United States or Tunisia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We ask at Teneriffe what is become of the Guanches, whose mummies alone, buried in caverns, have escaped destruction? Every individual, made prisoner before he received the rite of baptism, became a slave. At that period no attempt had yet been made to prove that the blacks were an intermediate race between man and animals.
The Guanches of Teneriffe, the last representatives of the Iberians, and probably the most ancient race of Europe, took out the intestines of the corpse, dried the body in the air, painted it with a thick varnish, and finally wrapped it in the skin of a goat.
If this be a bullet-mark, the mummy may date from before the final conquest and submission in A.D. 1496. But it may also have resulted from some accident, like a fall, or from the blow of a stone, a weapon which the Guanches used most skilfully. Mr.
The conformation of the skull has some slight resemblance to that of the white race of the ancient Egyptians; and the incisive teeth of the Guanches are blunted, like those of the mummies found on the banks of the Nile.
There is much learned discussion respecting the origin of the Guanches, and interesting information regarding their civilization and knowledge. Noticias de la Historia general de las Islas de Canaria. Par D.J. Dariera y Clavigo. Madrid, 1771. 3 vols. 8vo. Borry de Saint Vincent, who derived much of his information from this work, justly characterizes it as a valuable and accurate performance.
The town is surrounded with a great number of windmills, which indicate the cultivation of wheat in these high countries. I shall observe on this occasion, that different kinds of grain were known to the Guanches. They called wheat at Teneriffe tano, at Lancerota triffa; barley, in the grand Canary, bore the name of aramotanoque, and at Lancerota it was called tamosen.
Word Of The Day