Crusades and established their first plantations at Tyre. in what is now Lebanon, in 1123. From there sugar production spread sraedily westward through the Mediterranean, never able to keep pace with the soaring demands of Europe's sweet tooth; always needing more battalions of slave labour.

Planataions in Syria, Cyprus, Sicily, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean were at first worked by captive Muslims and Slavic peoples("slaves")acquired at Black Sea ports . By 1404, when Portugal granted Giovanni della Parma, of Genoa, a royal licence to establish a sugar planntation in the Algarve the Canary Islands were a primary source of slaves. The Guanche resisted, but slave-raiding, combined with warfare and disease, had reduced the population of Lanzarote to 300 by 1402, and the indigenous Guanche population of the Canary archipelago had been all but annihilated by the early 1500s.


Excerpt taken from:

"Africa: A Biography of the Continent"
pgs 331-332
By John Reader

[galvez]

AOW quoted from a Mr. Reader:

The Guanche resisted, but slave-raiding, combined with warfare and disease, had reduced the population of Lanzarote to 300 by 1402, and the indigenous Guanche population of the Canary archipelago had been all but annihilated by the early 1500s.

The Guanches, it is my understanding, were a Nordish uncivilized people in the Canary Islands when the Europeans discovered them in their denuded state, due to their isolation. They were also somewhat tall. I don't think they were completely exterminated -- it is my understanding that many of the inhabitants of the Canary Islands today are at least partially Guanche.

According to my family, I am part Guanche, having ancestry from the Canary Islands. ;D

[Dienekes]

According to analysis of ancient Guanche DNA, they were of Berber origins.

www.dienekes.com/blog/archives/000368.html

[galvez]

I suppose that makes me partially a Berber. Pretty cool. The ancestor of mine who was Guanche is said to have been very tall and light-eyed/haired. But the amount within me is probably negligible.

[Kukul-Kan]

Practically all the people from Canary Islands claim to be descendants of the Guanches even though the Guanche ethnic identity hasn’t existed for centuries. It’s like people today claiming to be descendants of the Visigoths. Although the Guanches could’ve left a genetic legacy in the Islands. For example Canarians are some of the tallest Spaniards (some of the shortest have always been the Galicians).

The Guanches were the inhabitants of Tenerife only. Each island had a different population as this site states:

Guanche was the name by which the natives of Tenerife called themselves. Guan Chenech meant "Man from Chenech", or man from Tenerife. With the passage of time, the term Guanche became identified with all the native peoples of the Canaries.

FUERTEVENTURA: Maxorata, inhabited by the Majoreros or Maxos

GRAN CANARIA: Canaria, was inhabited by the Canarii or Canarios. All the islands took their name from this one, because the Castilians started to call them 'Islands of Canaria', later 'Islas Canarias' (Canary Islands).

LANZAROTE: Tyteroygatra

LA PALMA: Benahoare, pronounced "Ben-Ajuar", and meaning "from the tribe of Ahoare" (tribe of the African Atlas). Island inhabited by the Auaritas.

LA GOMERA: Gomera, inhabited by the Gomeros. 

EL HIERRO: Hero, inhabited by the Bimbaches.

home.pi.be/~p4u00071/canarias/canguan1-eng.html.

Here’s a very old description of the Guanches taken from the anonymous account called “Historia General de los Viages[sic]” published in 1763:




Translation:

Durret tells about his journey that these Guanchos or Guanches (name given by the Spaniards) were rugged, and of a big stature, but slender and brunet. Most of them had flat nose and have a lively agile brave and war liken nature. They are laconic, but when they talk they do it very fast. They eat so much that a man alone was able to eat 20 rabbits and a small goat (this part is a bit esoteric




However, Pedro Bosch Gimpera mentioned that the modern people who resemble the ancient Canarians the most craniologically are the Gomara Berber from Morocco like this one:

[galvez]

DNA tests are a bit more reliable than hearsay. According to Dienekes's blog entry, which he posted a link to:

"...despite the continuous changes suffered by the population (Spanish colonisation, slave trade), aboriginal mtDNA lineages constitute a considerable proportion of the Canarian gene pool."

[Dienekes]

Kukul-Kan said:

However, Pedro Bosch Gimpera mentioned that the modern people who resemble the ancient Canarians the most craniologically are the Gomara Berber from Morocco like this one:

He is Mediterranoid. From what I remember, there was both a Cro-Magnoid and a Mediterranoid element in the Islands before Europeans arrived.

[Kukul-Kan]

Yes, Bosch Gimpera mentions it quoting Fischer in his book as well. He also found a correlation between the Canarians with light eyes and hair and Cro-Magnon like features.

[AWAR]

Are there any pics of Guanches?

PS. I saw a BBC show called 'walking with humans' about pre-historic neanderthals and cro-magnons.
They hired some (probably) Amerindians with probable white admixture, or they were tall Cherokees or something to act as Cro-Magnons.

I always imagined cro-magnons as more depigmented and less adapted to cold ( without the eyefold ).

What do you think about the Cro-Magnid appearance in the days they first came into N. Europe?

[caucasoid]

Dienekes said:

He is Mediterranoid. From what I remember, there was both a Cro-Magnoid and a Mediterranoid element in the Islands before Europeans arrived.

"At the time of the Spanish conquest, the islands contained a varied population of different physical types, stratified in social classes. There was definitely a tall, blond element, which lived by its flocks for the most part, and which seems to have been socially superior; a darker, more Mediterranean element which was more agricultural."

(a second, conquering, migration by the herders?)

"The Guanche skulls as a whole are unlike those of modern European Mediterraneans, and resemble northern European series most closely, especially those in which a brachycephalic element is present, as in Burgundian and Alemanni series. Hpaton has divided them into clearly differentiated types, which include a Mediterranean, a Nordic, a "Guanche," and an Alpine. The "Guanche" accounts for 50 per cent of the whole on the four islands of Teneriffe, Gomera, Gran Canaria, and Hierro; the Nordic for 31 per cent, the Mediterranean for 13 per cent, and the Alpine for most of the remainder. The "Guanche" is particularly prevalent on Teneriffe, the Alpine on Gomera, and the Mediterranean on Hierro."

"Hooton's "Guanche" type skulls, although not as large as the Afalou bou Rummel crania, resemble them morphologically, with heavy browridges, strong muscular markings, low orbits, and lambdoidal flattening.104 His Nordic crania are distinguished from the Mediterranean sub-group largely on a basis of size and robusticity. The Alpine crania bear what Hooton considers to be a slightly Mongoloid cast, as is also found in early European brachycephalic skulls of the Mesolithic and earlier."

"Fischer, who has studied the modern Canarians,106 finds among them the following types: (1) A true, small Mediterranean, which may be partly of Spanish introduction (2) A "Berber" type, with a heavier, broader face, but essentially Mediterranean (3) An "Oriental" type, with a narrow face, thin, convex nose, dark hair, and attenuated extremities (4) An Alpine of Bavarian appearance - this is said to be uncommon (5) The "Crô-Magnon" type; with a low, rectangular face, especially characterized by bigonial prominence; deep-set eyes under heavy browridgcs, with low orbits; a straight nasal profile, but relative broad nose; thin lips, and heavy jaw. This type has a thick-set body build, with trunk proportions similar to those of living Bavarians."

"Fischer finds no Nordic type in the present-day Canarian population, but attributes the mixed blondism present in it to his "Crô-Magnon" element, which is the modern version of Hooton's "Guanche" type. Hooton readily states that he has no means of attributing any given pigment character to any one of his selected cranial types. It is, therefore, questionable whether there was a Nordic type in the Canary Islands in the pigmental as well as in the skeletal sense."

"The Canarian evidence, taken as a whole, is of great value in the reconstruction of the racial history of North Africa. ft is evident that in the time of the Neolithic agriculturalists the Mediterranean food-producers must have associated, in some parts of North Africa at least, with the descendants of earlier Afalou-type people, who survived in the Canary Islands as an important factor in the imported population. The early Alpine-like strain found in the Canaries, especially in Gomera, may probably be attributed to a reëmergence of the brachycephalic element in the Afalou people, in a somewhat reduced form. This identification is confirmed by its extreme lowness of orbit and shortness of face. This type is comparable to the minor brachycephalic element found in other parts of North Africa, as in Ghomara and among the Kabyles, and it may conceivably be connected with the brachycephaly of Jerba. The Guanches were less dolichocephalic than most living Berbers, and had received a minimum infusion of the Atlanto-Mediterranean racial element which carried Hamitic speech."

"The most troublesome factor in the whole North African racial problem lies in the necessity of explaining the origin of the local Nordics, whose presence as a minority in the populations of Tunisia, Algeria, and northern Morocco, if not in the Canary Islands, cannot be denied. There are two possible explanations, as follows: (1) The North African Nordics resemble the mixed Nordics of Upper Palaeolithic inspiration found in Ireland and western Norway more than they do the ash-blond Eastern Valley Nordics of Norway, and those of Sweden. Therefore the so-called Nordics of North Africa are a mixture of brunet Mediterraneans of tall stature and considerable facial length with Afalou survivors. The minor blondism of these "Nordics" is derived from the Afalou side of the ancestry (2) The North African Nordics were partly formed as stated, but not wholly so, for there are some ash-blonds in the Rif; furthermore, the Riffian Nordics are lighter-haired than individuals of Afalou type, just as European Nordics are lighter-haired than are modern representatives of the Brünn race. Blond hair is positively associated with narrow noses, and the Afalou type nose is moderately broad. Unless it is possible to explain these phenomena as genetic recombinations, we must admit a Nordic invasion of North Africa from Europe or Asia as early as the second millennium B.C. "

( From www.fikas.no/~sprocket/snpa/chapter-XI14.htm )