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The Canary Islands have been known since antiquity. Until the Spanish colonization between 1402 and 1496, the Canaries were populated by an indigenous population called the Guanches, whose origin is still the subject of discussion among historians and linguists. The islands were visited by the Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Carthaginians. According to the 1st century AD Roman author and philosopher Pliny the Elder, the archipelago was found to be uninhabited when visited by the Carthaginians under Hanno the Navigator in 5th century BC, but that they saw ruins of great buildings. This story may suggest that the islands were inhabited by other peoples prior to the Guanches. At the time of European engagement, the Canary Islands were inhabited by a variety of indigenous communities. The pre-colonial population of the Canaries is generically referred to as Guanches, although, strictly speaking, Guanches were originally the inhabitants of Tenerife. According to the chronicles, the inhabitants of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote were referred to as ''Maxos'', Gran Canaria was inhabited by the ''Canarii'', El Hierro by the ''Bimbaches'', La Palma by the ''Auaritas'' and La Gomera by the ''Gomeros''. Evidence does seem to suggest that inter-insular interaction was relatively low and each island was populated by its own distinct socio-cultural groups who lived in relative isolation separated from each other. ==Historical background== The origins of the Canarian indigenous people – the Guanches – remain the subject of debate. Numerous proposed theories have achieved varying degrees of acceptance. Various Mediterranean civilizations in antiquity knew of the islands' existence and established contact with them. Visitors included Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians. According to Pliny the Elder, an expedition of Mauretanians sent by King Juba II (d. 23 CE) to the archipelago visited the islands, finding them uninhabited, but noting ruins of great buildings.〔 When King Juba, the Roman protegé, dispatched a contingent to re-open the dye production facility at Mogador (historical name of Essaouira, Morocco) in the early 1st century,〔(C.Michael Hogan, ''Chellah'', The Megalithic Portal, ed. Andy Burnham )〕 Juba's naval force was subsequently sent on an exploration of the Canary Islands, using Mogador as their mission base. The peak of Teide on Tenerife can be seen on clear days from the African coast. The Carthaginian captain Hanno the Navigator may have visited the islands during his voyage of exploration along the African coast. The Phoenicians may have arrived seeking the precious red dye extracted from the orchil - if the Canaries represent Pliny the Elder's ''Purple Isles'' or the Hesperides of legend. Although no evidence has survived of any permanent Roman settlements, in 1964 Roman amphorae were discovered in waters off Lanzarote. Discoveries made in the 1990s have demonstrated in more definite detail that the Romans traded with the indigenous inhabitants. Excavations of a settlement at El Bebedero on Lanzarote, made by a team under Pablo Atoche Peña of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Juan Ángel Paz Peralta of the University of Zaragoza, yielded about a hundred Roman potsherds, nine pieces of metal and one piece of glass at the site, in strata dated between the 1st and 4th centuries. Analysis of the clay indicated origins in Campania, Hispania Baetica and the province of Africa (modern Tunisia). The Romans named each of the islands: ''Ninguaria'' or ''Nivaria'' (Tenerife), ''Canaria'' (Gran Canaria), ''Pluvialia'' or ''Invale'' (Lanzarote), ''Ombrion'' (La Palma), ''Planasia'' (Fuerteventura), ''Iunonia'' or ''Junonia'' (El Hierro) and ''Capraria'' (La Gomera). During the Middle Ages Arabs visited the islands. For example, the Muslim navigator Ibn Farrukh, from Umayyad Granada, allegedly landed in "Gando" (Gran Canaria) in February 999, visiting a king named Guanarigato. From the 14th century onward, sailors from Mallorca, Portugal and Genoa made numerous visits. Lancelotto Malocello settled on the island of Lanzarote in 1312. The Mayorcans established a mission with a bishop that lasted from 1350 to 1400. It is from this mission that the various paintings and statues of the Virgin Mary that are currently venerated in the island were preserved. European disembarkations of Genovese, Castilian and Portuguese missionaries and pirates on Canarian shores became relatively common and the prehispanic populations experienced a long and ongoing process of Westernisation before formal colonization took place. A variety of theories regarding the origins of pre-colonial Canarians explain them by the hypothesis of a more recent immigration. Some scholars (mainly from the University of La Laguna, in Tenerife) defend the theory that the Canarian populations are Punic-Phoenician in origin. Professor D. Juan Álvarez Delgado, on the other hand, argued that the Canaries remained uninhabited until 100 BCE, when Greek and Roman sailors began to explore the area. In the second half of the 1st century BCE, King Juba II of Numidia abandoned North African prisoners on the islands, who eventually became the pre-Hispanic Canarians. If the first inhabitants were abandoned prisoners, this explains, according to Álvarez Delgado, their lack of navigational acumen. Genetic analysis using mitochondrial DNA points to the Moroccan Berbers as the African population most closely related to the Guanches. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Canary Islands in pre-colonial times」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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