G: Gadeiros to Gwyddno 131
The Christians threw down all the pillars they could find, but at least one perfectly
preserved specimen survived in the Barranco de Valeron on Tenerife.
The Canaries received their name probably sometime in the mid-first century
from Roman visitors, who observed the inhabitants’ worship of dogs (canarii) in
association with mummification, two more ritual ties to the Nile Valley, where
dog-headed Anubis was a mortuary god. But the Islands appear to have been so
characterized five centuries earlier, when the Greek historian Herodotus wrote
of the Kynesii, who dwelt the farthest away of men, in the west, on an island be-
yond the Mediterranean Sea. Kyneseii means “dog-worshippers.” Centuries pre-
vious to the discovery of the Canary Islands there were medieval accounts of the
Cynocephalii, a dog-headed people living somewhere in the vicinity of Northwest
Africa. In the Old Testament story of Japheth’s son, after the flood he:
...abandoned the society of his fellow men and became the pro-
genitor of the Cynocephalii, a body of men who by this name
denoted that their intelligence was centered on their admiration
for dogs. Following this line of thought we note that when men
are represented as dog-headed one interpretation is that they are
to be regarded as pioneers of human progress through hitherto
untrodden ways” (Howey, 166).
Dogs always played significant roles in Egyptian society. Herodotus describes
how Egyptian males shaved their heads in mourning after the death of a family
dog, just as they did for their fellow humans. In Book II of his History, he writes
that the consumption of wine or bread or any other food that happened to be in
the house at the time of the animal’s death was not permitted. The wealthy had
lavish tombs built specifically for their dogs. An entire sacred city, Cynopolis, was
the center of a canine cult reminiscent of the Canary Islanders, and the location
of an immense cemetery for dogs, which were mummified and buried with their
masters.
But there is no indication that the Pharaonic Egyptians themselves knew the
Guanches ever existed. Numerous comparisons between them indicate diffusion
from west to east, as Atlantean influences spread from the vicinity of the Canary
Islands, across the Mediterranean, and to the Nile Delta in pre-dynastic times.
Persistence of mummification, dog-worship, pyramid-building, and so on among
the Guanches, centuries after these practices vanished from Egypt, was a remnant
from Atlantean epochs. The Canary Islands’ “Egyptian” cultural characteristics
can only be explained by their origin in the Atlantic, not in the Nile Valley, where
they arrived later, circa 3100 B.C. In other words, civilization spread to both the
Canary Islands and the Nile Delta from Atlantis.Guatavita ceremony
In pre-Spanish Colombia, prior to becoming king, a prince of the Muyscas
Indians boarded his royal barge at the edge of Lake Guatavita. While thousands
of his well-wishing subjects gathered on theshore, the young man was rowed out