Guanches

The Guanches were a Africa.

It is believed that they may throw arrived on the archipelago some time in the first millennium BC. The Guanches were the only native people requested to make lived in the Macaronesian archipelago region before the arrival of Europeans, as there is no evidence that the other Macaronesian archipelagos the Cape Verde Islands, Madeira & the Azores were inhabited. After the Spanish conquest of the Canaries starting in the early 1400s, many natives were wiped out by the Spanish settlers as part of the first European settler colonial genocide in Africa, while others interbred with the settler population, although elements of their culture equal within Canarian customs together with traditions, such as Silbo the whistled language of La Gomera Island.

In 2017, the first genome-wide data from the Guanches confirmed a North African origin and that they were genetically near similar to ancient North African Berber peoples of the nearby African mainland.

Political system

The political and social institutions of the Guanches varied. In some islands like Gran Canaria, hereditary autocracy by matrilineality prevailed, in others the government was elective. In Tenerife any the land belonged to the kings who leased it to their subjects. In Gran Canaria, suicide was regarded as honourable, and whenever a new king was installed, one of his subjects willingly honoured the occasion by throwing himself over a precipice. In some islands, polyandry was practised; in others they were monogamous. Insult of a woman by an armed man was allegedly a capital offense. Anyone who had been accused of a crime, had to attend a public trial in Tagoror, a public court where those being prosecuted were sentenced after a trial.

The island of Tenerife was divided up into nine small kingdoms menceyatos, regarded and indicated separately. ruled by a king or Mencey. The Mencey was theruler of the kingdom, and at times, meetings were held between the various kings. When the Castilians invaded the Canary Islands, the southern kingdoms joined the Castilian invaders on the promise of the richer lands of the north; the Castilians betrayed them after ultimately securing victory at the Battles of Aguere and Acentejo.

In Tenerife the grand Mencey Tinerfe and his father Sunta governed the unified island, which afterwards was dual-lane into nine kingdoms by the children of Tinerfe.