Hi Prairy, hi Relatives!
It is good to be here again!
Thanks to post this thread! I have some information you must read about Rh-, Atlantis and the Guanche People of Canary Islands... it is a lot of info, but very interesting:
DiscoveryThe Europeans "discovered" the Canary Islands ("Islands of Fortune) in the first half of the 14th century. They find some peoples, which afterwards have been called «Guanches», and which even today are still surrounded of unknown aspects.
As the European conquerors explained, the Guanches were "full-blooded white, very tall, brawny, of great beauty, and there were many blond among them...". The great height had to be understood it relatively, that is, the average size of the Europeans of the period into account. As for the presence of blond, even nowadays, after many centuries of invasions and mixtures, it is asurprising fact that blonde people and blue-eyed people can also be found among the bereberes of the African Atlas.
Some political interests have intended to refuse the Berber origin of the Guanches: to prevent the possibility of some possible claims proceeding from Morocco. But that would be totally illogical: the ancestors of the current Moroccan bereberes and Algerians who emigrated to Canary Islands made it some centuries before the birth of Christ, when there was not either Morocco, nor Algeria, nor Spain, nor the current cultures of those countries.
Alfonso Fernandez de Lugo lands in Tenerife. The island was the last to fall to the Spaniards in 1495
Geographically the Canary Islands are located less than 100 kilometers from the African coast, and unsurprisingly the first inhabitants of the archipelago were Berbers who crossed the straits from Morocco around 3000 BC. By the time of Christ they had spread out across the islands, and were to become known collectively as the Guanche. They Guanche developed a tribal based society led by chiefs, known as menceyes. The menceyes were aided by a council known as tagoror, who met in an open circular space, such such as the one in Garajonay. Here they performed civic functions like adjudicating disputes or holding war council. The Guanche lived in caves, and early cave drawings can be seen in Gran Canaria. They cultivated crops and lived on a staple diet of gofio. They also used a script, again related to Berber, which is yet to be deciphered.
As early as the second century AD the existence of the Canary Islands was known to the Greeks, and the islands were identified with the Atlantis legend. In the first century AD, King Cuba II of Mauritania is said to have visited the islands, but the first incursions by the Europeans didn't take place until the early in the fifteenth century.
Jean de Bethencourt :
As the closest island to the African coast Lanzarote was first to fall in a 2 year campaign led by the Norman Jean de Bethencourt, which ended in 1404. Lanzarote was closely followed by Fuerteventura and the sparsely populated western island of El Hierro. It is important to remember that there was no sense of political unity among the Guanche. Tenerife alone was divided into nine kingdoms, and the Spanish exploited the divisions between the tribes. Over the course of the next century the islands fell, one after another culminating in the conquest of Tenerife by Alfonso Fernandez de Lugo in 1495. Against a backdrop of the reconquista on the mainland, proselytizing priests were eager to spread Christianity among the vanquished natives. Some of the Guanche was sold into slavery, or perished in epidemics introduced by the Europeans, while others assimilated with new arrivals.
Columbus:
The early years of Spanish rule brought prosperity, with the development of the sugar plantations. In 1492 Columbus passed through the Canary Islands en route to the Americas, stopping at La Gomera. While there, he is reported to have seen a major eruption of Mount Teide. The discovery of the new world was to have important consequences for the islands. The burgeoning trade with the Americas saw a large ports spring up as Sant Cruz de Tenerife to became one of the main mercantile hubs of the Spanish Empire. After the subjugation of the Guanche, immigrants poured into the islands from mainland Spain and the towns of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, La Laguna and Santa Cruz de la Palma developed.
http://www.fiestasiesta.co.uk/history/canary_history.htmlThe Canary islands were known in antiquity as the Western edge of the known world. Homer referred to the Islands of the Blest, lying westward of Maurusia (modern-day Morocco) (see extract from Strabo). The Canaries have also been associated with Plato's description of the island of Atlantis (see extract), though most modern historians discount this suggestion.
It is likely that the first people to discover the Canaries were early Phoenician explorers, originating from Sidon and Tyre in modern-day Lebanon. Herodotus claims that a Phoenician expedition circumnavigated Africa in the 6th century BC (see extract). Carthage, a north-African Phoenician colony, sent a colonising expedition of 30,000 people to the west of Africa in about 425 BC (see extract from Hanno). Phoenician coins are claimed to have been found as far afield as the Azores. Thor Heyerdahl sailed from Africa to South America via the Canary Islands in the Ra, a boat made of papyrus, in order to prove that the journey was possible for ancient mariners.
Around 120 AD, Marinus of Tyre wrote that the habitable world was bounded on the west by the Fortunate Islands. The status of the Fortunate Islands as the western edge of the known world was more formally established when Claudius Ptolemy (AD 90 - 168), following Marinus, adopted the Fortunate Islands as the prime meridian for his Geographia. This was the most famous classical map of the world, unsurpassed for almost 1500 years. The Canaries continued to be widely used as the prime meridian for maps of the world until well into the 19th century - for example, Louis XIII decreed that EL Hierro be used as prime meridian on all French maps in 1634, and this continued until about 1800. Dutch maps of the period used the peak of El Teide on Tenerife as their prime meridian. (see for example this 18th century English engraving).
The Romans are known to have explored the Canary Islands. The most complete classical account of the Canaries is by Pliny the Elder (see extract), taken from a description of an expedition sent by Juba II, governor of the Roman protectorate of Mauretania (modern-day Morocco) from about 29 BC to 20 AD. The islands were found to be uninhabited at the time of this expedition, though Junonia (the Roman name for La Palma) did have a 'small temple built of a single stone', presumably evidence of earlier inhabitants or explorers.
During the middle ages the Canaries become more myth than reality. They figure for example in the search by St Brendan (c. AD 484 - 578) for paradise, which he assumed to be an island in the Atlantic Ocean (map).
Around the end of the 13th century, the Canaries were rediscovered by a Genoese fleet under Lancelot Malocello. A detailed survey was made by Nicoloso de Recco of Genoa in 1341. A papal bull of 1433 awarded rights over the Canaries to Henry the Navigator of Portugal, but this decision was reversed in 1436, when another papal bull awarded these rights to the crown of Castile. In the Alcovas treaty of 1479, Portugal recognised the rights of the Castilians to the Canaries, in return for Castilian recognition of Portugese sovereignty over Fez and Guinea.
At the time of the rediscovery of the Canaries they were inhabited by an indigenous people called the 'Guanches'. We know from cultural similarities that the Guanches were Berbers from the mountains of Northwest Africa. How they reached the Canaries has been the subject of much speculation, particularly since at the time of the rediscovery they apparently had no knowledge of seafaring techniques - surprising for a people living on a small island with other nearby islands clearly visible.
There is evidence for two distinct Guanche racial types , usually referred to as 'Cro-Magnoid' and 'Mediterranean'. Pottery remnants suggest there were up to four distinct waves of colonisation, whilst carbon dating techniques suggest that the first colonists arrived during the first millenium BC.
The Guanches named their island Benahoare, and divided it into 12 kingdoms, each with its own ruler (see map, list). Estimates of the Guanche population at the time of the conquest range from 1,200 to over 4,000.
The Guanches lived in caves, such as those at Belmacho near Mazo , and at Zarza in Garafía . They mummified their dead. The Gaunche religion appears to have centred around stone pyramids, and the Roque Idafe in the Caldera de Taburiente. The legacy of the Guanches includes carvings of geometrical forms and hand-made decorated pottery. Reproductions of these pots are still made, in the artesania El Molino in Mazo
The conquest of the Canaries took from 1402, when Juan de Bethencourt landed on Lanzarote, to 1496, when Tenerife fell to Alonso Fernandez de Lugo. The conquest of La Palma started on the 29th of September of 1492, with the landing on the beaches of Tazacorte by Fernandez de Lugo, and finished on the 3rd of May of the following year. The last king of Benahoare to submit himself to the invaders was the legendary Tanausu, who ruled the Kingdom of Acero (Caldera de Taburiente). After two failed attempts by the Castilian conquistadors to penetrate La Caldera to defeat him, Fernandez de Lugo sent a man called Juan de Palma, a relative of Tanausu already converted to christianity, to establish a truce. Tanausu agreed, but Fernandez de Lugo broke the agreement, and Tanausu was captured in an ambush. Tanausu was taken away into slavery, but refused to eat after leaving the island, and died without seeing land again.
After the conquest, Alonso Fernandez de Lugo was appointed the first governor of Tenerife and La Palma. Since he had been personally responsible for financing the conquest, he was endowed by the crown with powers rather more extensive than the governors of the other islands. These powers included the disposition of slaves, the right to control entry and exit from the islands, to exercise civil and criminal jurisdiction, and to appoint and dismiss judicial deputies.
The richness of the island resulted in immigration not just from Castille, but also of Portugese, Italians, Catalans, Basques and other northern Europeans. Indeed, Fernandez de Lugo was accused at successive judicial enquiries of favouring Genoese and Portugese above native Castilian. The period of immigration was intense but relatively short-lived - after the 1520s immigration almost ceased, until the eighteenth century.
For an impression of La Palma in the period following the conquest, see this map produced by Leonardi Torriani, an Italian engineer who toured the Canaries fron 1587 to 1593 on an inspection of the islands fortifications.
Despite the large number of immigrants, the Guanches did not disappear, being assimilated rather than exterminated. Gaspar Frutuoso writing at the end of the 16th century described the population of La Palma as being evenly divided between Castilian, Portugese and indigenous peoples. He reported these elements of the population as already being largely interbred, indistinguishable in faith and custom, and coexisting as equals.
The principal produce in pre-conquest days were dye-stuffs and shells. Of particular importance was orchil, a moss-like dye-stuff. Wheat was introduced during the 15th century, but towards the end of the century sugar became the dominant export. Apiculture thrived alongside the sugar industry, producing both honey and beeswax.
From the beginning of the 16th century the sugar industry was the basis of a commercial boom. Shipbuilding enterprises were established and Santa Cruz de La Palma's port developed sea connections with Europe and America. The primary interest of foreign merchants was the export of sugar in return for the import of cloth. Hakluyt described the trade by Nicholas Thorne of Bristol in 1526, who exchanged sugar, orchil and goatskins for cloth 'both coarse and fine, broad and narrow, of divers sorts and colours'.
La Palma figured prominently in this boom. One of the largest holdings in the Canaries was the estate held from 1513 by the Welzers, a German banking family, which included all the waters of the Tazacorte valley. Sugar was being produced for export from La Palma in 1515 by the English merchant Thomas Malliard, in partnership with the Genoese Francesco Spinola, at a refinery at Rio de Los Sauces.
The Canaries became strategically important as a stopping point on the route to the newly-discovered Americas. Christopher Columbus stopped at the Canaries (but not La Palma) to restock before crossing the Atlantic for the first time, and later mariners followed the same pattern. The transatlantic sailings were known as the 'carrera de Indias'. From early spring ships would leave Sevilla and follow the clockwise pattern of the prevailing Atlantic trade winds down to the Canaries, and thence across through the islands of the Lesser Antilles into the Southern Caribbean - see the 'Secret Instruction for Navigation between Spain and the Isle of Santo Domingo', published in 1526 by the Casa de Contratacion, the body established in 1503 to regulate the transatlantic trade.
The prosperity of the Canaries attracted famous pirates and corsairs of the time, particularly the French Jambe de Bois (Peg-Leg) who sacked Santa Cruz de La Palma in 1553. Most of the older buildings that can now be seen in Santa Cruz date from the subsequent rebuilding of the city. In 1585 Santa Cruz was attacked by an armada of 24 ships commanded by the English pirate Francis Drake, resulting in the destruction of the harbour fort.
The expansion of the Brazilian sugar industry in the last quarter of the sixteenth century dramatically reduced the demand for Canarian sugar. Wine replaced sugar as the principal export. Of particular importance was the production of Malvasia, a sweet dessert wine.
Malvasia wine remained a major source of income throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the wine being exported to Britain and the American colonies. The position of the Canaries on the route to the Americas made commerce with the colonies particularly attractive.
The Canarian economy was affected throughout much of this period by trade restrictions imposed by the Casa de Contratacion in Sevilla, which was responsible for overseeing the crown monopoly on trade with the American colonies. For example, in 1610 exports from the Canaries were limited to a total of 1000 tons, of which 300 was from La Palma. The destination of these exports was also restricted. In 1613 the total was reduced to 600 tons and in 1627 to 700. Regulations introduced in 1678 required 5 families to emigrate to America for every 100 tons of exports.
A more liberal regime was introduced by Charles III in the second half of the 18th century. Trade was liberalised from 1778 onwards, and produce included cotton, tobacco and silk. During the 18th century the port of Santa Cruz was regarded as the third largest of the empire, after Antwerp and Sevilla. (see 'Civitas Palmaria', an 18th century watercolour of Santa Cruz).
Portugese and Madeiran wines provided strong competition to Malvasia throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The wine trade with England slumped at the beginning of the 19th century, with the introduction of port wine to the English market.
The wine trade was replaced around 1825 by the growing of cochineal, a cactus parasite used as a food colouring, which became an important source of income. However, this industry was hit by the introduction of artificial colourings in the 1870s, resulting in widespread hardship.
The production of sugar cane reappeared, and around 1880 a rudimentary tourist industry started. At the turn of the century the first banana plants appeared. The resulting prosperity was however to be short-lived, due to the effects of world war 1 on foreign trade.
Economic hardship during the latter part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century resulted in high levels of emigration, Cuba being the preferred destination up to the 1930s, and Venezuala subsequently. Many Canarians retain strong family links with Cuba and Venezuala.
The Canarian economy continued to be dominated by agriculture until the early 1960s. Liberalisation introduced by the Franco regime from 1960 onwards allowed an economic revival, based on bananas, annual exports of which exceed 130 million kilograms, plus other produce, forestry and tobacco. Most important of all was the growth of the tourist industry, from 73,240 tourists in 1960 to over 2 million tourists in 1975.
http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/lapalma/history.htmlBlood and Rh among Guanches As it is well known the type of blood is hereditary, this determines that the studies done following the blood analysis offer great credibility and a scientific base of wide reliability is granted to her.
The blood studies carried out in Canary Islands by eminent specialists in 1963 (Schwidetzky), on soft tissues of Guanche mummies before the spanish conquest, show a frequency of 92% of the “O” type of blood, and a 45%of the factor RH - (negative), what determines a homogeneity and a pureness without doubts. It is good to clarify that up to the moment, equal pureness has not found anyway.
The research is centered in several regions of what it is called Guanche Band, on a universe of more than 60.000 people, they take an sample of 1.432 analyses and the results are definitive: more of 70% of the present population has the type of blood O, whereas the factor RH - (negative) it arrives to 60% (the Spanish average is 40% and 15% in relation to the type of blood O and the factor RH - (negative) respectively).
For those that the exposed data do not finish convincing them let's see the test of the cystic fibrosis in its mutant gene G542X.
The called Guanche Band, - according to the catalan author Xavier Estevill i Coll – is a milestone of “strange population” in the Iberian Peninsula for the high and inexplicable frequency of the mutant gene G542X.
The greatest frequency of this mutant are found in Canary Islands with 25%, in Spain it is of 5,7% and in the rest of Europe it is of 3%, whereas the average in the Guanche Band is of 14,4%.
The ozkenazis Jews, with 13,5%, (who have not taken part in the population of theIberian Peninsula), present the nearest value.
There’s also some evidence for the Ancestors of the Guanches as the Founders of Predynastic Egypt: A theory has been proposed that the Guanches, Nordic Caucasians with similarity to, or descended from, neolithic Cro-Magnon stock, were influential in founding the first civilizations in the region of predynastic (lower) Egypt circa 6000 BP. The Guanches, those who dwelled in the Canary Isles, known as the Elysium, and the Garden of Hesperides by the classical Greeks, also known as the legendary Fortunate Isles or the Isles of Fortune by classical Europeans and Spaniards, were a mysterious people of antiquity, said to be submerged according to their own traditions, from the lands which first bore them, a few score miles off the western coast of what is now northwest Africa. A subtheory or subtheories contained within this paper shall argue that it be of no coincidence that the predynastic Egyptians also maintained this tradition of near-submergence and regeneration and migration from a far-off land (to their west - the Land of Amenti), in their own distant recorded times.
The scope of this paper will argue those theoretical postulations, including historical, linguistic, archaeological, anthropological, geological, religio-mythical and associated criteria and evidences as reasons for the proto-Guanche exploration eastward along the north African coastline from the sinking islands that once made up the sunken lands of the Northwest Atlantic near Europe and Africa were mainly from the stimuli of adverse climactic change. The recreation of their advanced societal knowledge in predynastic Egypt was for the purpose of their societal continuation and regeneration.
http://www.robertschoch.net/Guest_Articles...e_guanches.htmlThe Guanches, Nordic Caucasians with similarity to, or descended from, Cro-Magnon stock who dwelled in the Canary Isles, known as the Elysium, and the Garden of Hesperides by the classical Greeks, also known as the legendary Fortunate Isles or the Isles of Fortune by classical Europeans, those who the Spaniards battled against, invaded and eventually subjugated to complete the first action of European colonial expansion outside of Europes shores - and to get good strategic trade ports for Western Hemisphere trade - were a mysterious people of antiquity, said to be submerged according to their own traditions, from the lands which first bore them, a few score miles off the western coast of what is now northwest Africa.
The scope of this paper will argue the reasons for the proto-Guanche exploration from the sinking islands that once made up the sunken lands of the Northwest Atlantic near Europe and Africa were mainly for reasons of adverse climactic change. The Canary Islands were the homeland of the proto-Guanches descended from a Cro-Magnon people who had migrated there from Northwest Africa some time in the remote past, who like Thoth, sailed from the isles of the West to found a new civilization in pre-dynastic Egypt at least 6000 years ago. This memory was also preserved in the later writings of Plato in his Timaeus and Critaeus of the [sic] Atlanteans sailing through the Pillars of Hercules to subjugate the lands around the Mediterranean under their Empire, though they were stopped by the apparent ancestors of the classical Greeks.
Anthropological and Linguistic Evidence The distribution of various Cro-Magnon peoples now generally identified as such are mainly in western and northwestern Europe and northwest Africa. Scholars have traced the existence of the Iberian languages, including Iberian, Basque, Berber and the Northwest European languages generally called Celtic - as pre-Indo-European (the Indo-European invasions or series of settlements, colonizations and military invasions in a general sense from Eastern to Western Europe dating from circa 2500 BCE, as actually pre-Celtic and Pre-Indo-European (PRIE), the language group and root from whence Breton, Cymric, and other British Celtic languages evolved; as evidence of the direct lineage of these ancient PRIE languages from their Cro-Magnon ancestors.
R. Cedric Leonard in Quest for Atlantis, (Manor Books, Inc. New York, 1979) cites that evidence is based upon the strict, unchanging nature of Berber languages over 2,000 years and the lack of evidence of an intermediary language family form the hypothetical Cro-Magnon languages and the PRIE languages that scholars have evidence of antedating the Indo-European additions (see Prof. Johannes Friedrich (1957), a leading linguist of the Free University of Berlin, says that the Berber language has not changed at all in the last two thousand years. [Friedrich, Johannes, "Extinct Languages," (translated from German by Frank Gaynor) Philosophical Library, New York, 1957.] If this conservatism in Berber is so pronounced, then it is possible and probable that the history of the remainder of the Guanche language is also cut from the same linguistic cloth of tradition.
In Writing Berber Languages, Lameen Souag indicates the links between the ancient Berber language and Guanche are notable in these writing scripts of Old Libyan groups:
Sometime in the fifth century BC or so (the earliest attested dated inscription was from 138 BC, but the letter forms appear to have developed independently for some time and to have developed from early Phoenician rather than the cursive Punic then current), the Numidians and other early Berber kingdoms developed a script now known as Numidic or Old Libyan. [Writing Berber Languages, by L. Souag,
http://www.geocities.com/lameens/tifinagh/]
Souag goes on to state that archaeological evidences of these scripts are found across North Africa to the Canaries:
It is attested from innumerable tombstones and a couple of Numidian governmental inscriptions (most famously a bilingual one at Dougga), from the Canary Islands all the way to Libya, although the letter forms varied to some extent across this vast range, falling into two main groups, eastern and western. This script continued in occasional use up to the late Roman Empire, after which it is not attested anywhere north of the Atlas Mountains. [ibid]
It is probable that trade and movement of peoples prompted the inscriptions of the language across the area, pre-dating the rise of the Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean to the heights of the Cartaginian Empire. It is possible at that time the relations between he Guanches and the peoples of northwest Africa, their linguistic and probable ethnic cousins were at a peak, for by the time of the Spanish invasions of the Canaries the Guanche had apparently forgotten how to read their script and construct naval vessels that they likely sailed in and used over two millennia before.
In A History of Iberian Civilization, Portuguese historian Oliveira Martins hypothesized that the descendants of the hypothetical Cro-Magnon people in the Northwest of Euro-Africa call themselves by names with the suffix tani, such as Lusitani, Aquitani, Mauritani, (A History of Iberian Civilization, Oxford University Press) and one might add Pretanni as the original; or earliest cited name of the inhabitants of the modern-day British Isles. Other scholars, including the pioneering work of the linguist Renan [Renan, Ernest, De l'Origine du Language, Paris, 1858; La Societe' Berbere, Paris, 1873], cite evidence for the PRIE languages which they indicate is at least of the neolithic era and may date backward even further to the paleolithic era of the lithic-dating system of modern archaeology.
Scholars such as Michael Harrison [Harrison, Michael, "The Roots of Witchcraft," Citadel Press, Secaucas, N.J., 1974.] have indicated from their research that the descendants of the Cro-Magnons are represented today by the genetic remnants of the berber and Tuareg peoples of Northwest Africa, the Guanches of the 16th century Canary Islands, the Basques of Northern Spain, French living in the Dordogne Valley, Isle dOleron and Brittany in France, in the general vicinity of the river valleys of the remoter parts of modern northwestern Europe of the past century. Harrison is of the school that believes the PRIE languages including Basque originated in North Africa:
Indeed that Basque should have many words in common with the member of all
the North African group of languages is not surprising, since modern opinion ever
more inclines to credit the Basque with a North African origin . . . (Harrison, 1974)
The anthropologist von Luschan verified the similarities between the craniums of the Guanche and the Cro-Magnons in 1896:
Some twenty years previously Verneau42 had remarked upon the resemblance between Guanche crania from the Canary Islands and these Crô-Magnon skulls, and had postulated a genetic relationship between the two peoples so separated in space and in time. In 1896 von Luschan and Meyer43 reaffirmed this relationship, and this endorsement prepared the way for a more accurate realization of the part played by survivors from the last glacial period in the modern peopling of Europe. [Racial Classification within the White Family, Chapter 8, Sect. 6, ]
Generally dolichocephalic, fair-featured with blond or red-hair, with males over six foot tall and women approaching six feet in height, they were a people of tall, strong and comely appearance, resembling many Northern Europeans today but for a generally greater and more robust stature. Their general appearance and racial characteristic were valued by the Spanish:
"All historians agree in reporting that the Canarians were beautiful. They were tall, well built and of singular proportion. They were also robust and courageous with high mental capacity. Women were very beautiful and Spanish Gentlemen often used to take their wives among the population. The belief that the ancient Canarians were a people favored by great duration of life became popular at the time of the Spanish Conquest ." [The Early Inhabitants of the Canary Islands, By Alf Bajocco, 1965 Part IV cont.
http://geocities.com/MotorCity/Factory/2583/Canary4.htm]
Their civilization once featured sea-faring, mummifying their dead, dog-taming for hunting and war, thus the Spanish word for the islands, Isle of the Dogs, or Canaries, after the Latin Canis, sing, meaning Dog.
http://www.robertschoch.net/Guest_Articles...e_guanches.htmlThe Canary Islands and their Indigenous Hounds Dog-taming was a cultural feature of the early European Cro-Magnons and related archaic Caucasian peoples; according to the source, Dog Domestication and History,:
Dogs were first domesticated approximately 12,000 years ago during the last Ice Age. Earliest canine fossil remains were discovered in Iraq and Jordan. Oldest European evidence of dogs was discovered in Yorkshire, England. Those remains were determined to be approximately 9,000 years old. Bones of early dogs have been found in Europe and Asia in archeological digs of human sites.some people speculate that dogs were originally kept as sources of food or that perhaps, in the course of day to day hunting and scavenging, a cooperative relationship developed between primitive dog and man. [http://loudoun.nv.cc.va.us/vetonline/vet116/Dogs/dogdomest.htm]
And Professor I. Lehr Brisbin, Jr. cites the following data about the genesis of dog-taming:
"....Breeds of dogs can not be distinguished from each other by any known anatomical attribute or even biochemical genetic test, including DNA fingerprinting. Since a given breed of dog can not be defined by any scientific means currently known, our contention is that it is not possible to write any ordinance or law that would single them out for special treatment since they cannot be so defined in a legal sense. "Recently I attended a canine genetics workshop at Texas A & M University in which it was further emphasized that there is no biochemical genetic test that can even distinguish wolves from domestic dogs. "....I would taxonomically identify all wolves, wolf hybrids and domestic dogs as the species Canis lupus. Technically, the domestic dog and wolf hybrids should be designated as the sub-species "domesticus". [I. Lehr Brisbin, Jr., Research Professor, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, The University of Georgia. Letter, 30, Jan. 1990]
Though the tradition of dog-taming for hunter-gatherer and perhaps more advanced cultures may date to even earlier periods than the currently accepted dates, the similarity between the Guanche and pre-dynastic Egyptian cultures in using hunting dogs is noteworthy in conjunction with the other facts which shall be brought to this cope of this paper. The antiquity of dog-taming by neolithic humans cannot be denied and it is upon the Guanche-inhabited Canary Islands that the practice continued at least until the Spanish invasions of the 1500s CE.
Egypt scholar Michael Rice indicates that the importance of animals and pets to the Ancient Egyptians, alike the proto-Guanches, transcended the mundane necessities of life such as hunting and became ritually important in their mythology:
After the emergence of the fetishes, the next phase of Egyptian god-making turned to invest certain animal forms with the prerogatives of divinity. The slate palettes which are amongst the earliest graphic representations to survive provide much evidence of this practice: scorpions, lions, bulls, the ubiquitous falcon, the ibex, gazelle, hounds are all shown as personifications of the gods, assisting the King in putting down his enemies or in conducting the rituals of the state. Men needed the power of animals; even the early Kings, in the later Predynastic period and the First Dynasty, called themselves by animal names: Scorpion, Catfish, Fighting Hawk, Serpent are four of the best known." [Egypts Making The Origins of Ancient Egypt 5000-2000 B.C., by Michael Rice, copyright 1990.]
Pharaohs such as the marginally important Tut-ankh-amen were often depicted in hunting scenes with their dogs chasing game although it is not currently known how the commoners used hounds, or if they saw them as nuisances, such as the wild dogs and jackals of the countryside, to be put away.
It is known that the proto-Guanches used dogs in hunting and the kings probably used them as well, for the breed was on the islands invaded by the Spanish and could not have crossed the seventy miles of ocean from northwest Africa without the aid of human beings; how long the breed had been on the Canaries is a matter of conjecture but as there has never been any evidence of Roman occupation or exploration of the Canaries, dating from at least the time of the Cartaginians, circa 200 BCE, if not with the expeditions between the Canaries and Berber northwest Africa circa 1000 BCE or earlier.
If it was well-known in the classical world how to circumnavigate large islands and travel between widely-placed cities within continents, why would the ancients, given ample economic or political reasons, or indeed in catastrophe, not have traveled further afield? David Eccott illuminates interesting new archaeological evidence to support to the ancient naval movements of northwest african Berbers:
They were able seafarers who explored the Atlantic Ocean as early as the first millennium BC and, as the Lixitae of classical tradition, acted as pilots, translators and perhaps even crews for Carthaginian sea-captains. Moreover, they are accepted to have been synonymous with the Guanches of the Canary Islands, who also utilised Egyptian religious symbolism a case made recently on British television by Egyptologist and mummy expert Joanne Fletcher. [David Eccott,
http://www.andrewcollins.net/page/mysteries/deccott.htm]
Eccott also cites interesting information about the knowledge of the Roman geographers of the later classical era:
For instance, we have the evidence of the Roman wrecks laying uninvestigated off the coasts of Brazil and Honduras (and possibly even another in a river which forms the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua). Furthermore, Statius Sebosus, the Roman geographer of c. 100 BC, tells us that it was forty days sail from the Gorgades (the Cape Verdes) and the Hesperides (the Islands of the Ladies of the West, unquestionably the Caribbean see GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS). [Ibid]
There is a breed of dog, the Spanish Galgo, said to be descended from the hunting dogs of ancient Egypt and resembling the greyhound; this theory is explained by the writer:
We can be quite sure that the Spanish Hound is a descendant of the Vertades Romano, which reached Spain with the Romans. This roman race, itself a descendant of the Egyptians Hound resembles the pharaonic race. The only noticeable difference is the position of the ears as the egyptian dogs have erect ears and the Spanish Hound has rose-shaped ears.
Another theory is that the celts brought the Greyhound to the peninsula, when they settled in Gaul and thus the reason for its name in latin "canis gallicus". There
There is no doubt that the Spanish Hound is a descendant of the ancient pharaonic dogs. There is also another, more illogical, theory which says that it is a descendant of the Sloughi, and arrived in Spain with the arabs in the ninth century.
The latest investigations point to the fact there were two branches of similar dogs from different points (the Romans and the Celts) and the successive crossbreeding through the years could explain the differences that exist between the Ibizan Hound and the Spanish Hound. [De Vil Kennel,
http://www.sendanet.es/sastre/DeVilKennel/history.html, 2002]
Regardless of the dates of the arrival of the hounds of the Canaries, there is currently no evidence to prove that the dogs of the Canaries were in fact indigenous to the islands before the submersion of what became the land shelves beneath that island archipelago, and that therefore they had to be brought either by the proto-Guanches or some earlier indigenous population or populations. Recent evidence from archaeological digs has indicated a human presence from at least 6,000 years ago, far back-dating the presence of human inhabitation on those islands.
It is interesting to note that Plato recorded the Kings of Atlantis as wearing the skins of dolphins and that they figured into their mythology as kings of the sea, such as Poseidon. The Canaries also have a population of sea mammals including:
There are also sea mammals: dolphins (Delphinus delphus and Tursiops truncatus) and whales (Physeter macrocephalus and Globicephala macrorhynchus) and something called in Spanish Zifo comun (Ziphius cavirostris). [Fauna de las Islas Canarias by Jose Manuel Moreno, Ediciones Turquesa, 1992]
These mammals, like the hounds of the land, have a reputation for being friendly to man and especially to sea-farers.
http://www.robertschoch.net/Guest_Articles...e_guanches.html Artifacts of Guanche Worship and Comparison to Ancient Egyptian Analogues Pyramid building, mummification, and myths and religion of the Guanches were similar to that of the ancient Egyptians of the Pre-Dynastic and early Old Kingdom periods.
It is said that the Guanches by the time of the Spanish crowns invasion in the 1500s CE, had forgotten their ancient scripts, apparently resembling the Phonecian alphabet, although it is unknown if it was their original script, a similar alphabetical transferrence at some remoter time in their past, or a script similar to but not identical in phonology, syntactical or literal meaning to the proto-Phonecian, Phonecian, Cartaginian, Libyan or related North African semitic alphabet with Hamitic, probably with spoken neolithic Basque or its similarities to the indigenous Berber language.
It is known that their language closely resembles both Basque (Euskadi) and spoken Berber (the Tifinagh language), indicating an ancient or classical lingual and perhaps cultural or ethnic linkage between the three groups, though the Canary Islands have ben inhabited for longer period of time than the initial theoretical Guanche colonization of North Africa over 3000 BP - or the Berber colonization of the Canaries, though there would have been indigenous peoples in the archipelago antedating the Berbers of 1000 BC, due to recent archaeological discoveries in the Canaries that will be cited later in the scope of this paper.
Historical Overview of the Guanches Some scholars speculate that the Guanches were remnants of a pre-cataclysmic oceanic population in the Atlantic based in the Canaries which became water-logged through natural geological upheaval and eventual devastation; Charles Berlitz thought that they could have been survivors of that cataclysms who came by boat from remoter areas. Others have speculated a Cro-Magnon connection which would have necessitated the construction of naval vessels for the settling of these islands a hundred miles from the African and a few hundred from the European shores. However it should be pointed out that the islands were closer to the African and European coasts due to expansion of total island size due to lower oceanic levels at the time of the late Cro-Magnon or Azilian period in particular and may have been easier to colonize or migrate from during those geological periods.
There is interesting evidence in linguistic history which indicates the Cro-Magnon and Azilian connection between the European continent and the Canaries:
The antiquity of some of the words (in some cases) are pre-4,000 B.C. in its use or beginnings and which can make scholars conclude from this no doubt 6,000 B.C. with this date at least that the beginning of Canary Island inhabitants migration and possibly older as being very plausible. For Guanche is actually older by name then Ben. Ben is well known at least 3,400 B.C. in Egyptian description, or language. We know there was a great migration of Azilians a Cro-Magnon descendant at around 10,000-8,000 B.C. which ironically the word 'Azil' was a Canary word? Could they be the one and the same? [The Early Inhabitants of the Canary Islands, By Alf Bajocco, 1965 Part II cont.
http://geocities.com/MotorCity/Factory/2583/Canary2.htm]
Some scholars have speculated that the Guanches were remnants of a Vandalic slave population from the Roman period, taken to the Canary Islands, and due to the natural distance between islands of the Canarian archipelago, had forgotten how to navigate upon the oceans, became physically and then culturally stranded; their building structures and society had had fallen into disarray.
However a slave population on the small and climatologically diverse islands would have been unusual for its functional uselessness, unless other minerals were mined from the Canaries that are not in abundance today or they were way-stations populated by a small coterie of imperial or royal administrators for other nautical destinations. Then as now the hot springs, and forests - though the forests had been cut down largely by the time of the Spanish colonization - were noteworthy aspects of the islands, as well as the great island peak at Grand Canaria, but any slave-based economy based on any form of agriculture for a larger-scale population than a subsistence herding population, would have been difficult to achieve on a series of geologically unstable ocean archipelgoes, lending credence to the idea of either a slash-and-burn slave colonization of the archipelago and as a way-station for seafarers.
In Alternative Gomera, writer Nicholas Albery posits the following information about the Guanches:
The Guanche may have had Berber connections (in Tenerife, Guan meant man, but each island had its own language, with similarities between the islands. The languages are now lost, although some Guanche surnames and place names and about 3000 words survive). [Alternative Gomera, by Nicholas Albery, 2001]
Concerning the state of the Guanche civilization at the time of the analysis he presents, around the Spanish invasion, Albery indicates the following:
The Guanche buried the mummified bodies of their dead in bricked-up caves in as inaccessible spots as possible, and they followed a Stone Age way of life (without even the use of the potters wheel) into the middle ages. They had no bread, using a gofio barley flour instead. They had no chisels or metal instruments. Supposedly their only way of fishing was to jump into the sea so as to frighten the fish into their reed nets. On Tenerife island even the art of swimming is said to have been unknown. None of the Canary Islands except Hierro discovered how to produce alcohol by distillation, so that water and palm juice were the only drinks. They had no cotton or flax, only chamois leather. And no needles, only awls made of fish bone or palm thorns. They used cattle as a symbol of wealth, and the nobility had slaves or commoners as servants. Shields were made from the bark of the dragon tree. [Ibid]
It is possible like many civilizations, especially those living on small archipelagoes, the inhabitants rose and fell from savagery many times in their millennia of history and that the Spanish colonized their islands at a low point in their history. It is difficult to imagine people indigenous to island archipelagoes so close to one another would not now how to or want to construct boats, or know how to swim, unless they had regressed in civilization due to civil strife and subsequent cultural reduction, or cataclysm. Their usage of cattle as wealth is indicative of a Berber and far earlier Cro-Magnon predilection, as evidence by the Cro-Magnon art of human hunters and elaborately drawn cattle herds, oxen, antelope, and other animals.
It is also noted that Cro-Magnon and post-Cro-Magnon Azilian-era sites in Europe indicated usage of needles and clothing for sewing, thousands of years before the explanation of the primitive state of their possible descendants in he Guanches and proto-Guanches of the Canary Islands.
Another explanation is that the Romans took the Guanches ancestors to the Canaries as they were prisoners, and utilized the Canaries as a prison colony. However, the Phonecians recorded their efforts at the Canaries while embarking on mercantile activities in the eastern Atlantic and the theoretical Berber contact several hundred years before would antedate a Phoenician discovery of the Canaries. Moreover the archaic step-pyramid building, dog-training and astronomy of the Guanches are cultural features that do not have Roman or Cartaginian precedents and their linkage to Phonecian cultures are tenuous. This lends support to a native Guanche culture earlier than the classical period of the Mediterranean.
Nevertheless the linguistic archaeology points to an earlier influence or utilization of script; a Cartaginian or Libyan language similar to Tifinagh, the language of the Tamazight or Berber peoples of North West Africa who also have the fair features of the Guanche; their geographical proximity to the Canary Islands is also noted. Furthermore little if any Roman influence seems apparent in the artefacts or archaeology or language in the Guanche Canary Islands. It is argued that the Guanche Canarians were part of a trading station that enabled them movement southeast across the Atlantic to the trading and colony centers of the Americas as well as to their colonies along the Mediterranean coast and that their culture was autocthonous in late neolithic Europe and spread outward to encompass others, including an eventual Berber/Tamazight culture in Northwest Africa in the late neolithic period. This Guanche culture extended into the early Spanish period when it was irradiated and transformed into a European culture.
Scholars point to the resemblance between the Guanche or proto-Guanche, Egyptian, and Mayan cultures in their usage of pyramids and other archaeological evidences of the societal linkages between far-flung cultures, pointing to a greater usage of sea-faring and exploration in pre-Mediaeval times than is commonly accepted by orthodox historians of Egypt:
The famous explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, who "rediscovered" the pyramids on the Canary Islands and who set up an academic body to study the phenomena, argued that the pyramids may be remains from explorers who sailed the Atlantic in ancient times, and who may have possibly forged a link with the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.
As the original inhabitants of the Canary Islands were fair-haired and bearded, it was possible, Heyerdahl suggested, that long before the 15th Century, people of the same stock as those who settled the Canary Islands, also sailed the same route along the Canary Current that took Christopher Columbus to the Americas. [Guanche Type Pyramids Found in Mexico,
http://www.white- history.com/hwr6a.htm]
These people as well as the nearby Nehmadi [for a fascinating travellers account of the Nehmadi, vide The Songlines, by Bruce Chatwin], a surviving Nordic Caucasian hunter-gatherer tribe in a modern area of Berbers, Arabs and mulatto or Negro slaves, a tribe which uses tamed dogs and jackals to help in their hunt for antelope and other prey, in Berber North Africa, yet more primitive than the Berber. It is likely that the Nehmadi are related to the Guanches, or to Vandals or earlier Germanic peoples who lived in North Africa, or to the Amazight (or Berber in the Arab tongue); these are two threads in the great weaving of an apparent ancient, pre-Egyptian old Kingdom of the pre-dynastic era, in and of itself a loose historical term explaining both the animistic nomes cultural features of the river cities of the Nile, and the cyclopean architecture of the predynastic period in ancient Egypt which perhaps featured the technology and culture of ancient Nordic Caucasian colonizers and sea-farers.
The author continues, citing the similarities between the Guanche and Egyptian pyramid-building styles:
However, the most stunning link between the Guanches and the Egyptians comes in the form of pyramids - the Guanches built several small step pyramids on the islands, using exactly the same model as those found in ancient Egypt and in Mesopotamia. The pyramids have an east-west alignment which also indicates that they probably had a religious purpose, associated with the rise and setting of the sun.
Carefully built stairways on the west side of each pyramid lead up to the summit, which in each case has a flat platform covered with gravel, possibly used for religious or ceremonial purposes. [The Guanche Pyramids on the Canary Isles,
http://www.White-History.com, by Arthur Kemp.]
Through recent archaeological data were are able to recalculate with greater probability of historical accuracy the ages of some of the most important cyclopean or prehistoric and grey-dated architecture in Egypt, the Sphinx, Great Pyramid and Gizeh, and the Osirieon complex back further than the orthodox Egyptologist dating of these structure-ruins at approximately the rein of the Old Kingdom Pharaoh Khufu (circa 2800 BC or 4800 BP) past the rein of Nar-mer circa 5000 BP, to approximately 4000 BC or 6000 BP or earlier, to the era of the mediterranean-wide colonization of sea-faring nordics of the archaic, post Cro-Magnon Azilian-era archaic Europeans. It is therefore possible that some of these people became proto-Guanches.
Concerning the evidence for cross-cultural contact between the northwest African Berbers and the Egyptians in remoter periods, in the classical period, circa 950-700 BCE, the Berber peoples had a reign of several pharaohs as cited by Habiba Boumlik:
...the first mention of the Amazigh people in historical records: the founding by Amazigh Pharaoh Sheshonq I of the 22nd pharaonic dynasty in 950 BC, followed by the 23rd and 24th Amazigh pharaonic dynasties, over 200 years (950 BC-712 BC) of Amazigh rule in ancient Egypt. According to ancient Egyptian historian Manetho (3rd century BC) and archeological records, the Amazigh Pharaonic dynasties brought back stability to Egypt by reunifying it and defending it against foreign invasion from the East. [Habiba Boumlik, The Celebration of Yennayer/Amazigh New Year,
http://www.waac.org/amazigh/culture/yennay...ba_boumlik.html]
This may not be the first instance of far western African cultures influencing far eastern African cultures as shall be demonstrated later on.
http://www.robertschoch.net/Guest_Articles...e_guanches.html Guanche Habits It is known that the Guanche used an odd whistled language called silbo, perhaps to communicate across the valleys and volcanic hills of the multi-climated Canary Islands; their mixed Spanish descendants are said to use the language today. Whistling is also useful as a non-verbal language for seafarers. In Alternative Gomera, by Nicholas Albery, 2001, the author states the history and current usage of silbo as follows:
The language of Gomera nowadays is Spanish. Some of the older inhabitants can still use the intriguing Gomeran whistling language, el silbo, useful for conveying quite detailed information from mountain-top to mountain-top, such as meet you in the cafe by the plaza for a drink at 12. Some whistlers can make themselves understood up to five miles away, with a following wind, it is claimed. The whistle is demonstrated at some of the tourist restaurants, is recognised by UNESCO as a language whose survival is threatened, and is taught to 9 and 10 year olds in specialised classes in school. The whistle compresses all spoken sounds to four consonants and two vowels, using varying tone and length. Some experts say that the whistling originated from the Berbers in the high Atlas in Morocco, although the Turks near the Black Sea in the Kuskoy valley do a similar form of whistling. [Ibid]
It is unknown if the ancient Egyptians used such methods of communication in their daily lives. Pottery found on the Canaries indicates an ancient cultural connection between the pottery making of northeast Africa and the Mediterranean and the Guanche or proto-Guanche:
While in Tenerife pottery is for the most part plain ware with oval bottom, mainly produced for utilitarian purposes after the Neolithic models, that of Gran Canaria shows skillful use of red and black scheme with geometric motifs recalling pre-Minoan Crete." [The Early Inhabitants of the Canary Islands, By Alf Bajocco, 1965 Part IV cont.
http://geocities.com/MotorCity/Factory/2583/Canary4.htm]
The Flood According to the Egyptians Floods occurred throughout the ancient world, and some had devastating effect over wide regions. Concerning the theological ramifications in the Egyptian culture regarding ancient flood of the Eastern Mediterranean, R. Cedric Leonard states:
Nu, the Egyptian god of the Primeval Sea, is represented on the marble sarcophagus of Seti I as being up to his waist in water with arms upraised to carry the Solar Boat across the Sky. He is said to have held the royal occupants of this boat above the flood waters engulfing their mountainous island home in the West. Nu had been ordered to bring about this very flood by Atum in order to purify the world (Budge, 1960). Does this primeval flood scene depict the first migration from the Lands of the West to Egypt because of the inundation of Atlantis? (Ancient Egyptian Writings, R. Cedric Leonard,
http://www.atlantisquest.com/Hiero.html) Aside from the obvious etymological and perhaps cultural diffusion in the similarities between the Hebrew No-ah and the Egyptian Nu, who travels the primeval sea in a solar boat, it is likely that the ancient Egyptians based their religion in part on their history, as did the later Hebrew people with their accounts of Abrahams flight and settlement into Egypt during a time of famine and Moses exodus from Egypt with the body of the Israelite people. If this is the case it points more strongly to a common cultural record of origin in the flooded lands of southeast Europe, or even the volcanic islands of the far eastern Atlantic of the founders of the Pre-Dynastic kingdoms of Lower Egypt.
The Proto-Guanche Historical Origins of the Egyptian God Thoth While the Guanche were known to have worshipped the god of the sun, and of higher thought, Men-cey, (note that the first Egyptian pharaohs called themselves Men-es) or the revelation of god through the sun, it is unknown what the other gods, if any, of their pantheons were. Yet throughout the ancient Egyptian writings of the God-Kings before the Pharaohs, are references to men of other lands who became gods of wisdom before migrating to lower Egypt. One of them was Thoth, traditionally designated by historians and Egyptologists as the Egyptian God of Writing and Wisdom. Leonard states:
Thoth was born in a distant country to the west which was across a body of water. Its main city was by the sea (Plato's metropolis). The land possessed volcanoes and, like Atlantis, had a low mountain or large hill in the center. This land is sometimes referred to as the Isle of Flame. (Book of the Dead, Hymn of Rameses IV and Pyramid Texts)
A catastrophe occurred which darkened the sun and disturbed the gods, but Thoth led them across the sea to an eastern country [Egypt]. Thoth is depicted as the "controller of the Flood," (Leyden Papyrus) and the Theban Recension includes the Island of Flame in the Flood story. (Papyrus of Ani, Chap. CLXXV)
In Chapter LXXXV of the Book of the Dead, Thoth rules the "Western Domain," and by the end of the New Kingdom he is called "Lord of the West". (Seth, 1912) Thoth is depicted standing in sht htp [the "field of peace" known to the Greeks as the Elysian Fields], holding his writing quill and palette. The question is pertinent: Was Thoth an Atlantean god-king? [R. Cedric Leonard,
http://www.atlantisquest.com/Hiero.html]
The sacred island of the Guanches, the Gran Canaria, is a great mountain, white peaked, with very little arable land surrounding it as it juts forth from the Atlantic, similar to the description of the Isle of Rame, indicating an interesting similarity in the volcanic homeland of Thoth It may not be possible to prove that Thoth was an Atlantean God-King, but there are indications that the isles of the West were the Canary Islands, and that proto-Guanches of a more advanced state did explore outside of their archipelago with their astronomical, navigational and cultural knowledge and achievements of the late neolithic era.
http://www.robertschoch.net/Guest_Articles...e_guanches.html Canary Islands: Home of the Guanches The Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean near the Tropic of Cancer, immediately west of the African coast (near the ancient Berber/Tamazight lands) form an archipelago made of seven islands and six smaller islets. Their naval coordinates are between 27 degrees north and 29.5 degrees north and go as far west as 18 degrees. It is not surprising that some historians and other scientists speculate that the ancient culture and people of these islands are directly related to the ancient indigenous inhabitants of Northwest Africa, the Tamazight.
The Canarian writer Juan Rancel tells the following:
Roman naturalist Plinius wrote that Juba, King of Mauritania and vassal of Rome in the I century b.C., sent an expedition to explore the mythical Fortunate Islands which were in the Dark Ocean beyond the Columns of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar). They gave name to some of these islands. One they called "Nivaria" for the snow covering its mountains (nivea=snow, in latin) -the island of Tenerife. Other was called "Herbania" (herba=grass, in latin) for the meadows they found there. A third one was named "Junonia" for the many doves they saw; the dove was the bird dedicated to goddess Juno. And one of the islands, in which they found a fierce breed of dogs (can, canis in latin), was called "Canaria"...
Regardless of what Plinius wrote in the I century a.C., the fact is that the island called today Gran Canaria was inhabited by a tribe who called themselves the "canarii". The islands were called "Fortunate Islands" or "Islands of Fortune". During the XV century, the island of Canaria became famous for the brave defense deployed by their natives against the landings of the conquistadores. They started to call all islands "the Islands of Canaria", from which they were later called "Canary Islands" (Canarias, in Spanish). (The Canarian Balcony, Juan Rancel)
The Egyptian pharaohs from Pre Dynastic times used hunting dogs throughout their funeary stela, bas-reliefs, statues and in their daily life; the God of the Dead was Anubis, and the ancient Egyptians were known to have bred several breeds of hunting dogs for the courts usage for war and for sport. The western islands which suffered much natural catastrophism were none other than the Canarian Islands, nearly directly west of Lower Egypt, but removed by thousands of miles across the Atlas Mountains and the once fertile plains of the Sahara. If the lands of the Northwest of Africa were more hospitable in those days, it is not surprising that the proto-Guanches could have sailed the 70 plus miles from the eastern Canaries to the African mainland and then followed the African coast to the geologically safe and fertile Nile River delta.
It is quite possible therefore that the inundated, fleeing proto-Guanche sailed due eastward with little trepidation, as in those days the climate of the Sahara was different:
...the Eastern Sahara was of a Savannah Environment with plentiful flora and fauna, with a far higher taxonomic variety than today. Wild herds of grazing antelope, gazelle and cattle made easy game for hunting. However since the end of the last Ice Age North Africa has been undergoing environmental change, with climatic fluctuations. Increasing desiccation at the end of the Pleistocene (start of the Holocene) most likely induced human groups to merge towards the Nile (Childe 1934; Hassan 1984b). Indeed from as early as 15000 BC we have various examples of Palaeolithic sites with stone tool assemblages, distributed along the desert limits. (Egyptvoyager.com: The Nile Valey-Egypt 8/02)
However if the proto-Guanche at that time utilized naval resources for travel, the navigation from the Canary Streams, northwest across the western shore of Africa and through the Pillars of Hercules would have made a simple trip through the relatively easier to navigate Mediterranean. Furthermore the climate of North Africa 6000 BP was far gentler and climatological evidence points to a savannah-like North Africa, with running streams and forest like the Serengeti plains of Southern Africa.
The journey from the volcanic disturbances in the Canaries would have been generally uneventful one in a time of peace, given there were human populations and ample food and water along the pleasant subtropical or temperate climate of North Africa at that time, capable of supporting human life in advanced numbers. If the proto-Guanche survivors knew about Northwest Africa then they might have known about lushness and perhaps relative primitivity of the Nile Valley inhabitants as well.
(....to be continued)
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I still learn something new every day. ![rolleyes.gif](http://ghostchild.4.<a href="http://www.forumer.com">forumer</a>.com/html/emoticons/rolleyes.gif)
Awesome. 
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the index of rooting of the Canarian-mazigia toponymy is high in Gran Canaria (little difference among greater and minor toponymy in Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro and Lanzarote), and low in Fuerteventura. It is in this island where it charges greater urgency the rescue of those valuable toponyms that are about to disappear -under the enormous migratory pressure that is suffering- and that so much can provide the ethnohistory of Canary Islands. Work that fortunately has been carried out or is being carried out in other islands.