The withdrawal of the Mummy Guanche of the Barranco de Erques, exhibited in the National Archaeological Museum, as a decision of the Ministry of Culture not to expose human remains in the museums that belong directly to the entity, has highlighted the origin of this, and which serves to know the history of the first settlers of the Canary Islands.
A Guanche mummy in a great state of conservation, which was part of the area of the aforementioned museum dedicated to prehistory, along with other symbols of history such as Elche’s lady, and who had been requested back by Tenerife, where it was found and where it comes from.
Who were the Guanches?
The Guanches is the name that the Canarian aboriginal peoples, specifically the one inhabited by the island of Tenerife In the case of the mummy at hand, and that were tribes that remained more than 2,000 years fully isolated in the archipelago before the arrival of the Castilians in the early fifteenth century.
The origin of the Guanches is not entirely safe, although it has been confirmed that their genome would have a Important relationship with Berber origin of North Africa According to an investigation from the University of La Laguna published in Nature Communications in 2023.
It is not at all clear how the arrival of these residents was to the Canary Islands, what is known is that they had their own customs and laws by living totally isolated from the rest of the world, although they used to have confrontations between the different towns of the archipelago .
His warrior character, in fact, is one of the samples that reached our days through the chronicles of the Castilians who were sent by the Catholic Monarchs for the conquest of the islands, which gave rise to strong clashes, and that made it made that Colonization will have been from the first arrival in 1402 until ended with the submission of Tenerife in 1496.
The vast majority of Guanches lived in Cuevas, with an economy based on hunting and livestock, especially sheep and goats, and with specific cases of agriculture. In the Canary Islands there are some traces of the passage of the aborigines, and in the town of Candelaria the Menceyes sculptural setthat pays tribute to the main Guanches kings who ruled at the time of the conquest of the island.
How the mummy Guanche arrived in Madrid
The mummy in question that he has been the protagonist for his withdrawal of the exhibition of the National Archaeological Museum was found in the Erques Barranco, among the Tenerifeña towns of Arico and Güímar, and He arrived in Madrid as a gift for King Carlos III In the 18th century.
In 1878 he came to participate in the Universal Exhibition of Paris, and is one of the best preserved Guanches mummies in the world, along with another that is currently in Cambridge, England. Dates from the 11th and twelfth centuries, It would belong to a man between 35 and 40 years oldand retains its teeth and some internal organs such as the brain, according to investigations, which has given details of what the ritual followed by the guanches in terms of death and mummification, but also of the lifestyle of the first settlers of Tenerife
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