MUSEO CANARIO  LAS PALMAS

In this excellent museum, dedicated to the pre-history of Gran Canaria, we get a glimpse of the lives of the neolithic people who inhabited the island at the time of Spanish conquest. They were of proto-Berber, Cro-Magnon and Mediterranean stock, many of them tall and fair-haired. Exhibits show that they lived in caves, as well as stone houses. They kept livestock and grew cereal; they ground grain with millstones and used pestles and mortars. They mummified their dead see the long gallery of skulls, skeletons and mummies wrapped in cloth of junco (cloth made of reeds) and goatskin.

They were expert at leather and cane work and made fine pottery, without the benefit of the wheel. Although they had no written language, they left many examples of rock engravings depicting humans, animals and geometric symbols. The famous Painted Cave of Galdar, closed to the public during conservation work, is reproduced in this museum. The islanders were ruled by kings, or guanartemes, practised sports such as wrestling and cross stick fighting (still popular among modern Canarios), and, according to contemporary accounts, they loved music and dancing.

The first Europeans described the inhabitants as generous, simple and trusting. However, when it became clear that their visitors, armed with superior weapons (the Guanches had no knowledge of metal and had never seen a horse), were intent on invading and enslaving them, they resisted them with courage and skill. Indeed they kept up this resistance for most of the 15th century.