Canarias: Información geográfica e histórica

THE GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF THE CANARY ISLANDS

The Geographical position of the Canary islands is positioned between 27º 4 and 29ª 3´ North, and 13º 3´ and 18º 2´ West and 51 miles West off the Moroccan Coast. It is the First African Archipelago coming on the Southern route from Europe. It is the only African Archipelago which has been populated for more than three thousand years. The archipelago is a part of Africa. The two Eastern islands, being Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, were once probably a part of the North African Continent, perhaps breaking away when the Continents of Africa and South America split apart millions of years ago. Gran Canaria and the Western group of islands, Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro, however, appear to be of purely volcanic origin. The rainfall in the Canary Islands is greater than in the case of the nearby African Coast. It is a certainty that, commencing with Fuerteventura on the East, which is the driest and where the annual rainfall does not average more than five or six inches, the Canary Islands themselves become gradually damper as the distance from the African desert increases. The Northern and Western sides of Tenerife and the Islands of El Hierro, La Palma and La Gomera are much on a par with one another, the altitude of the mountains being an equivalent in the first to a greater influence from the Gulf stream in the others. Another influence in the climate is the elevation of the mountains.

THE ORIGIN OF THE INDIGENOUS POPULATION:

The origin of the Indigenous Population of these islands is of Berber origin, a population coming from the African Continent. The first colony of immigrants has been referred to as having perhaps come from Egypt about 1400 B.C. This reference comes from Homer. Others think that some of the natives were brought from Libya by the Phoenicians or Punics around VIII century B.C. The Indigenous Population are named THE GUANCHES. The Guanche people practised the mummification of their dead, very similar to the ancient Egyptians. Many examples of Guanche writing still exist, which is similar to the ancient Libyan scriptures, but some Punic writing has recently been discovered on the islands, with large numbers of Punic amphoras (vessels), with a discovery of the reproduction of the Punic Goddess Tanit and various Pheonol-Punic amphoras found in the sea around the islands confirm the arrival of Libic-Punic People, talking in the Berber language in the Canaries about 2,500 years ago or more, and not excluding the people who arrived before, these being from another place, possibly Morocco, or the Egyptian border at the time of the Pharaoh Oserkon or Nekao. Nowadays in order to gain more information about the Canarian tribes a lot of research is being carried out on Punic remains found on the islands. Also, a petroglyph with Punic script was found on the island of Fuerteventura, and collected by W. Pichler and read by Prof. R. Muñoz, of the Laguna University, in 1.992, it read: " t' dnmn ( hata adon amon ) : " which is the god Amon "; this is very important because the Egyptian god Amon is now quoted and later on as a Punic god and this makes us think of the Guanche god Achamon or Achaman. However, the Guanche was the only Berber group to have practised mummification, specially in Tenerife. This island was populated by a Berber group called the Zanata. Other groups arriving on the islands were, the Canarii and the Hawara. The Spanish conquerors destroyed a lot of Guanche characters, petrogliphs, monuments and remains, and because of this, it is difficult but not impossible to make progress in studies about the Guanche inhabitants of the islands. The Spanish government have always tried to sabotage studies or congresses where the Guanche history or problems are discussed.

THE GUANCHE LANGUAGE

When the first European conquerors including the French and Spanish arrived in the fifteenth century, the spoken language in the Canary Islands was an archaic form of the present day BERBER or TAMAZIGI (the ancestral language of North Africa). This language is now called GUANCHE and this denomination also corresponds and applies to the present inhabitants of the islands and those who fought against the first conquerors when they arrived. The name Guanche comes from a generalisation of the name of the inhabitants of the island of the island of Tenerife, which later applied to those from all the Archipelago.

Nuestro correo
Correo al CNC

Volver a la página principal del CNC