Guanches: who were they and how did they live?

Before the Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands, back in the 15th century, an aboriginal culture lived in the archipelago: the guanches.

Although archaeological excavations and contacts with Europeans have allowed us to know a little about this culture, their language, religious rites and social organization, many Guanche aspects continue to be a mystery. Let's travel to the Canary Islands to discover this very interesting culture.

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Who were the Guanches?

The Guanches are the name by which they are known the ancient aborigines of the Canary Islands, although its etymological origin refers above all to the culture that inhabited the island of Tenerife before the Castilian conquest of 1496. They have been related to the Berber peoples of North Africa.

The word Guanche has an uncertain origin, although several historians, philologists, and conquistadors of the time point out that it comes from of the Guanches' own language, the word already appearing in official documents from the time in which the conquest. The word Guanche is probably a syncopated form of "guanchinerfe", which would mean "man from Chinerfe", Chinerfe being the name that the Guanches gave to the island of Tenerife.

Where they came from?

The Guanches had to arrive by sea, despite the fact that the first contacts between these peoples and the Europeans indicated that they had lost all knowledge of navigation. Unlike what is usually seen in other island cultures, they did not have any type of boat that would allow them to travel between islands, despite the fact that they had to come from somewhere. The curious thing is that this fact was what made the Guanche groups of each island differentiate themselves in a very marked way over time.

According to the archaeological sites of Icod de los Vinos (Cave of the Guanches), the first humans to inhabit Tenerife must have lived in the 6th century BC. c. Through genetic analysis, it has been shown that these populations must have been related to the ancient Berbers of North Africa. About 55% of the Guanche lineage is related to the genetics of the people of the Maghreb.

The colonization of the islands by Afro-Americans occurred, surely, through various migrations, motivated by the desertification of the Sahara and the search for places free from the Phoenician and Roman invasion that settled on the Mediterranean coast african.

How were they physically?

According to descriptions of the first European explorers, such as the friar Alonso de Espinosa, the Guanches of the island of Tenerife had two sub-races: those in the south were brown-skinned, while those in the northern part were whiter and even darker. blondes.

Anthropological studies have divided Guanche remains into two types, depending on its cranial shape. There are those who have been called chromañoids, with a broad and robust face, and an elongated and narrow skull, and the Mediterraneanoids, with high faces and short skulls.

Although we are talking about a human group like any other, what is striking is that it seems that they presented a pronounced sexual dimorphism. The men were more robust and taller, measuring between 160 and 170 centimeters, while the women rarely exceeded 160 cm.. It should be noted that these heights varied depending on the area. There was a population that lived in the mountainous massifs of Anaga and Teno, isolated from the rest, where the men were not taller than 160 cm and women were less than 150 cm, having less differentiation sexual.

Their life expectancy should range between 30 and 45 years, although surely the nobles, better fed and without having to make great physical efforts, reached up to 65 years.

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Characteristics of the culture of the natives of the Canary Islands

These are the main cultural characteristics of the Guanches.

the guanche language

The Guanche language is the set of languages ​​spoken by the Canarian aborigines. This language It was related to the Berber languages, and for this reason it has also been called Canarian Berber or Insular Tamazight.. Inscriptions and stone engravings have been found whose signs are similar to the Tifinagh alphabet used by the Berbers, which is considered evidence of the relationship with Tamazight.

Although the language most likely became extinct around the 18th century, there are those who believe that it could have survived until the 19th century. Today no native speaker of this language is known, apart from the fact that There is relatively little information about its grammar and vocabulary.either.

However, there are not a few Canarian place names whose origin is Guanche, especially the names of municipalities, such as Gáldar, Alajeró, Timijiraque and Chipude, as well as some personal names, such as Mahey, Acoidan, Agoney, ossinissa. Several words have also survived in the Spanish dialect spoken in the Canaries, such as baifo (breeding of goat), gofio (roasted and ground grain), gánigo (clay pot), beletén (first milk) or guirre (vulture).

What did they eat?

The main Guanche subsistence activity was cattle ranching and transhumance grazing, basically made up of goats and sheep. They had also introduced pigs and small breed dogs, called cancha. In some deposits remains of cats and hedgehogs have been found and it is believed that all these animals could have formed part of the aboriginal diet, rather than being pets or production animals tissues. From the cattle, in addition to eating their meat, which they ate half roasted and without accompaniment, they obtained milk or “ahof”, from which they made a butter called “oche”.

Agriculture was developed as a complementary practice, being rainfed and very rudimentary.. They grew barley, wheat and various legumes. With the cereals, once toasted and ground, they made gofio or "ahoren", which was drunk mixed with water, milk or butter. With that same ground wheat and cooked with milk and butter they made a kind of porridge. Agricultural activity was more intense in the north of Tenerife, since it is there where there are better climatic conditions. They also ate wild berries.

What were their houses like?

The Guanches normally lived in caves, or in simple constructions made by hand with stone.. They preferred to live in caves located on the slopes of ravines and coastal cliffs. The outermost part of the cave, with more lighting, was reserved as a kitchen, where mills and vessels could be found. The darkest part of the cave served as a bedroom.

There were no towns in the strict sense of the word. Families and single individuals were grouped according to how the caves were arranged..

Dress

The Guanches dressed in a primitive but quite elaborate way. His clothing consisted of a cape made of goat or sheep skin, tied with straps around the neck., which was called “tamarco”.

The women wore a sleeveless nightgown, made of two pieces of chamois leather and sewn with leather straps. The genitals were covered by a kind of loincloth, called "ahico", and it was common in men and women. These garments were made by women, using bone awls and fish bones.

Weapons

Although isolated from the rest of the world, the Guanches were also a warrior society, although conflicts often occurred between them, especially when there had been a robbery or some territorial invasion.

The weapons were spears, maces, clubs, and throwing stones. They used their tamarcos as a shield. From a very young age they were raised in the art of war, being very skilled at throwing and dodging projectiles.

What was your society like?

Guanche society was highly hierarchical in the form of a pyramid, with a class of nobles who owned the means of production, basically cattle and land, and another class, the commoners, who provided labor.

At the top of the hierarchy was the Guanche king, called "mencey", in charge of the redistribution of the productive means, from which three other strata close to him familiarly started. The high nobility was made up of his closest relatives, the achimencey, who were his successors. Then came the cichiciquitzo, a class that would correspond to the second class nobility. At the base of society was the achicaxna, who were the common people.

Social differentiation was represented by physical appearance, noble men having permission to wear long beards and hair, while the mob had to be shaved.

The mencey was helped by a council of nobles, who administered justice. Among the punishments used were public lashes given with the king's rod or "añepa" and they did not exercise the death penalty. Whoever had committed a murder was sentenced to exile, and he had to compensate the victim's family with heads of cattle.

Religion and funeral rites

Guanche mythology is diverse, since it was very different from island to island. The main religious festival was the Beñesmer or harvest festival.. The Guanches believed that their social organization was represented by the way in which the world had been created. A creator deity had first made the nobles, to whom he had given cattle and land, and then made the rest of the population, to serve the former.

On the island of Tenerife they believed in Achamán, who was the god representing the good, the supreme, luck and benevolence. As a counterpart was Guayota, the devil, who lived inside Echeide or hell, a Guanche word from which the name of Teide comes. Magec was the god of the sun, being one of the main deities.

The Guanches worshiped their ancestors and, those who could afford it, mummified them.. The mummification techniques were quite similar to those used by the ancient Egyptians, extracting some of the viscera of the deceased.

They practiced sacrifices, both animal and human, although it is a little-known trait of the Guanches. During the winter solstice they had the custom of slaughtering part of the cattle and throwing it into a bonfire until the smoke rose to the sky.

Contact with Europeans

The first contacts between Guanches and Europeans occurred in the second half of the XIV century, being visited sporadically by Majorcan navigators. It was from the arrival of Jean IV de Béthencourt in 1402 when Tenerife was the scene of frequent raids in search of slaves., the slavery market that had just re-emerged in Europe.

In 1464 an attempt was made to conquer the island for the first time. Diego García de Herrera, self-proclaimed Lord of the Canary Islands, tried to subdue the Guanches, but saw that the Castilians were numerically inferior to the islanders. He signed a peace treaty with the menceyes of the island, who allowed him to build a tower. The treaty was broken in 1472 and the Europeans were expelled from the island.

After several attempts by the Europeans without much success, he having an ambivalent relationship with one of the menceyes, Bencomo de Taoro, the conquest of the island was completed in May 1496, when the menceyes decided to surrender after being progressively weakened. The act of submission was made official through the Peace of Realejos.

Bibliographic references:

• Acosta Martinez, P.; Pellicer Catalan, M. (1976). Archaeological excavations in the Cueva de la Arena (Barranco Hondo, Tenerife). Yearbook of Atlantic Studies (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Board of Trustees of the House of Columbus) (22): 125-184. ISSN 0570-4065
• Arco Aguilar, M. (1976). The pre-Hispanic Canarian burial». Yearbook of Atlantic Studies (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Board of Trustees of the House of Columbus) (22): 13-124. ISSN 0570-4065