“Tindaya has something that is not found in the rest of the world: its magnificent collection of podomorphic prints.” Astronomer Juan Antonio Belmonte’s eyes shine when he talks about this sacred place for the Majos, a natural pyramid that stands out over a barren moor in the north of Fuerteventura. It is only 400 meters high, but from its top, the first settlers of the second largest island in the Canary Islands touched the sky. It is the mountain that seduced the sculptor Eduardo Chillida to design a grandiose work that was never executed. This report is the first that we dedicate to the worldview of the pre-Hispanic Majorera society, a trilogy with which this journalistic investigation on the astronomers of the past concludes, a trip through the Archipelago, from March to December 2024, which has allowed Canary Islands Now and elDiario.es amplify the archaeoastronomic legacy of the Guanches.
“The archeology of religion,” in the words of Nona Perera, one of the archaeologists who has most studied the indigenous culture of Fuerteventura, “contemplates equinoctial or solstitial markers, conditioned by the orography and the relationship that the architectural structures maintain with the environment.” sun and with other stars of the celestial universe.” In Tindaya there are no stone structures that we find on the peaks of El Cardón or Melindraga, nor the tombs that sacred other mountains on the Island. Tindaya is another dimension: it is the archaeological site with the most podomorphs on Earth. It contains 57 panels with 213 engravings. All sculpted on the summit, the watchtower from which the Majos watched the sky to worship their gods and measure time.
Scientists from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) Juan Antonio Belmonte and César Esteban, the precursors of cultural astronomy in Spain, ascended to the top of Tindaya, accompanied by Nona Perera. Previously, astronomers had analyzed the tracings of the podomorphs that the archaeologist had drawn. “We oriented them and made a pattern of those orientations,” Belmonte recalls in the interview we did with him before embarking on a trip to the enigmatic Fuerteventura at the end of this year. “The pattern turned out beautiful because there is a huge concentration in the southwest-west quadrant, with a maximum that is at sunset on the winter solstice over Gran Canaria. That’s why we know that it is an astronomical site.”
With this preliminary study, astronomers explored the sky from the top of the mountain with their instruments. Day and night. “With podomorphs, you define a very clear orientation: you can stand on top of the engraving and you see the direction in which the author of the figure was looking. Consequently, since there are hundreds of engravings you can measure a statistically significant sample. And that’s what we did.” The results of that astronomical research are in the article Tindaya: an archaeoastronomic study of the pre-Hispanic society of Fuerteventura.
César Esteban recalls that “80% of the petroglyphs have azimuths between 225 and 270 degrees”, while “the profile of the islands of Gran Canaria and Tenerife extends between 240 and 265 degrees, so it would be possible that a cause geography was behind this concentration. In any case, in this azimuth range several important astronomical events occur, such as solar sunset on the winter solstice and lunar sunsets on the major and minor lunastices, among others.” Regarding the remaining 20% of the engravings, “it does not seem that they are distributed randomly but rather that they are mostly oriented towards the cardinal points.”
Dual orientation pattern
Over the years, “we have been qualifying and adjusting our research,” says Belmonte, which has allowed him to conclude “a double orientation pattern.” To the initial that marks the winter solstice when the sun sets behind Gran Canaria, is added the conviction that “the vision of the crescent winter moon with the rain-bearing star: Venus caught their attention. It gives a double orientation pattern, the same one that podomorphs have with a double meaning: the astronomical question related to a fertility cult in all probability.”
Why did you come to that conclusion? We asked the IAC scientist. “Because both the Moon and Venus are rain bearers in the post-Majos culture.” Belmonte and the anthropologist Margarita Sanz de Lara carried out research for several years on the islands of the Archipelago that was captured in the book The sky of the magicians: Astronomical and meteorological time in the traditional culture of the Canarian peasantry (Le Canarien, 2020).
“From north to south of Fuerteventura, the farmers told us about the star Venus”, reminding them of phrases such as ‘Moon on the right does not shed water’ or ‘the October Moon covers four moons’. For this reason, Belmonte insists: “I am convinced that the Tindaya podomorphs are related to a fertility cult. Without a doubt, the references on the horizon, Gran Canaria and Teide, were important, which could have represented the idea of a Finis Terrae in the mentality of those ancient populations, but the distribution of podomorphs tells us that the most important thing is what happens in the sky.”
Tindaya archaeological environment
The connection of Tindaya to the worldview of pre-Hispanic culture is not only limited to the engravings at the summit. There are a series of sites in the surroundings of the mountain that archaeologists Nona Perera and Antonio Tejera, co-authors with Belmonte and Esteban de Tindaya: an archaeoastronomic study of the pre-Hispanic society of Fuerteventurarelate to the world axis of the nice ones.
From afar, Tindaya stands out from any cardinal point. Its profile is so imposing on the plain of Esquinzo that it seems isolated from the rest of the Island. But it is not like that: neither now nor in the times of the majos. Three fountains are located on one of its slopes; and where there is water there is life. On the south side is the village of Tindaya, with just over 600 inhabitants; It probably housed a town a thousand years ago. Where there were people when the Europeans landed in the old Maxorata or Erbania is in La Oliva, the town that gives its name to the municipality in the north of Fuerteventura.
From the top of the mountain you can see La Oliva. It was the capital of the Island where the hermitage of the Virgen del Rosario was built (16th century), demolished in 1830; The current transept was built in that same location. Its main door faces directly towards Tindaya. If it was a sacred space for the first settlers of the island, Christian acculturation, as occurred in Chipude (La Gomera), Candelaria (Tenerife) or Teror (Gran Canaria), was associated with that symbol of nature.
In the bad country -volcanic lava flow- close to La Oliva is located the Cueva de los Idolos, which owes its name to the discovery of six small sculptures that can be visited in the Archaeological Museum of Fuerteventura; Two pieces similar to pintaderas were also found, an exclusive record from Gran Canaria. From this volcanic tube, the summit of Tindaya can be seen from its northern access. Associated with the mountain are several kneeled stone circles, among which the Corral de la Assembly stands out, an enormous elliptical construction measuring 75 meters by 65 meters. These structures called efequén, esequén or corral, some with astronomical connections certified by IAC researchers , will be the protagonists of the next chapter of this trilogy.
Near Tindaya and nestled in a bad country is the town of Tisajoire. This site has, informs Canary Islands Now-elDiario.es the IAC astronomer César Esteban, “a station of podomorphic engravings that are oriented to the west, but at a different azimuth interval [a los petroglifos de Tindaya]between 291 to 305, the area where solar sunset occurs on the summer solstice, the sunset of the new Moon closest to it or, also, the sunset of the full Moon that follows the winter solstice.” The existence of this second station of podomorphic engravings, Esteban asserts, reinforces “the possible astronomical connotations of this type of sites.”
The Bailadero de las Brujas is another of the sites linked to the worldview of the Majos, in the plain that surrounds the Tindaya Natural Monument, as cataloged by the Law of Natural Spaces of the Canary Islands. It is a jameo. This enclave, says Nona Perera, “is the most relevant in the Llano and Barranco del Esquinzo.” Archaeological surveys located aboriginal material inside the cave and outside, in addition to “three stone piles.” The archaeologist has found references to burials in the grotto.
The investigation of the written sources after the Conquest provides “ethno-astronomical evidence” and its connection with the acculturation of the indigenous community. The town of Lajares, very close to Tindaya, Perera points out in his scientific article, “celebrates the festival of San Antonio de Padua on June 13, a date that coincided with the summer solstice at the time of European colonization.” The historian also finds it “striking” that “the most important festival on the Island – of possible pre-Hispanic roots –, that of the Virgen de la Peña, is celebrated on the third Saturday of September, coinciding with the autumn equinox and the beginning of the first rains.”
In short, concludes the team of archaeologists, historians and astronomers who have investigated this unique site on planet Earth, “Tindaya is a broader concept than the mountain itself, a formidable archaeological space awaiting in-depth study, protection and conservation.” . There is much pending investigation, because for the author of this journalistic investigation, after Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura is the island with the most archaeological potential in the Canary Islands. Unfortunately, the scientific and academic community, with honorable exceptions, has not paid it the interest it undoubtedly deserves.
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