I am intrigued about the origin of the natives of the canary islands

I am intrigued about the origin of the natives of the canary islands.

The berber hipothesis is widely accepted nowadays, but when you look at the topic a bit deeper, everything is extremely confusing.

The first spanish conquerors describe the natives as almost nordic, blonde, blue eyed and extremely tall (1,80, compared with the spanish average during that era, 1,60). The women are described as extremely beautiful. (These descriptions are based on the expedition of Jean IV de Béthencourt)

If such a thing is true and there were no new settlers during historical times, those natives were perhaps the last remanent of a proto-berber race.

However, later anthropologic studies using mummies suggest the presence of a heterogeneous population. Some authors identify two human types and several degrees of admixture among them, while others identify up to four types.

One of the types is defined as "crogmanoid" and the other is defined as "mediterranean", being the crogmanoid associated with the most primitive culture. I am mostly intrigued about the presence of blondism among natives.

Modern populations are not a valid sources to study this topic, because they are heavily mixed after the spanish colonization, to the point they are mostly spanish. Same goes for the berbers: Most of them are too mixed.

Any thoughts on this?

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What is certain is that all the Guanches migrated together as they forgot how to sail.Maybe some Vandals migrated with the berbers at some point.Or you know the explorers and conquistadors were just exagerating to get more men and funding which is something that they did frequently.

This.

Not even scholars agree completely on where did they come from or when did they get there. It's, today, an enigma. I'm a history student from the Canary Islands and, even if Canary Islands History isn't my favourite subject, I can try to explain what I know.

First, we've got the theory that says they were "Mediterranean" populations brought there by, presumably, punic populations to extract Tyrian purple in very early stages (8th century BC and older although dating samples have been criticized). Those populations were brought from all over the Mediterraneal area, Europe too and not ony Africa. Remains have been found in a rock next to one of the islands has been theorized to be a Roman Tyrian purple factory, but it has not been proven yet. If they confirm it, it'd prove Roman presence, and it'd suggest punic populations could know the area too. However, completely why are they there. If the purpose of those populations was to be brought to work on just a rock (a very small island), why would they bother in populating the whole area?

That theory doesn't appeal to everyone, as you could figure out, so there's scholars who say those populations gathered into the islands randomly and only by luck. It was not a deliberate process, but just something that occured by fate. That makes no sense to me either because the population of an island is, from a bioanthropological point of view, it's almost impossible.

Blondism is explained simply by the veriety of the population source today, since it has such a diverse orign, different people showed different traits. However, most thoughts about guanches being overall a massively tall and strong population with blond hair and blue eyes is probably a big of an exageration, but there isn't doubt some Guanches were taller than most Spaniards with European traits.

Even if conquistadors do exaggerate, they do not make up things completely. Spaniard descriptions of Aztecs and Mayans are somewhat valid. If a Conquistador states that he saw several big muscular guys with blue eyes and blond hair, he probably saw something like that, even if he was just a bit taller (10cm) than him.

Occupations were before Vandals got to Africa, so they don't have anything to do with guanches.

Modern canary islanders who have a huge amount of native DNA cluster together with Sardinians


Food for thought

>Modern canary islanders who have a huge amount of native DNA cluster together with Sardinians
Most guanches were enslaved or died due the european diseases.Almost no one has Guanche ancestry in the world

You realize the Vandals were a major naval power for centuries, right? I'm sure they cold have reached and settled the Canaries. Not saying they did, but it's certainly possible.

We are talking here first occupations in Canary Islands are, at least, from the 5th century BC and there's evidence that it could've been even in an earlier date (10th century, but these datings are controversial) so Canary Islands were already occupied long before Vandals showed up.

That's not true. Not all Guanches were turned into slaves, some of them reimained in the Islands. A lot of Guanche women married conquistadores so their descendants have both DNA, it happened something similar to what happened in Mexico and other Latin-American countries. The problem is you can't easily tell like in those countries because Guanches were white.

>for centuries

More like for 50 years when they stole Carthage's fleet

Guanche population was tiny and most didn't survive and the enslaving was more common with guanches than with indians.People with guanche ancestry area rarity

Isn't the Guanche language a dialect from phoenician?

Studies have proven there's Guanche lineages in today's population so you are just wrong.

"his shows that, despite the continuous changes suffered by the population (Spanish colonisation, slave trade), aboriginal mtDNA lineages constitute a considerable proportion of the Canarian gene pool"
nature.com/ejhg/journal/v12/n2/full/5201075a.html

>we will never know the culture and history of the Guanches

You haven't even read your own link pal
>First of all, as the Berber markers are also present in the Iberian Peninsula,7,8,9 drift effects after the Spanish colonisation could justify their higher frequency in the Canary Islands, without invoking aboriginal heritage. Furthermore, after the Conquest, the need of labour led to the introduction of slaves from the Northwest African coast. With time, these slaves were freed and integrated into the island population. This could justify the presence, in the current Canarian gene pool, of a higher amount of Berber markers than the Iberian Peninsula.

They knew of the labyrinth symbol too

Creepy...

There's two Guanche dialects as far as we know and none of them is derived from phoenician. However, there's two possibly scripts, one is related to Bereber-Libyan and the other one is possibly related to Carthaginese script. There isn't, sadly, any solid evidence to relate the latter to actual Carthaginian script but there's enough hints for that to be a possibility.

Also they had megalithism like Neolithic Europeans, weird

And pyramiths

it also says this, just in case you missed it

>"Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages such as U6 and Y-chromosome markers as M81, with a Berber origin have a significant higher presence in the Canary Islands than in Iberians, the main colonisers of the Islands"

Yes and as I quoted you here
>the need of labour led to the introduction of slaves from the Northwest African coast. With time, these slaves were freed and integrated into the island population

They had mummies too, what the hell, this one seems like a pretty big guy

When talking about genetics, it is extremely hard to come out with correct interpretations, because there are so many possibilities.

The fact is both options are not mutually exclusive.

>forgot how to sail

But they're like 40 kilometers from the coast, you can do it with canoes too like Neolithic people did in Europe and the Levant

Holy shit look at the size of his hand

>"Here, we report mitochondrial DNA analysis (HVRI sequences and RFLPs) of aborigine remains around 1000 years old. The sequences retrieved show that the Guanches possessed U6b1 lineages that are in the present day Canarian population, but not in Africans."

You also missed this.

My source on the Guanches is Hugh Thomas and when his sources said that the Guanche population was very tiny and proportionally it was enslaved more than native americans.

What we do know:
Canarian haplotypes from ancient samples show they were largely descended from Iberian or Northwest African populations, as you would expect. Nothing really associated with "nordic-looking" populations.
Canarian autosomal DNA from modern samples point primarily to older descent from the group identified as Neolithic Anatolian farmers who settled in much of the Mediterranean basin and adjacent regions and is thus not notably different from their neighbors. They have much more SSA admixture than Iberians but way less than Northwest Africans

Basically everything indicates that they were like other Western Mediterranean or "Middle Atlantic" populations, although differences in modern Y-DNA shows that recent migrations had a clear impact on the modern population.
This doesn't necessarily say much about cosmetic traits like hair or eye color but I would expect them to have looked like berbers, iberians or sardinians. It's quite possible that blondism or blue eyes (which are rare but present in the first two populations) could have become more common among Canarians. Their greater height can be attributed to their lifestyle (pastoralism and gathering rather than agriculture, although they did practice the latter somewhat)
Or the accounts could be complete bullshit. I wouldn't be overly surprised either way.

Certain Algerian population have high frequencies of blondism, comparable to some European population, I think it's those who live in the Atlas mountain chain or whatever it's called.

No we aren't, we're talking about what the Conquistadores may or may not have found when they got there.

It's worth noting that while the mummy can attest that they were big guys, the hair seems dark enough (mummy hair tends to lighten if anything) and it has that curly frizzy quality common in North Africa.

There's absolutely no evidence that Vandals showed up there. If a maritime power like them had found the islands, you would think they at least know how to go from an island to another through canoes or something but nope, there's nothing like that. So saying enough Vandals were in Canary Islands for their presence to be significative is just unbased. Maybe a few got there here and there, but not rnough for them to be relevant.

Just because you can make a sailing ship, it doesn't follow that you can make ANY type of ship. The Canaries lack wood suitable for shipbuilding, after the colonists lost contact with whatever culture they came from, they would have had to invent a whole new ship technology to reach the coast. And while it may seem close on a map, that strait has extremely strong currents that will defeat any simply paddling coracle that you might be able to use to get around the islands themselves.

This almost certainly comes from enslaved Europeans. The Berbers were famous slavers, and took millions from Europe over the course of their history, some from as far afield as Ireland.

Maybe a ship or two hit the rocks and the survivors bred with the natives and produced the tall blonde offspring the Conquistadores report seeing. For that matter it could as easily be shipwrecked Vikings or Normans.

The report comes from that French guy from the XIV century that OPs quotes, when the islands have already visited by Europeans decades before.
It would be way easier to conclude that the peoples with blondism were children and grandchildren of such sailors.

And they forgot everything about their past? How?

Because they died of old age and their children's children's children didn't inherit their genetic memories?

The problem with this explanation is that Mediterranean and Atlantic Europeans aren't too blond (the Irish do have red hair and pale skin but they're otherwise quite dark for such a Northern people, possibly indicating Iberian and/or Aquitanian contact), blondism was present in North Africa even in Egyptian times, and you'd expect the coastal urban folks to be fairer, not some pastoralist tribes in the Atlas.

Obviously, they were a last outpost of the Atlantean race. The Basques and Ainu also fit this category.

Yes, those are some of the older theories some scholars have held to explain Guanches' complexion. However, no haplogroup belonging to those populations have been found and, unless it got (which is a possibility I suppose), chances are none of those populations ever arrived in significant amounts for them to be genetically relevant. Haplogroups found are U6b1 and U6c1 and they haven't been found anywhere else but in the Canary Islands populations.

But they didn't teach anything at all to the natives? lol

I am not saying it is not possible, but it sounds kinda funny. They moved there, fucked then women, and they were silent for the rest of their lives...

Plus there is a hole in that theory: They didn't found germanic DNA anywhere. It is not present on mummies nor in modern canarians.

>In other instances, the women were so fierce during combat, or in encouraging and helping their men in combat that the conquistadors spoke of the “the amazons” of the island of La Palma. Or they told legendary tales of Guacimara, royal princess of Anaga (Tenerife) who took part in the struggle against those who tried to land on the beaches of Añaza. Women also played an important role in stories mixed with legend which tell of the heroism displayed by princesses and aristocrats who preferred to throw themselves from the cliffs rather than be taken captive by the Europeans. This ritual suicide, symbol of love for freedom, was practiced not only by women, but also by some men of the royal families, and was preceded by the cry Vacaguaré! (I want to die!).

Interesting, they were a proud people

>Haplogroups found are U6b1 and U6c1 and they haven't been found anywhere else but in the Canary Islands populations.
Rather incorrect, they are found in Iberian and North African populations and now even in Latin America thanks to colonialism.
You're quite right that no Nordic haplogroups have been found (at least none that wouldn't be attributed to Iberians with Occam's Razor)

In the town of Acentejo they defeated conquistadors armed with fire weapons and armor using stones and spears and being semi naked. Pretty embarassing.

More precisely:

In contrast [to the widespread U6a], U6b shows a more limited and patched distribution, restricted to western populations. In the Iberian Peninsula, U6b is more frequent in the North whilst U6a is prevalent in the South. In Africa, it has been sporadically found in Morocco and Algeria in the North, and Senegal and Nigeria in the South, pointing to a wider distribution in the past, or to gene flow from a geographic focus which has still not been sampled. Curiously, two Arab Bedouins [22] with the same haplotype (16111 16172 16219 16311 16362), are the only Eastern representatives classified as U6b. It would be very interesting to test the 9438 HaeIII restriction enzyme to confirm this classification. [Ed.Note: See Comment below:] Furthermore, subgroup U6b1 characterized by mutation 16163, is restricted to the Canarian Archipelago and the Iberian Peninsula. The geographic distribution of the new subgroup U6c, characterized by the basic motif 16169 16172 16189, is even more localized. It has only been found in the Canary Islands and Morocco. It could also be present in Algeria, if the two individuals with haplotype 16172 16189 16234 16311 [9], classified as U* by RFLP analysis [5], belong to this subgroup. Like for U6b, an autochthonous U6c subcluster (characterized by mutation 16129) was also detected in the Canarian Archipelago.

Note that this is both evidence of the relative isolation of Canary Islanders and of their Iberian/North African descent.

If you can find those haplogroups in Latin America is, as you've said, because of colonialism and emigration (lot of people left the islands to live in America through all our history, my grand-grandfather is one of many examples) but those specific haplogroups haven't been found in any North African population yet (they haven't searched through some areas like Tunice and Libya) so even if the haplogroup orign is, supposedly African, no population today (yet) has been found with those specific haplogropus outside the islands or their area of influence.

>The first spanish conquerors describe the natives as almost nordic, blonde, blue eyed and extremely tall (
stopped reading

Don't forget that, according even to the conquistadores, their army was ambushed by 300 warriors while they were running away from a 3k men army. It was such an easy battle for them Guanches thought the conquistadores were like little kids so they laughed at them and understimated the Spaniards hard, which explains the second battle of Acentejo and how the Spaniards swept the floor with the Guanches (they had to use horses and the veterans from the Reconquista though)

I didn't think Guanche contributed significantly to Spanish colonization, that would explain a lot.

In any case the distribution patterns hint that the Canary Islands were settled long ago, because they have the same haplotype as more distant populations rather than their immediate neighbors and even had some time to develop their own mutations.

It's true though you retarded fuck:

>According to the tales of the European conquerors, the Guanches were a “highly beautiful white race, tall, muscular, and with a great many blondes amongst their numbers” Their great height must be understood in relation to the average height of Europeans at that time. As for the presence of blondes, even today after many centuries of invasions and intermarriage, a heritage of blond hair and blue eyes is easily found among modern day Berbers of the Atlas region in Africa.

Well not the Guanche per se, but the post-conquest population who also had those haplogroups.

Indeed, and that only opens more questions about who they were or how did they get there. It's a really interesting enigma nobody's going to solve any time soon. If those datings that have been found from 10th century BC happen to be true (they are controversial, there's nothing clear), that'd mean they were there before Greek poleis existed.

I still laughed my ass off when I read the story the first time. It is funny to imagine a bunch of semi naked savages stoning to death an army of confused soldiers.

They had some sort of slings, islanders were usually very good with slingers for some reason (makes me think of Balearic islanders)

Indeed, they had clubs, slings, small shields and obsidian weaponry, very dangerous and very sharp. They knew how to fight because inner fights were something common (in fact there was a guanche faction who allied the spaniards in the conquest) so even if their weaponry wasn't too advanced, they made the best out of it.

>obsidian weaponry

I think you are confusing them with native americans. We are talking about the canary islands...

No, I'm not. There's obsidian in Tenerife (one of the islands and the island where the Battle of Acentejo happened) and Guanches made knives and small weaponry with it. Nothing compared to what you could find in America though, but simply small daggers.

>We are talking about the canary islands
you mean those islands with the calderas and the volcanoes?

Obsidian was used and traded over long distances in North Africa and Eurasia since the neolithic, but since they guances were cut off from the rest of the world I don't know if they could get it

Canary Islands are volcanic islands, one of them is famous for its obsidian. They didn't have to trade it, they had it right there.

Firstly, blonde people do exist in Mediterranean countries, and where a high priority for Muslim slavers. Secondly, most of the slaves that ended up in the Muslim world were from northern Europe, typically Slavs, who made their way to the Middle East via the Byzantine slave trade.

My father is canarian and he has blue eyes and blonde hair.

I hightly doubt he has any northern european ancestry.

You make it seem as if this is unusual, but the history of the US is full of whites who "went native", married into a tribe, and subsequently lost their European identity.

They ended up there in the 10th century bc, maybe stranded Sardinian/Iberian sailors?

Because exactly during those centuries those guys sailed around the Atlantic coasts and North Africa

My cousin is Canarian from Canarian family 100% and he's completely white, blonde and blue-eyed. And, even if he's somewhat of an exception, he's not the only one there to be like that.

Which tales? Looking for more exact sources.

Out of curiosity, how would you describe their nose shapes and hair?

Sardinia wasn't settled until the 15th century you tard. it's too far away from land

Le Canarien, it's the chronicles of the conquest

Different, my cousin's hair is curly and I can't remember exactly his nose shape, I guess not too wide, it never caught my attention.

His father though had straight hair and he a huge 190cm tall, can't remember his nose either, he dided when I was way too young.

My father has straight hair, but his blonde is like "straw". His eyes are blue but there is also something different with them. It is like a mix between blue and gray.

His nose is pretty wide, more than the average european.

Yeah that's kind of the blue I'm talking about, not exactly nordic blue but a different hue.

Thing with Canarian population is we're way too mixed-up with Iberians, Italians and other populations due to how strategic the islands were back in the day, so you can find a lot of different traits of different populations here and it's really hard to say "this is a typical canarian people trait" because it's really hard to specify. The only thing you can't find here is gingers though.

Which chapter.

I am not that guy, but you can also google it and you will find a lot of descriptions, sources included.

Anyways, modern analysis of mummies show a diverse population, there were at least two racial types. I am OP.

Well this is all new to me, so are these guys just descended from the Berbers or were they their own thing? Are there any left today?

For you.

Top kek I was in that thread

Read through the thread you lazy fuck.

I did jackass but there's still so much to learn about these people, I've never heard of them till today