Early NavigationĬurrently, there is no archaeological evidence suggesting inter-island mobility. The Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479), between Portugal and Spain, established the Spanish sovereignty over the archipelago. The archipelago was mapped in 1341 for the king of Portugal, Afonso IV (1291-1357), by Florentine and Genoese sailors, and appears in the Medici (1351), Pizzigani (1367), and Catalan Atlas (1375).įollowing a period of wars and invasions organized by the Portuguese and Spanish monarchs, the Canary Islands were conquered by the Castillian kings during the 15th century, starting with the expeditions of Jean de Bethencourt (1362-1425) and Gadifer de la Salle (1340-1415). The traditional dates vary around 1300, with the Vivaldi brothers sailing along the western coast of Africa around 1291, or Lanceloto Malocello rediscovering it around 1312, although it is difficult to find a consensual story of the rediscovery of this archipelago among historians. In the late middle age Europeans visited the Canaries, in the late 13th or early 14th centuries. Islas Canarias, Spain (Google Maps 2020). It is interesting to note that while most people like to reference the anecdotal presence of massive wild dogs, many researchers have decided to obviate the mentioning of anthropogenic activity in the Island of Gran Canaria. In this island, there was also a species of wild dogs that impressed explorers who captured two specimens to be taken back to Juba II. However, this early Roman historical source describes the presence of human-made structures in the island of Gran Canaria already present upon the arrival of an exploratory mission by Mauritanian King Juba II (Santana-Santana et al., 2007 Santana-Santana and Arcos-Pereira, 2007). Alberto-Barroso and colleagues have argued that the peopling of the islands must have taken place after Roman occupation of the archipelago officially described by Pliny the Elder. Some authors claim that the earliest occupation of Gran Canaria Island occurred during the 4 thcentury CE, a chronology obtained from human bone collagen extracted from the mortuary cave of Guayadeque (Alberto-Barroso et al., 2019 Velasco-Vázquez et al., 2020). The latter were known to be mainly pastoralist communities living inland and lacking long-distance seafaring knowledge. The second hypothesis argues for a later occupation of the archipelago mainly initiated by Roman seafarers who could have brought tribal peoples of northern Morocco, known as Berber tribes (Onrubia-Pintado, 1992 Velasco-Vázquez, 2015 Morales-Mateos et al., 2017 Alberto-Barroso et al., 2019 Fregel et al., 2019 Velasco-Vázquez et al., 2020). Leonardo Torriano’s map of the Canary Islands in the late sixteenth century (source: Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra, catalogue number Ms. BCE (Atoche-Peña, 2011 Atoche-Peña and Ramírez-Rodríguez, 2017a). The oldest chronologies come from the site of Buenavista in Lanzarote, which brings human settlement as far back as 960 cal. The oldest evidence of Phoenician presence in west Africa comes from a glass bead found at the site of Nin-Bèrè 3, in Mali, dated between 7 th – 5 th century BC (Truffa Giachet et al., 2019). From Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) in his Naturalis Historia, as well as from recent discoveries in the islet of Lobos (Arco-Aguilar et al., 2016 Atoche-Peña and Ramírez-Rodríguez, 2017), it has been widely acknowledged that the islands were once visited and settled by the Roman Empire. Roman cities such as Lixus and Volibus – modern Moroccan cities of Larache and nearby Meknes – were discovered to be original Phoenician settlements strategically located near the northwest African coast highly exploited by these merchants (López-Pardo and Mederos-Martín, 2000, 2008 Mederos-Martín and Escribano-Cobo, 2008). Nearby evidence from these ancient seafarers comes from the well-documented factory of the island of Mogador, where Stramonita haemasatoma was exploited to obtain the lustrous red dye, a Phoenician trademark (López-Pardo and Mederos-Martín, 2000 Mederos-Martín and Escribano-Cobo, 2002 Wagner, 2008). One possible explanation considers the settlement of the archipelago started by Phoenician merchants exploring the northwest coasts of Africa (Atoch-Peña, 2003, 2011 González-Antón and Arco-Aguilar, 2007 González-Antón and Arco-Aguilar, 2009). Two main hypotheses are currently being discussed. The peopling of the Canary Islands is still a matter of debate in archaeology. The Maritime Archaeology of the Canary Islands Paloma Cuello del Pozo Santa Cruz: Museo Naval del Barco de la Virgen.
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