Guanches
The Guanches were the indigenous inhabitants of the Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean some to the west of modern Morocco and the North African coast. The islanders spoke the Guanche language, which is believed to have been related to the Berber languages of mainland North Africa; the language became extinct in the 17th century, several generations after the completion of the Conquest of the Canary Islands by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain.
It is believed that the Guanches may have arrived at the archipelago some time in the first millennium BC. The Guanches were the only indigenous people known to have lived in the Macaronesian archipelago region before the arrival of Europeans. There is no accepted evidence that the other Macaronesian archipelagos were inhabited.
After the commencement of the Spanish conquest of the Canaries, starting in the early 15th century, many natives were outright killed by the Spanish or died of exposure to new pathogens during the social disruption. Eventually, any remaining survivors were assimilated into the new Spanish population and associated culture. Elements of their original culture survive within Canarian customs and traditions, such as Silbo, as well as some lexicon of Canarian Spanish. Some scholars have classified the destruction of the Guanche people and culture as an example of colonial genocide.
In 2017, the first genome-wide data analysis of the ethnic Guanche confirmed a North African origin, genetically being most similar to ancient North African Berber peoples of the mainland African deserts.
Etymology
The native term guanachinet literally translated means "person of Tenerife". It was modified, according to Juan Núñez de la Peña, by the Castilians into "Guanche".Though etymologically an ancient, Tenerife-specific term, the word Guanche is now used mostly to refer to the pre-Hispanic Indigenous inhabitants of the entire archipelago.
Historical background
Prehistory
Genetic and linguistic evidence show that North African peoples made a significant contribution to the aboriginal population of the Canaries, notably, following desertification of the Sahara. There are 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 has led to the conclusion that they share an ancestry with Berber peoples who immigrated from Northwest Africa.The islands were visited by a number of other peoples and representatives of distant civilizations during recorded history; the Numidians, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians all knew of the islands and made frequent visits, including expeditions dispatched from Mogador by Juba.
Based on Roman artifacts, found on and near the island of Lanzarote, the Romans visited the Canary Islands during their occupation of mainland North Africa between the 1st and 4th centuries AD; the artifacts found show that the Romans engaged in trade with the people of the island. However, there is no evidence of them ever settling on or invading the Canaries. Archaeology of the Canaries seems to reflect diverse levels of technology, with items differing widely from the Neolithic culture that would have been encountered by the Spanish, at the time of their conquest.
Scholars believe that the original settling by humans on the islands likely resulted in the extinction of uniquely-adapted endemic species, such as reptiles and mammals exhibiting insular gigantism; one example is believed to be Canariomys bravoi, the extinct giant rat of Tenerife.
Pliny the Elder, a Roman author and military officer drawing from the accounts of Juba II, stated that a Mauretanian expedition to the islands, circa 50 BC, found the ruins of great buildings, albeit with no population to speak of. If this account is accurate, it may suggest that the Guanche were not the only inhabitants, or the first ones; alternatively, this could imply that the Mauretanian expedition did not explore the islands thoroughly.
Tenerife, specifically the archaeological site of the Cave of the Guanches in Icod de los Vinos, has provided evidence of habitation dating to the 6th century BC. This is based on the analyses of ceramics and pottery artifacts that were found inside the cave.
Historically, the Guanche were the first peoples of Tenerife. Their population seems to have lived in relative obscurity and isolation up until the time of Castilian conquest ; Genoese, Portuguese, and Castilian ships may have visited the archipelago earlier for trade purposes, from the second half of the 8th century onward. The Spanish gradually applied the term "Guanche" to the indigenous populations of all seven Canary Islands, with those living on 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.
According to European chroniclers, the Guanche did not possess a system of writing at the time of conquest; their potential writing system may have fallen into disuse, or aspects of it were simply overlooked by the colonists. Inscriptions, glyphs, rock paintings and carvings are all quite abundant throughout the archipelago. Petroglyphs attributed to other Mediterranean civilizations have also been found on some of the islands. In 1752, Domingo Vandewalle, a military governor of Las Palmas, ventured to investigate the petroglyphs. Aquilino Padron, a priest at Las Palmas, catalogued inscriptions at El Julan, La Candía and La Caleta, all on El Hierro. In 1878, Dr. René Verneau discovered rock carvings in the ravines of Las Balos that resembled Libyan or Numidian script, dating from the time of Roman occupation or earlier. In other locations, Libyco-Berber script has been identified.
Pre-conquest exploration
The geographic accounts of Pliny the Elder and of Strabo mention the Fortunate Isles but do not report anything about their populations.An account of the Guanche population may have been made around AD 1150 by the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi in the Nuzhatul Mushtaq, a book he wrote for King Roger II of Sicily. Al-Idrisi reports a journey in the Atlantic Ocean made by the Mugharrarin, a family of Andalusian seafarers from Lisbon. The only surviving version of this book, kept at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and first translated by Pierre Amédée Jaubert, reports that, after having reached an area of "sticky and stinking waters," the Mugharrarin moved back and first reached an uninhabited Island, where they found "a huge quantity of sheep, which its meat was bitter and inedible". They "continued southward" and reached another island where they were soon surrounded by barks and brought to "a village whose inhabitants were often fair haired with long and flaxen hair and the women of a rare beauty." Among the villagers, one spoke Arabic and asked them where they came from. Then the king of the village ordered them to bring villagers back to the continent. There they were surprised to be welcomed by Berbers.
Apart from the marvelous and fanciful content of this history, this account suggests that the Guanche had sporadic contacts with populations from the mainland. Al-Idrisi described the Guanche men as tall and of a reddish-brown complexion.
During the 14th century, the Guanche are presumed to have had other contacts with Balearic seafarers from Spain. This is based on the Balearic artifacts found on several of the Canary Islands.
Castilian conquest
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 invaded Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.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, called La Matanza, Guanche ambushed the Castilians in a valley and killed many. Only one in five of the Castilians survived, including the leader, Alonso Fernandez de Lugo.
Lugo later returned to the island with the alliance of the kings of the southern part of the island. He 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.
Various scholars have used the term "genocide" to describe the conquest of the Canary Islands. Mohamed Adhikari argues that the Canary Islands were the scene of "Europe's first overseas settler colonial genocide," and that the mass killing and enslavement of natives, along with forced deportation, sexual violence and confiscation of land and children constituted an attempt to "destroy in whole" the Guanche people. The tactics used in the Canary Islands in the 15th century served as a model for the Iberian colonisation of the Americas.
Language
The native Guanche language is now known only through a few sentences and individual words, supplemented by several placenames. Many modern linguists propose that it belongs to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic languages.However, while there are recognizable Berber words within the Guanche language, no Berber grammatical inflections have been identified; there is a large stock of vocabulary that does not bear any resemblance to Berber whatsoever.
Other strong similarities to the Berber languages are reflected in their counting system, while some authors suggest the Canarian branch would be a sister branch to the surviving continental Berber languages, splitting off during the early development of the language family and before the terminus post quem for the origin of Proto-Berber.