Home-grown archaeologists reveal how people overcame the challenges of life on the Canary Islands 1800 years ago
More than 1000 years ago, a young man stood on the northern shore of the island now known as El Hierro. Across the wave-swept Atlantic Ocean, he could see the silhouettes of other islands, a volcanic peak on one soaring toward the clouds only 90 kilometers away. Yet, for him, those islands were as unreachable as the Moon.
By applying the latest archaeological tools to this trove of material, Santana and other home-grown archaeologists are unearthing their stories, shedding light on puzzles that have mystified archaeologists since the 19th century.
Instead, Mitchell suggests the Amazigh settlers took to the sea to escape conflicts sparked by a drying climate or the Roman expansion. Some islands might have seemed like an oasis compared with the desert from which those settlers came. “People might think going over the Atlantic to get here, ‘This is quite worth it. We’ve never seen so many trees,’” Mitchell says.
The granaries and their variety of foods also suggest that Gran Canaria, where central highlands capture up to 1 meter a year of rainfall compared with 10 to 20 centimeters elsewhere, was one of the most productive islands in the archipelago. Even today, the mesa topping the cliff above the granary “is the best place for cultivating barley in this area,” Morales says.
The apparent ninth century crisis coincides with the onset of warmer than average global temperatures, in a time known as the Medieval Warm Period. Fregel wonders whether the warmth might have brought climate change and famine. But ancient DNA from 34 people on more populous Tenerife and Gran Canaria shows no signs of a population collapse.
Geneticist Rosa Fregel collects a sample from the remains of a woman who lived on Gran Canaria between 600 and 900 C.E.It’s easy to begin to see the lives of ancient Canarians as ones of deprivation. But Morales cautions against applying modern sentiments to a different time and place, or to viewing the Indigenous people as trapped. “I don’t agree with this view. I imagine the lives of those people as profoundly linked to the natural world, and especially to the plants,” he says.
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