The Mysterious origin of the Guanches

The Guanches are the mysterious natives of the Canary Islands. They were just about exterminated by the Spaniards when these invaded the archipelago at the turn of the 15th century. Tall, blond and blue-eyed, the Guanches have long intrigued the anthropologists, for blond natives are rarity. According to the reliable Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Guanches "are thought to have been of Cro-Magnon origin... and had a brown complexion, blue or gray eyes, and blondish hair"

Indeed, the Guanches are deemed to be related to the Berbers of neighboring Morroco, who are, likewise, tall, blond and blue-eyed when unmixed with the Arab majority. Other specialists, however, believe that the Guanches are related to the Celts of Western Europe, the early realm of these races. No matter what, the Guanches represent a unique opportunity of studying the early peoples of this region so intimately connected with Atlantis and the Garden of the Hesperides.

Isolated in their islands, the Guanches were prevented, until the advent of the Spanish, from sexually mingling with other races. So, they preserved their pristine Cro-Magnon genetic traits in a more or less pure fashion until that date. But, as we said, the Guanches were massacred by the Spaniards, and their remainder mingled heavily with the invaders, so that they essentially inexist today. But the blond, blue-eyed, tall stock has been preserved in part, and can still be seen in many individuals. As is known, blond traits are dominated by dark ones, and tend to disappear from the population. But they survive unseen, and may return in certain individuals called "recessives", who combine the proper genes.

Furthermore, the Guanches mummified their dead, and this material can be studied by the researchers, particularly concerning traits such as blood type and racial characteristics. This strange mode of disposing of the dead - which the Guanches shared with the Polynesians, the Egyptians and the Mayas - has been mooted out by several authorities as indicating a close affinity among these distant nations. The Guanches also left some sort of alphabetic inscriptions which have yet to be studied, along with their pottery and peculiar ruins. All in all, the archaeology of this most remarkable people is far from satisfactorily researched.

Many researchers have pointed out the resemblance of the Guanche natives with the Cro-Magnons and, particularly, with Cro-Magnoid types of regions such as those of Muges (Portugal) dating from the Mesolithic (c. 8,000 BC). Similar groups have been noted and studied Portugal, Spain, France, England, Sweden and Northwest Africa, precisely the realm of the Celto-Germanic and the Berber races.
Are the Canaries the Remains of Sunken Atlantis?

Many Atlantologists have proposed that the Canary Islands are the remainder of a sunken Atlantis, being the lofty volcanic peaks left behind when the lost continent foundered. However, the Canary islands rise directly from the deep ocean floor, from a depth of some 3,000 meters below the surface. Indeed, they are a part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, having been formed by submarine volcanoes at the end of the Tertiary Age (circa 2.5 million years ago).Their lavas consist of basalts and trachytes, the typical material of submarine, non-explosive volcanism typical of seabottoms.

Due to both their age and their origin, the Canarian volcanoes can hardly be invoked to account for the conflagration that wiped Atlantis off the map. Instead, this type of basaltic, submarine volcanism is nowadays perfectly well understood geologically speaking. Such volcanoes result from the upwelling magma that forms the Continental Plates, according to the theory of Plate Tectonics, and are a feature of all oceanic regions of the world. Hence, the claims made by certain Atlantologists such as P. Termier, I. Donnelly, C. Berlitz and many others that the Canaries or the Azores, or the Madeiras are the remains of sunken Atlantis do not hold water at all.


Are the Guanches Atlantean Relicts?

As we said above, though we can be certain that the Canaries, along with the other neighboring Atlantic islands, are not the residues of a sunken continent that foundered in the region, we have yet to explain the mysterious origin of the Guanches. However, where smoke is, there is usually fire, and we cannot simply ignore the recurrent legends that link this people to Atlantis.

But if they are not Atlanteans left behind when their continent sunk, the only possible explanation for the mysterious origin of the Guanches is that they primordially came from somewhere else. But, whence? Certainly not from neighboring Africa, the realm of the Black Man. No serious anthropologist has ever maintained that the blond Aryans originated in Africa itself. The standing proposals for the origin of the Berbers and, possibly, the Guanches themselves, are that they came from Arabia, after crossing the Sahara desert.

But, to start with, no one is sure that the Arabs or, even less, the Aryans, originated in Arabia or Palestine, and their own ethiological legends affirm that they came from beyond the Indian Ocean. Moreover, the Sahara desert poses a formidable barrier ever since the end of the Pleistocene, and it is highly unlikely that it could be crossed by hordes of migrants, unstocked with the food and water required for the task.

The Guanches were held in perfect isolation from Europe and other Old World civilizations until they were discovered by the Portuguese and Spanish at the end of the 15th century. This separation dates from prehistoric times that far predate the ones of Plato and Herodotus, and even those of Homer and Hesiod. So, if Guanche legends indeed relate to Atlantis and its doom, we can be certain that the golden realm was no idle invention of Plato or other Greeks, but originated in a very ancient tradition, dating from the dawn of mankind. This is precisely what we aim to prove in the present work on the origin of the Guanches.

We start by reviewing the ancient traditions linking the Canaries to the Garden of the Hesperides and the Islands of the Blest, and progress into the modern proposals purporting to show that the Canaries and the other neighboring islands are the remains of sunken Atlantis. Finally, we attempt showing their rather direct relationship between the Canaries, Atlantis and the Garden of Eden, the legendary site of the origin of Mankind.

If our conclusions indeed prove to be right and survive the wellcome attack of the critics, the whole of human prehistory will have to undergo a major revision. Hence, the importance of inquiring on the origin of the Guanches and their possible connection with Atlantis. The mysterious Guanches provide the key to the riddles that surround the origin of Mankind, and are the "missing link" connecting the Mediterranean and other neighboring civilizations to the Far Orient and the Indies, the true site of the Garden of the Hesperides. This garden, also known as that of Eden, is the place where Mankind and Civilization indeed developed, according to the holy traditions of many nations, and not only that of the Bible.

Evening Isles Fantastical

Classical writers often mention legendary islands in the Atlantic Ocean in a way that closely evokes the legends of Atlantis. Homer mentions islands like Phaeacia, Scheria and Ogygia. The Argonautica, deemed to be prior to Homer's Odyssey, also speaks of legendary oceanic islands such as Aiaia, Thrinacia and Colchis. More than just delightful novels, these ancient sagas were indeed Sacred History, and were believed to derive from actual fact. The Greco-Roman traditions concerning the fabulous oceanic islands and their golden realms apparently derive from the far earlier ones such as the Epic of Gilgamesh of the Sumero-Babylonians or the Ramayana and the Mahabharata of the Hindus.

Many other classical authors also mention such fantastic islands of the ocean. This ocean the Greeks, ignorant of the other oceans, very naturally identified with what we nowadays call by the name of Atlantic Ocean, that is, "the Ocean of the Atlanteans". But when we read the ancient traditions closer, we notice that the fabulous islands of the Atlanteans were always placed "at the confines of the earth".

Moreover, the ocean in question is invariably described as "winy red" and is placed towards dawn and Orient. In other words, the ocean in question is the Indian Ocean, which the ancients called Erythraean, that is, "Red One". And Atlantis is the same as the Ultima Thule of the ancients, this being the name they gave to the "confines of the earth" which lay towards the Orient, in the Eastern limits of their world, and where they also placed the Pillars of Atlas, the twin and counterpart of the western Pillars of Hercules, in Gibraltar.