Off the coast of West Africa lie the Canary Islands - this region became home to a mysterious group in antiquity who became known as the Guanches.

While it is unknown for sure how they arrived on the islands, what is known is that they shared a number of cultural characteristics with the ancient Egyptians and that their building style appears to have been replicated in South and Central America.

Like the Celtic Tocharians, the finest evidence of what the original Guanche looked like, is in the fortuitous existence of original Guanche mummies, which are on public display in that island group's national museum. The corpses on display are estimated to be between 600 and 1000 years old.

Above: Guanche mummies, with red hair and other Nordic features - the original inhabitants of the Canary Islands.

They are likely to be the original Cro-Magnons.
 

An examination of one of the mummies' bodies showed incisions that virtually matched those found in Egyptian mummies, although the string used by the Guanche embalmers to close the wounds was much coarser than would have been used by the Egyptian experts.

The Guanches also possessed the art of writing, although this has not yet been the subject of any major study.

 

THE GUANCHE PYRAMIDS ON THE CANARY ISLANDS

However, the most stunning link between the Guanches and the Egyptians comes in the form of pyramids - the Guanches built several small step pyramids on the islands, using the same model as those found in ancient Egypt and in Mesopotamia. The pyramids have an east-west alignment which also indicates that they probably had a religious purpose, associated with the rise and setting of the sun.

Carefully built stairways on the west side of each pyramid lead up to the summit, which in each case has a flat platform covered with gravel, possibly used for religious or ceremonial purposes.

Above left: One of the Pyramids of Guimar, Canary Islands. Right: A Mayan pyramid in Central America (Chichen Itza).

The resemblance is unmistakable.

 

GUANCHE TYPE PYRAMIDS FOUND IN MEXICO

The famous explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, who "rediscovered" the pyramids on the Canary Islands and who set up an academic body to study the phenomena, argued that the pyramids may be remains from explorers who sailed the Atlantic in ancient times, and who may have possibly forged a link with the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.

As the original inhabitants of the Canary Islands were fair-haired and bearded, it was possible, Heyerdahl suggested, that long before the 15th Century, people of the same stock as those who settled the Canary Islands, also sailed the same route along the Canary Current that took Christopher Columbus to the Americas.

This theory formed the basis of Heyerdahl's famous "RA" expeditions in which he showed that is was possible to cross the Atlantic in an Egyptian reed boat.

In fact Columbus' starting off point was the Canary Islands, where he obtained supplies and water on Gomera, the island next to Tenerife. The Guanches on Tenerife in 1492 did not permit Columbus to land on their island - they were not impressed by the physical appearance of the bearded Europeans, who looked like the Guanches themselves.

When Columbus and the Europeans who followed in his wake landed in the Americas, they were welcomed and initially worshiped as gods, since the beardless Indians they encountered believed that the spanish belonged to the same people as the legendary founders of their civilization, bearded men from across the Atlantic Ocean.

According to the Aztec and Olmec (Central American Amerind) legends, their god, Quetzalcoatl, had Nordic features (eyes and hair color) and a beard. This god came from over the sea and taught the Amerinds how to raise corn and build structures.

There is indeed a marked similarity between the step pyramids to be found on the Canary Islands and those to be found in Central and South America, strongly suggesting yet another great lost migration, this time to Central and South America, perhaps a thousand years or more before Columbus.

The existence of the red-haired Guanches on the Canary Islands, combined with the red-haired pre-Columbus mummies found in South America and the marked similarity in pyramid building styles, indicate that an over the atlantic people probably used the Canaries Current to cross the Atlantic, most likely between 2000 and 500 BC. Columbus himself used the Canaries Current, setting out from the Canary Islands on his first crossing of the Atlantic in 1492 AD.

There is also clear evidence from the Mexican side of the Atlantic Ocean that blond-haired people reached that part of the world long before the spanish explorations of the late 1490s.

Below is a pre-Columbian wall painting which can be found in the Temple of the Warriors, Chichen Itza, on the east coast of Mexico. The first depicts prisoners after their capture by the dark-skinned natives, and the second, shows a man with long blond hair being sacrificed. It is worthwhile to remember that these paintings date from before Christopher Columbus sailed the Atlantic in 1492.

 

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE GUANCHES

Guanche artifacts, such as cave murals, tombs, stone and mortar walls, broken pottery and other everyday items are abundant on the island. Similar artifacts have been found on the African continent itself - notably in Morocco, indicating that at some stage the Guanches crossed the sea to Africa.

There they started mixing with other racial types on the african continent itself. This process is very likely to be the cause of some flashes of blond hair and light colored eyes still to be found amongst the Berber population of north west Africa to this day.

The pyramids and other structures on the islands seem to have been constructed by an advanced people - certainly by the time of the spanish invasion, the Guanches had lost much of their civilized apparel, and spanish accounts have it that they were attacked by naked tribesmen, who sometimes inflicted serious military defeats upon the invading spaniards. It was only in 1496 that the spaniards finally defeated the last of the Guanches.

The arrival of the spaniards in the mid 14th Century saw the remaining Guanches absorbed into the new settler population. The blond, blue-eyed, tall stock has been preserved in part, and can still be seen today in many individuals on the island. Culturally speaking, the Guanche civilization was completely absorbed by the imported continental European culture, so that the Canary Islands remains spanish territory to this day.
 

 

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