The Guanche enigma: Romans, slaves and Berbers in the Canary Islands

The Guanche enigma: Romans, slaves and Berbers in the Canary Islands

How did the first inhabitants reach the Canary Islands? The question, which has obsessed historians for centuries, still has no definitive answer. The Guanches, the only native people of Macaronesia, had no boats or nautical knowledge when Europeans encountered them in the 15th century. Yet genetic and archaeological evidence points to a North African Berber origin and an arrival that may have taken place in the 1st century. The mystery of their arrival, and theories ranging from Roman deportations to migrations forced by the desiccation of the Sahara, are at the centre of a debate mixing science, history and speculation.

A Berber origin confirmed by DNA

Analyses of ancient DNA extracted from Guanche skulls from Tenerife and Gran Canaria have conclusively shown that the first inhabitants of the Canary Islands were more closely related to today's North Africans of Berber descent than to any other population. The study, led by Stockholm University with the participation of Professor Juan Luis Arsuaga, also reveals that today's inhabitants of Gran Canaria carry between 16% and 31% Guanche genetic ancestry. Added to this is the examination of alphabetic inscriptions and the place names of the seven islands, which confirms their origin in the Maghreb and, to a lesser extent, sub-Saharan Africa, probably the ancient Roman province of Mauretania.

The traceability of the genome suggests that the Berbers arrived in large numbers, judging by the archaeological traces of supplies, weapons and animal skeletons dated by carbon-14. They travelled fully equipped with the intention of settling. One theory suggests that the rapid desiccation of the Sahara may have forced its inhabitants to emigrate, as suggested by the paintings of seafarers in the caves of Tassili (Algeria) and Tibesti (Chad).

The paradox of a people who could not sail

Most puzzling of all is that the first conquerors, according to the chronicles, described the islanders as incapable of sailing. How, then, did they reach an archipelago more than a hundred kilometres from the African coast? Theories abound. Some argue they were deported by the Romans after a rebellion in Roman Mauretania, and that the archipelago later became a kind of human farm for capturing slaves until the Castilian conquest. Others suggest that a tribe may have seized Roman ships, used them to reach the islands and then lost the ability to build or maintain them, becoming isolated.

The Roman presence in the Canary Islands is documented. The site on the Lobos islet, off Fuerteventura, formally discovered in 2012, is the most important Roman settlement on land in the Canaries. It was a factory producing purple, the prized dye extracted from shellfish. According to one hypothesis circulating in the debate, the Romans brought Berber slaves to the islands and, after the collapse of the Empire, they were forgotten for a thousand years. Another line of analysis stresses that the first inhabitants knew agriculture and practised it for centuries, but lost it at some point, whether through lack of seeds or of knowledge, and by the 15th century they lived by gathering and herding. They even practised infanticide when they calculated that the island could not support more people.

Juba II and the first documented expedition

The known history of the settlement of the Canary Islands begins in Caesarea, present-day Cherchell (Algeria). From that port city, King Juba II financed the first expedition on record to reach the islands, shortly after ascending the throne of Mauretania in 25 BC. The accounts of those navigators and of other expeditions were compiled by Pliny the Elder in 77 AD in his Natural History. Thanks to those voyages, Juba II moved the archipelago from the realm of myth to reality. Juba II, a Romanised Berber monarch and scholar, financed expeditions that crossed the Pillars of Hercules. Before him, the geographer Statius Sebosus already mentioned them around 30 BC, and the map of Agrippa, earlier than 12 BC, included them for the first time.

The traces of purple and the first contacts

Juba's envoys were not the first to arrive. Plutarch mentions fishermen from the south of the Iberian Peninsula who reached two Atlantic islands separated by a strait, clearly Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, which he called the Fortunate Isles. But the most solid evidence of human presence before the conquest is that of the purple producers on the Lobos islet, around 40 BC. That business, controlled by the Phoenicians, left its mark on the place names: Canaries, Canaanites, palms and island factories. The Phoenicians, also called Canaanites, had already passed through on their routes to Guinea in 800 BC.

The debate over today's population and the genetic legacy

Genetics does not settle every question. Against the finding that today's Canarians retain between 16% and 31% Guanche DNA, some argue that this figure is a hoax and that the Berber contribution is negligible, visible only in a few thousand people with pre-Hispanic surnames. The vast majority of today's Canarians would have more Cádiz, Seville, Portuguese, Galician or French blood than Guanche. The demographic evolution of the islands, with constant migratory inflows, would have diluted the indigenous descent almost to extinction. Even the Canarian whistle language, silbo, a communication system that allows messages to be exchanged between distant valleys, has been claimed as a Berber heritage, though also as a rudiment similar to smoke signals or the Alpine alphorn.

An ending without a definitive answer

The enigma of how the Guanches reached the Canary Islands remains open. The evidence points to a Berber origin, a massive and organised arrival, and the Roman presence as a possible vector. But there is no solid theory explaining why a people who could not sail ended up on an archipelago more than a hundred kilometres from the coast. Deportation, flight, shipwreck or simple adventure are competing hypotheses with no clear winner. Meanwhile, today's Canarians look at their DNA and their history with a mixture of pride and scepticism, aware that their past is, to a large extent, an unsolved mystery.