130 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
According to British researcher Chris Ogilvie-Herald, “Even in the moun-
tains of Tibet there survives a tradition of a cataclysm that flooded the highlands,
and comets that caused great upheavals.”
(See Mu)Guanches
Native inhabitants of the Canary Islands. “Guanche” is a contraction of
Guanchinerfe (“Child of Tenerife”) the name of the largest of the islands. They
were discovered by Portuguese explorers in the mid-15th century, but subsequently
exterminated by the Spaniards through wars and disease. A few, far from pure-
blooded Guanches may still survive, but their lineage is doubtful. Although their
estimated population of 200,000 resided in most of the Canary Islands, they were
concentrated on Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Las Palmas, and
Lanzarote. Tall, fair-haired, and light-eyed, the Guanches were a white race some
modern investigators believe were the last examples of Cro-Magnon man.
The Guanches raised massive, finely crafted step pyramids not unlike those
in Egypt and Mesoamerica. Many of these structures were built of the native
volcanic tufa, pumice, and lava stone—the same materials Plato described as the
construction components of buildings in Atlantis. The Guanches’ chief deity was
Atlas, known to them as “Ater.” Variants of the name reflect his attributes by
which he was known in Greece: Ataman, “Upholder of the Sky”; Atara, “Holy
Mountain,” etc. Approximately 25 percent of Guanche personal names began
with “At.” The Guanches told the Portuguese their islands were anciently part of
a larger homeland engulfed by the sea, a cataclysm their forefathers survived by
climbing to the top of Mount Teide, Tenerife’s great volcano, the highest peak in
Europe. Guanche oral tradition of this catastrophe concluded with the words,
Janega qyayoch, archimenceu no haya dir hando sahec chungra petut—“The power-
ful Father of the Fatherland died and left the natives orphans.”
The Atlantis story was preserved at the Canary Islands perhaps in far greater
detail than even Plato’s account before the imposition of Christianity, which
affected Guanche culture like a blight. Perhaps the most revealing of all surviving
material connecting the Canary Islanders to Atlantis is found in the Tois
Aethiopikes by Marcellus. In 45 A.D., he recorded that “the inhabitants of the
Atlantic island of Poseidon preserve a tradition handed down to them by their
ancestors of the existence of an Atlantic island of immense size of not less than
a thousand stadia [about 115 miles], which had really existed in those seas, and
which, during a long period of time, governed all the islands of the Atlantic
Ocean.” Pliny the Elder seconded Marcellus, writing that the Guanches were in
fact the direct descendants of the disaster that sank Atlantis. Proclus reported
that they still told the story of Atlantis in his day, circa 410 A.D.
Atlantis in the Canary Islands does not end with these ancient sources. Like
the Atlanteans in Plato’s account, the Guanches met for prayer by forming a circle
around a sacred pillar with arms raised and palms open in the Egyptian manner.