The Mysterious origin of the Guanches

From: http://www.atlan.org/articles/guanches/

The present article should be read in conection with the one entitled "Guanche Language Derived From Dravida?", which also figures in the present Homepage. Both are an abridged version of a far vaster work of ours on the Guanche problem.

The Guanches are the mysterious natives of the Canary Islands. They were just about exterminated by the Spaniards when these invaded the archipelago at the turn of the 15th century. Tall, blond and blue-eyed, the Guanches have long intrigued the anthropologists, for blond natives are rarity. According to the reliable Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Guanches "are thought to have been of Cro-Magnon origin... and had a brown complexion, blue or gray eyes, and blondish hair" (See Fig. 1).

Indeed, the Guanches are deemed to be related to the Berbers of neighboring Morroco, who are, likewise, tall, blond and blue-eyed when unmixed with the Arab majority. Other specialists, however, believe that the Guanches are related to the Celts of Western Europe, the early realm of these races. No matter what, the Guanches represent a unique opportunity of studying the early peoples of this region so intimately connected with Atlantis and the Garden of the Hesperides.

Isolated in their islands, the Guanches were prevented, until the advent of the Spanish, from sexually mingling with other races. So, they preserved their pristine Cro-Magnon genetic traits in a more or less pure fashion until that date. But, as we said, the Guanches were massacred by the Spaniards, and their remainder mingled heavily with the invaders, so that they essentially inexist today. But the blond, blue-eyed, tall stock has been preserved in part, and can still be seen in many individuals. As is known, blond traits are dominated by dark ones, and tend to disappear from the population. But they survive unseen, and may return in certain individuals called "recessives", who combine the proper genes.

Furthermore, the Guanches mummified their dead, and this material can be studied by the researchers, particularly concerning traits such as blood type and racial characteristics. This strange mode of disposing of the dead — which the Guanches shared with the Polynesians, the Egyptians and the Mayas — has been mooted out by several authorities as indicating a close affinity among these distant nations. The Guanches also left some sort of alphabetic inscriptions which have yet to be studied, along with their pottery and peculiar ruins. All in all, the archaeology of this most remarkable people is far from satisfactorily researched.

Many researchers have pointed out the resemblance of the Guanche natives with the Cro-Magnons and, particularly, with Cro-Magnoid types of regions such as those of Muges (Portugal) dating from the Mesolithic (c. 8,000 BC). Similar groups have been noted and studied Portugal, Spain, France, England, Sweden and Northwest Africa, precisely the realm of the Celto-Germanic and the Berber races.

Are the Canaries the Remains of Sunken Atlantis?
Many Atlantologists have proposed that the Canary Islands are the remainder of a sunken Atlantis, being the lofty volcanic peaks left behind when the lost continent foundered. However, the Canary islands rise directly from the deep ocean floor, from a depth of some 3,000 meters below the surface. Indeed, they are a part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, having been formed by submarine volcanoes at the end of the Tertiary Age (circa 2.5 million years ago).Their lavas consist of basalts and trachytes, the typical material of submarine, non-explosive volcanism typical of seabottoms.

Due to both their age and their origin, the Canarian volcanoes can hardly be invoked to account for the conflagration that wiped Atlantis off the map. Instead, this type of basaltic, submarine volcanism is nowadays perfectly well understood geologically speaking. Such volcanoes result from the upwelling magma that forms the Continental Plates, according to the theory of Plate Tectonics, and are a feature of all oceanic regions of the world. Hence, the claims made by certain Atlantologists such as P. Termier, I. Donnelly, C. Berlitz and many others that the Canaries or the Azores, or the Madeiras are the remains of sunken Atlantis do not hold water at all.

Are the Guanches Atlantean Relicts?
As we said above, though we can be certain that the Canaries, along with the other neighboring Atlantic islands, are not the residues of a sunken continent that foundered in the region, we have yet to explain the mysterious origin of the Guanches. However, where smoke is, there is usually fire, and we cannot simply ignore the recurrent legends that link this people to Atlantis.

But if they are not Atlanteans left behind when their continent sunk, the only possible explanation for the mysterious origin of the Guanches is that they primordially came from somewhere else. But, whence? Certainly not from neighboring Africa, the realm of the Black Man. No serious anthropologist has ever maintained that the blond Aryans originated in Africa itself. The standing proposals for the origin of the Berbers and, possibly, the Guanches themselves, are that they came from Arabia, after crossing the Sahara desert.

But, to start with, no one is sure that the Arabs or, even less, the Aryans, originated in Arabia or Palestine, and their own ethiological legends affirm that they came from beyond the Indian Ocean. Moreover, the Sahara desert poses a formidable barrier ever since the end of the Pleistocene, and it is highly unlikely that it could be crossed by hordes of migrants, unstocked with the food and water required for the task.

The Guanches were held in perfect isolation from Europe and other Old World civilizations until they were discovered by the Portuguese and Spanish at the end of the 15th century. This separation dates from prehistoric times that far predate the ones of Plato and Herodotus, and even those of Homer and Hesiod. So, if Guanche legends indeed relate to Atlantis and its doom, we can be certain that the golden realm was no idle invention of Plato or other Greeks, but originated in a very ancient tradition, dating from the dawn of mankind. This is precisely what we aim to prove in the present work on the origin of the Guanches.

We start by reviewing the ancient traditions linking the Canaries to the Garden of the Hesperides and the Islands of the Blest, and progress into the modern proposals purporting to show that the Canaries and the other neighboring islands are the remains of sunken Atlantis. Finally, we attempt showing their rather direct relationship between the Canaries, Atlantis and the Garden of Eden, the legendary site of the origin of Mankind.

If our conclusions indeed prove to be right and survive the wellcome attack of the critics, the whole of human prehistory will have to undergo a major revision. Hence, the importance of inquiring on the origin of the Guanches and their possible connection with Atlantis. The mysterious Guanches provide the key to the riddles that surround the origin of Mankind, and are the "missing link" connecting the Mediterranean and other neighboring civilizations to the Far Orient and the Indies, the true site of the Garden of the Hesperides. This garden, also known as that of Eden, is the place where Mankind and Civilization indeed developed, according to the holy traditions of many nations, and not only that of the Bible.

Evening Isles Fantastical
Classical writers often mention legendary islands in the Atlantic Ocean in a way that closely evokes the legends of Atlantis. Homer mentions islands like Phaeacia, Scheria and Ogygia. The Argonautica, deemed to be prior to Homer's Odyssey, also speaks of legendary oceanic islands such as Aiaia, Thrinacia and Colchis. More than just delightful novels, these ancient sagas were indeed Sacred History, and were believed to derive from actual fact. The Greco-Roman traditions concerning the fabulous oceanic islands and their golden realms apparently derive from the far earlier ones such as the Epic of Gilgamesh of the Sumero-Babylonians or the Ramayana and the Mahabharata of the Hindus.

Many other classical authors also mention such fantastic islands of the ocean. This ocean the Greeks, ignorant of the other oceans, very naturally identified with what we nowadays call by the name of Atlantic Ocean, that is, "the Ocean of the Atlanteans". But when we read the ancient traditions closer, we notice that the fabulous islands of the Atlanteans were always placed "at the confines of the earth".

Moreover, the ocean in question is invariably described as "winy red" and is placed towards dawn and Orient. In other words, the ocean in question is the Indian Ocean, which the ancients called Erythraean, that is, "Red One". And Atlantis is the same as the Ultima Thule of the ancients, this being the name they gave to the "confines of the earth" which lay towards the Orient, in the Eastern limits of their world, and where they also placed the Pillars of Atlas, the twin and counterpart of the western Pillars of Hercules, in Gibraltar.

The Phoenicians and the Secret Route to the Indies.
The traditions concerning the legendary Atlantic Islands (or, rather, "Islands of the Atlanteans") were probably transferred from the Orient to the Occident by the ancient navigants and explorers such as the Phoenicians, the Minoan Cretans and the Etruscans. The Greeks had some knowledge of the ancient peripluses of the Phoenicians, the detailed accounts of the naval routes to such mysterious islands so often equated to the ones of Paradise and Atlantis.

In the desire to preserve the lucrative monopoly of their maritime trade with the Indies, the Phoenicians and their partners disguised their verbal maps under a veil of confusion intended to avert the possible competitors towards the wrong places and directions. It suffices to read such accounts, preserved in the writings of authors such as Avienus, Hanno, and Pytheas of Marseilles to observe the inextricable confusions that becloud the real distances, names and directions.

The same thing happens with the writers that speak of the Atlantic Islands in mythical terms. The accounts of authorities such as Herodotus, Plato, Diodorus, Theopompos and many others are no different from the accounts of the Odyssey and the Argonautica. They are full of allegories, metaphors, paradoxes and even downright lies that have led the experts to despair from ever making any sense out of them.

Such relates tell of seas riddled with clashing rocks, seamonsters and thorny sargassoes that dragged down the ships they caught, or in giant maelstroms and muddy shoals and doldrums that prevented the mariners from ever escaping death. They also tell of one-eyed giants and microscopic dwarfs, of strap-footed Titans and goat-footed satyrs, of terrible cannibals and of sorceress of all kinds. But some of these accounts were far more realistic and matter-of fact, and plainly alluded to real islands such as the Canaries and the Madeiras and, far more likely, to the Indonesian islands or even the Americas beyond.

Midas and the Satyr Silenus
The ancients believed, as did Plato and Herodotus along with the Greek geographers that a circular ocean — the one they called "Outer Ocean" or "Atlantic Ocean", and which included what we now call the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans— surrounded the world then known, which consisted of Eurasia and Africa. The historian Theopompos, a contemporary of Plato, relates a conversation between the legendary King Midas of Phrygia and the very wise satyr Silenus.

The satyr, entrapped and rendered drunk by Midas, told him of an Outer Continent (the Americas?) that outlay the ocean and which was inhabited by a people twice the size and twice as long-lived as the ordinary mortals. One part of their continent was permanently enwrapped by a red mist and was drained by two rivers, the River of Pleasure and the River of Grief. Once, these giants crossed the ocean intending to conquer the ancient world. But once they saw the misery of our world, they realized that it was useless to pursue their plan, and retired to their world in disgust.

The story of Theopompos is extremely interesting, for it embodies the essential elements of the myth of Atlantis. To start with, the attempted invasion of the giants closely evokes the similar one undertaken by Plato's Atlanteans. Plato too alludes to the Outer Continent, the Epeira Ges that delimited the Ocean on all sides, and which can only be the Americas. The Atlantean empire was indeed worldwide, and certainly encompassed the Americas, whose name comes not from a hypothetical Amerigo Vespucci, but far more probably relates to that of the Celtic Armorica.1

In the version of Theopompos, the Atlanteans are confusedly equated with the Long-lived Ethiopians of Homer, Herodotus and others. The Long-lived Ethiopians, often described as tall, blond, blue-eyed giants of twice normal size, are a recurrent feature of the ancient Greek legends. More realistic historians such as Pliny and Solinus correctly place these blessed giants in the islands of Taprobane, that is, in the Indonesian islands. But others, perhaps ignoring the true meaning of the antique traditions, place the Islands of the Blest and their beautiful, saintly giants, in the Canaries and the Madeiras where we also encounter them in reality.

The Mirror of Illusion (Maya)
As we shall see further below, these ancient "confusions" were planned, and the blue-eyed "Ethiopians" of the Canaries and Mauritania were planted there as a virtual replica or "mirror image" of the real ones, the fortunate Ethiopians of Trapobane. Indeed the metaphor of the "mirror image" of Atlantis created by the Ethiopians of the Canary Islands and of the Berber coast of Mauritania is not ours, but figures in many ancient symbols and traditions. This tradition concerns the Mirror of Illusion, the characteristic attribute of deceptive goddesses such as the Indian Mayâ ("Illusion") and the Greco-Roman Venus.

The motif of the Mirror of Illusion occurs even in the Americas and, particularly among the Gnostics such as the Cathars and others. The Phoenicians indeed held that the Pillars of Hercules of Gibraltar were a "mirror image" of those located in the Orient, as some of their coins specifically illustrate. Interestingly enough, Maya (the male avatar of the Mayâ) is the Great Architect, the luciferine deity of the Gnostics and the enlightened civilizer of humanity. Maya (masculine of Mayâ) is also the builder of legendary Lanka, the city and capital of the worldwide empire that was the actual archetype of Atlantis. In Fig. 2, we show two Phoenician coins illustrating the true Pillars of Hercules in the Far East, and their illusory reflection in Gibraltar.

As we shall see further below, Maya, the Supreme Smith of the Hindus, had his Guanche counterpart in Guayota, the Supreme God of the Guanches, and in Lug, their Celtic counterpart. Such coincidences can hardly be random. So, the only possible explanation lies in diffusion through direct contact among the civilizations in question, that is, those of the Guanches, the Celts and the Indonesian Aryans, known to the ancients as the Pious Ethiopians of Taprobane.

The Pillars of Hercules of Gibraltar and the Garden of the Hesperides of the Canaries in the Atlantic Ocean are an illusion or mirage, a mirror image of the true Islands of the Blest, in Indonesia. The Atlantic Atlantis, variously placed in the Canaries, the Azores, Tartessos (Spain), Mauritania (Morocco), or Crete is a sheer illusion created by the clever ancients in order to distract and to disillusion the inquisitive profanes of ever finding the Lost Continent and the true site of Paradise. So are the ones of the Syrtis (Libya), the Bosphorus, the Armorican coasts of Brittany, the Irish Isles, and so on.

The Ancient Conspiracy
The reader may wonder what proof do we have to substantiate our of a conspiracy of the ancients to hide the whereabouts of Atlantis-Eden? The ancients well knew the true site of Eden or, more exactly, of the ancestral Paradise whence we all came from, and which was the site where Mankind and Civilization first started. And they also knew that this paradisial region was destroyed by the Flood at precisely the date given by Plato, that of 11,600 years ago.

But they could not tell its true location, for this was the matter of the secret of the ancient Mysteries, and this divulgation was considered a grievous crime of profanation, often punished with death, as in the case of Socrates and, possibly of Plato himself. So, the true location of Paradise was only dealt in a sort of coded language based on allegories, riddles and puns that were intelligible only to the initiated in those secrets.

Well, the evidence we gave above is just a small sample of several hundreds of compelling evidences like the ones we present below and elsewhere. Our strongest evidences for Atlantis and its true location in the Far East are both geological and anthropological. They include racial characteristics, blood types, myths, traditions, customs, techniques, artistic motifs and, above all, the linguistic, cultural and religious affinities. The last two are just about the strongest and most unequivocal of all links between different nations derived from a single stock.

In an article parallel to this one we present the philological comparison of the Guanche language to Dravida, the sacred, pristine language of the Dravidian populations of India. As can be seen in that article, the two languages, though isolated from each other by untold millennia, are remarkably similar both in phonetics and in grammar. No serious linguist will idly dismiss the cogent parallels we present there, particularly as the linguistic affiliation of the Guanche tongue is an unsolved riddle so far.

For reasons of space and scope, these two articles are kept concise and non-technical. But even then, we believe that the evidence presented is compelling enough to convince all that take the trouble to follow them in detail. Moreover, as we just said, there are simply no viable alternative theories that explain the riddle of Guanche origins in a satisfactory way. In our view — which we argue in detail here and elsewhere — this people formerly lived in Indonesia or, more exactly, in the now sunken portion of it which now forms the South China Sea. When their land sunk away, at the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, they were forced out by the cataclysm, and moved to the Canaries, possibly in the wake of other seafaring nations such as the proto-Phoenicians and proto-Cretans.

The Twin Ethiopias of Homer and Others
From earliest times — as instanced in Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus and elsewhere — the Greeks spoke of two Ethiopias placed at the two opposite ends of the world. One corresponded to the region near Gibraltar we are presently discussing, and the other one was located beyond the Ocean (Indian), in Taprobane (Indonesia). The idea of "burnt faces" (aethi-opes) connected with the Ethiopia is not indeed an allusion to the dark coloration of this people, but to the fact that they were expelled from their homeland as the result of the fiery cataclysm that sunk Atlantis away. This catastrophe was indeed caused by the giant volcanic conflagration of Mt. Atlas, which mythically "charred" their physiognomies. In reality, this darkening was the result of the admixture with the darker neighboring nations of Indonesia, precisely as reported by Plato and others.

Emigrating from the charred remains of their sunken continent — the formerly paradisial Land of the Dead that would later become the Islands of the Blest — the Canarians (and other Atlantean nations as well) moved to the opposite side of the world, where they would attempt to rebuild their lost Paradise. Hence, the twin Ethiopias of Homer and others, and the duplicity of Pillars of Hercules, of Mt. Atlases, of Gardens of Hesperia, and so on.

Even the Ocean that encircled the earth with its ring was likewise parted into two complementary moieties ascribed to the omnipresent Atlanteans. More exactly, it was parted into two parts, one which we now call Atlantic Ocean, as did the ancients, and an eastern half that had its name changed from Atlantic Ocean into Indian (or Erythraean) Ocean. This name, which means "red" in Greek, is the mystic name of the Atlantean peoples such as the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and even the Guanches themselves. Indeed, the "Reds" are the Chams or Chamites of the Bible, a name not unconnected with the red races just mentioned and with that of the Guanches as well.2

The Atlantis of the Orient
Many authoritative writers of antiquity place Mt. Atlas and the Atlanteans, along with the Garden of the Hesperides in the Far Occident, in the region of Mauritania and the Canaries. But no lesser authorities than Hesiod and Eurypides, among many others, place Atlas and his Pillar of Heaven in the Far Orient, at the extremities of the world and of the day, where we also find the other legendary islands associated with Atlantis and its foundering.

The Hesperides (or Atlantides) were the seven daughters and lovers of Atlas. Atlas, the Pillar of Heaven, was the personification of Mt. Atlas, just as his seven beloved daughters were the ones of the Seven Atlantic Islands that figure in many traditions, and which are no other than the ones of Indonesia. It is only natural that the giant would want to place his girls right next to the place where he stayed up the heavens, for carnal reasons, if not prompted by fatherly love. Hence, the Garden of the Hesperides of the Far Occident in an illusion not unlike the "Mt. Atlas" of Mauritania or its Canarian replica, the Teyde (or Teide) volcano.

The Mt. Atlas of Mauritania, the one we know under that name, is not indeed a volcano, and, hence, cannot at all explain the traditions concerning the conflagrative destruction of Atlantis and the fall of the former heaven when its Holy Mountain collapsed. If Mt. Atlas indeed collapsed — as volcanoes are wont to do after gigantic explosions — and if Atlantis sunk along with its environing lands, how are we to expect to find its mountain unscathed, as is the case of Mt. Teyde in the Canaries, and of Mt. Atlas, its Mauritanian counterpart.

Theopompos' Atlanteans and the Mysterious Hanebut
It is time to return to Theopompos and his cryptic Atlanteans. The "red mist" that beclouded the Meropean continent is another traditional feature that we systematically encounter in the legends concerning such mysterious regions. Ultimately, the dark "mist" is the smoke cloud that resulted from the volcanic cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis and which, indeed, blocked away sunlight, obscuring the entire region for a large time.

This darkening of the sun is a sad reality, well known to the inhabitants of the region of Indonesia, volcanically the most active in the whole world. In Hindu myths, the city associated with the cataclysmic explosion and the smoke cover is called Dhumadi. This name means "Covered by Smoke", in Sanskrit. This etym (or etymon or etymology) closely recalls the legend of Sodom and Gomorra, likewise covered by a pillar of smoke "that rose up to the very skies".

Indeed, Dhumadi was the archetype of Atlantis and, as we explain elsewhere, of Sodom and Gomorra and other such cities destroyed by a volcanic conflagration. In Egypt we encounter the same tradition under the name of the mysterious Hanebut. The name means, in Egyptian, "the Dwellers of the Misty Regions".

The Hanebut were a real people, and their region was frequently visited by the Egyptians, who traded with them across the ocean. As the Egyptians only sailed the Indian Ocean, it is clear that the region in question lay beyond that ocean, in the region of Indonesia. It was there that the mysterious country of the nebulous Cimmerians was located, as well as the Pillars of Hercules and, more exactly, those of Atlas as well. Plato places Atlantis just in front of the Pillars of Hercules. So do many other ancient authors, disguising its true identity under names such as Cimmeria, Hades, Taprobane, Cassia, Punt and Hanebut.

The Celts and the Elusive Cimmerians
In Homer and others, such peoples that lived in perpetual, smoky darkness, were called Cimmerians. The Cimmerians or their equivalents are a recurrent feature of all traditions. The Germans and the Celts also spoke of such a misty region, which they called by the name of Nefelheim, "the Abode of Mist".

The Nephilim — the fallen Titans or Giants of the Bible, whose sin with the Daughters of Men led to the cataclysm of the Flood — in all probability derive their name from a radix neph meaning "nebula", "mist", as in the Greek nephele, the German nefel, the Sanskrit nabha, the Dravida nep, etc. Even in Egyptian we encounter the radix in the name of the Hanebut (or Hau-nebhu-t).

Homer (Od. X:508; XI:14) tells how the Cimmerians lived "enshrouded in mist and perpetual darkness which the sun never pierces". He places their region in Hades, beyond the Ocean, next to Mt. Erebus. Erebus is the very entrance to Hell, the terrible chasm left behind when Mt. Atlas foundered underseas, becoming a giant volcanic caldera.

The Celts are the Cimmerians of Taprobane (Sumatra)
The Cimmerians are deemed to be the ancestors of the Celts and the Scythians, two other races of blond, blue-eyed, gigantic Ethiopians. They are identified with the Cymry or Cimbri, a Germanic tribe which invaded Rome and almost defeated the empire at about 100 BC. The Cimmerians were deemed to have come from the Palus Maeotis, a legendary region often connected with the sinking of Atlantis (palus = "marshes", in Latin).

One of the triads of the Celtic Mabinogion tells how:

"Hu Gadarn originally came with the tribe of the Cymry to the Britannic Isles. They came from the Country of Summer, which is called Defrobani... They crossed the Misty Ocean (Tawch) and arrived in the Britannic Isles and Armorica, where they settled."

Here is direct evidence that the Cimmerian Celts (Cymry) indeed came from Taprobane (Sumatra), here misspelt as Defrobani. The Country of Summer (Gwlad or Haf) can only be situated at the Equator and can hardly be identified with the Hyperborean regions of the Far North, where this people also settled after fleeing their destroyed homeland. Hu Gadarn is the Celtic equivalent of Noah and of Aeneas, leading his people away from their destroyed Paradise, into the Promised Land.
Indeed, the Hyperborea whence the Celto-Iberians originally came is the realm of Apollo (the Sun), "the land beyond the Boreas". And the mythical Land of the Sun can hardly be believed to lie in the Arctic or, even less, in the Antarctic regions, as some authors will.

Actually, the Hyperboreans were held to live in the mysterious Thule, the divide of the world that lay beyond the ocean. And the word Ocean meant, for the ancients, the Indian Ocean, and never the Atlantic, which they never sailed. Thule is the same as the island of Long-Lived Ethiopians. And these Ethiopians are indeed the Hyperboreans, both legendary races being identical in being composed of tall, blond, blue-eyed Ethiopians. Both lived in the far off region of Taprobane (Indonesia), a place, the above authorities add, "which lies beyond the Aquilon".

Boreas Is Not Indeed the North Wind That Blows From The Alps
Boreas is not indeed the North Wind that blows from the Alps into Mediterranean Europe, but a figuration of the monsoon winds that blow in the northern regions of Indonesia. The name of Boreas given to the North Wind that blows in the chilly regions beyond the Alps is a replica, a "mirror image" of the true Indonesian archetype. The Hindus worship Boreas, the North Wind, under the name of Varaha (or Vayu), from whose name that of Boreas ultimately derives.

So, the mythical Hyperboreans, the mysterious "peoples that live beyond the Boreal winds" are not those who lived in the Alps, above Europe, but the ones who lived beyond the monsoon winds that blow in the northern coasts of Indonesia and nearby regions. This fact is attested by too many ancient authorities to be dismissed easily, except by solid contrary evidence

The reality of the North European Hyperboreans could never be established in realistic bases, and their postulation has only led to paradoxes and difficulties. But when we accept the assertions of Pliny, Solinus and other authorities such as the ones we have been quoting, everything starts to make sense. Besides, how could Apollo, the Sun god, make his abode in the gelid Alps, instead of the equatorial Indonesia, the true Island of the Sun of the ancients?

Pliny, Boreas, and the Hyperboreans
Now, the Aquilon is the Latin name of the North Wind, the very same one that the Greeks called by the name of Boreas. Here, it is identified with the monsoon winds of the East Indies. Hence, we see that the true location of Hyperborea or Thule was the island of Taprobane, the true abode of the blest, long-lived Ethiopians. The passage of Pliny (Hist. Nat. 4:26) on the Hyperboreans is worth quoting:

"Beyond the Aquilon one finds a blessed nation called, according to tradition, the Hypeboreans. Among them, men reach an extreme age. Many marvels are told of this people. Some say that the hinges of the world and the limit of the course of the stars lie in their region... The country is bathed in sunlight and enjoys a pleasant temperature..."
"Discord is there ignored, and so is disease. People there do not die but from the satiety of living. After a festive banquet, full of the joys of old age, the one who wants to die jumps into the seas from a lofty rock. Such is for them the happiest way to die. One cannot doubt the reality of this country, described by many authorities."

Pliny, in the above passage, also adds that Hyperborea was the realm of Apollo and that the Hyperboreans sent, from the island of Delos, the first-fruits of their crops to Greece, to be dedicated to the Sun God. The descriptions of Hyperborea in the many authors mentioned by Pliny are indeed those of a tropical Paradise not unlike the Garden of Eden and the Islands of the Blest. When one pauses to ponder, there is only one place in the world that fits the description of Atlantis, of Eden, Aztlan, Atala, and of other such Paradises turned Hell. That place can only be the Indies, as can be surmised from the dozens of traditional accounts. A posteriori, this conclusion of ours is so obvious it hurts.

Apollo and the Hyperboreans
It is interesting to note that Plato, in his detailed description of Atlantis, makes an obscure reference to the lofty rocks from which the Blest Ethiopians used to throw themselves into the waves, in an immitation of the primordial deed of Atlas and Hesperus, who also fell from such a lofty cliff. Actually, these cliffs were the legendary Leucades, whose name is a reference to their being covered by the white bones of the dead who went by throwing themselves from their tops.3

Pliny's Hyperborea also evokes the description of the island of Emain Abalach (Avalon) in Celtic poems. There:

Treason is there unknown and so is sadness.
There no pain, no regret, no death, no grief,
No disease, no weakness, ever afflict anyone.
For such is the fortune of Emain.

Another a similar Celtic poem adds:

What a wonderful country is this one!
There the young never grow old at all!

What is to be retained from the above discussion is the fact that Avalon, Hyperborea, Thule, Taprobane, Eden, Paradise, Emain Abalach, the Garden of the Golden Apples, the Garden of Idun and so on are all one and the same thing. Their connection with the "first fruits" is an allegoric reference to the fact that Atlantis was indeed the very first site of human civilization, the same as the legendary Paradise or Garden of Eden.
These pleasant, luxurious gardens all lay at the extremity of the world which, from the Celtic perspective in Brittany, could only be the antipodal Indonesia, located on the side of the world opposite to their own misty islands. This Paradise was destroyed by a cataclysm, and they were forced to leave it, emigrating to the far Occident, under the leadership of Hu Gadarn, the Celtic Noah, the Judeo-Christian hero of the Flood.

The sinking of this realm is told in the legend of the Flooding of Ys, another central tradition of Celtic mythology. And their sunken Paradise became the Land of the Dead, the "Tomb of Glass" (Glastonbury) or "Island of Glass" (Ynis Wydr) that we encounter so often in their Celtic legends. This dismal Hades is the same as the Cimmeria of the Greeks, the Hanebut of the Egyptians, the Sheol of the Jews and the Nefelheim of the Germanic Nations.

How the Guanches Got to the Canaries
Many writers who investigated the problem of the Guanches were puzzled by the fact that the natives of the Canaries detested the sea, and never sailed it at all. So, it is pertinent to ask, after them, how did the Guanches get to the isolated Canaries in the first place? The answer seems to be rather simple, after all. They were brought as passengers in the ships of seafaring peoples such as the Phoenicians, the Etruscans, the Minoan Cretans, and so forth. Indeed, the ancient records are full of references to the "ships of Tarshish" being used by passengers and migrants of several different nations.

When the White Ethiopians who survived the Atlantean cataclysm emigrated to the distant Occident in their ships — under the guidance of admirals like Aeneas, Hercules, Phoroneos, and Hu Gadarn and, perhaps, Noah, Canopus and Jason — they settled in colonies along the way, on every coast and every island that looked promising. The legends are certainly founded in actual fact, and these fleets of ocean worth vessels are the ones allegorized as the Ark of Noah in the Bible or as the Argonavis in Greek legends.

It was thus that Mauritania was settled by the Berbers, Lebanon by the Phoenicians, Crete by the Minoans, Italy by the Etruscans, the British Islands and Brittany by the Celts and, of course, the Canaries by the Guanches. Many of these emigrants were, as is usually the case, mere passengers who never knew how to sail or, even less, how to design and build sea-worthy ships strong enough to sail the open, rough ocean, a feat very hard to accomplish in antiquity. Such huge sailships — the "ships of Tarshish" of Biblical traditions — are attested from remotest antiquity, for instance in the Gerzean ceramics of pre-Dynastic Egypt, which date from about 5,500 BP or so.

In this way, the Guanches were stranded on the Canaries, and the enigma which has defied solution for millennia is naturally explained. The ancient peripluses like those of Hanno and Himilco relate similar expeditions and even the establishment of such insular colonies. Such is also the meaning of myths like the one of Aeneas and his fleet fleeing from the destroyed, sunken Troy or, also, of the Biblical relate of Noah and his clan repeopling the Islands of the Nations, and founding the different nations of mankind.

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1 Many authorities refute the usual derivation of the name of America — originally applied to Brazil and South America — from the name of Alberigo Vespucci, whose name was later altered into that of Amerigo in order to comply with the fanciful etymology. Alberigo was an obscure scribe, and would hardly deserve the honor. The name of Armorica was that of the Brittany in Roman times. It is usually derived from the Celtic ar-mor meaning "over the seas". Many legends connect Armorica with the sunken realm of Ys, the Celtic counterpart of Atlantis.

More likely, the true origin of Armorica's name is from the Dravida ar-mor-ika, meaning "remains of the land sunken under the seas". The name of America, which the Conquistadores learnt from the American natives, likewise seems to come from the Dravida am-mor-ika, meaning just about the same or, more literally, "remains of the marshy land sunken under the seas". Interestingly enough, these meanings are rather close to that of the epeira ges (or "outlying land") of Plato and others, and which embodies the idea of a mountainous fringe left behind when the flatter land sunk away. This name, as applied to the Americas, was an extension of that of Indonesia, whose actual situation indeed corresponds to actual fact.
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2 The "Reds" are one of the Hindu four castes, Brahmans (or priests), Kshatryas (or warriors), Vaishyas (or bourgeois) and Sudras (or serfs). These also correspond to the four primordial races of humanity, personified in the Bible by Noah and his three sons. In modern terms, these also correspond to the real four races of humanity: whites, reds, yellows and blacks, which are precisely the heraldic colours of the four castes (varnas = "colours").

The name of the Phoenicians derives from "red" (phoinikes) in Greek. The radix cham is of obscure origin, and is said to mean "black", as usually interpreted in connection with the Egyptians, who called their country Khamis or Khemis. But this is wrong, and the true etym is "red" or, rather, "candent", as in the Latin chama ("flame"). In contrast to what many authorities affirm, the land of Egypt is whitish, rather than black, due to the sand it embodies even in the irrigated regions. The idea is that the Chams, formerly white as the Guanches, were "charred" by the volcanism that destroyed their land, and became the Ethiopians, that is "the fiery faced" (aith-opes). But, as we already said, this darkening of the originally blond Atlanteans was the result of "too much admixture with mortal blood", as Plato discloses in his Critias.

Ultimately, the radix cham or, rather, kham or khem, derives from the Dravida, where it means "red", "fiery", "flaming", "gold". It designated the red races which formed the bellicose Kshatrya caste, and which was mainly composed of the Dravidian races. The name was also applied to the wild red dog of the Indies (Cuon alpinus), with which the Reds identified themselves. Hence, the fact that the Chamites were often equated to "dogs". The name was applied to the Canaries ("Isles of the Dogs") because of the Chams, rather than the dogs, as Pliny falsely alleges. Same thing with Khemis (Egypt), "the Land of the Chams". The very name of the Guanches derives from Guan-che or, rather, Kham-che, meaning the nation (che or ge) of the Chams". The reader interested in more details on this should consult our article on the Dravidian origin of the Guanche language.
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3 The name of the Leucades derives from the Greek leukas, the feminine form of leukos ("white", "shiny"). Legendarily, their name is ascribed to Leukates, a boy who, desired by Apollo, threw himself from the cliff in order to escape the relentless persecution of the god. Sometimes, the cliff is directly associated with Apollo Leukadios, who had a temple at its summit. The Leucadian Rocks became famous as the place from which non-corresponded lovers or those wishing purification committed suicide, a ritual known as katapontismos. Leukates is the obvious twin of Apollo, the two being the aliases of Atlas and Hesperus, who also found a similar death.

The Leucades were also obscurely identified with the Elysian Fields, the Greek counterpart of Eden or Paradise and, more exactly, of the Islands of the Blest which are no other than Atlantis. It is interesting to note that the name relates to the radix luk- meaning "fiery","shiny","white", and which partakes of the name of Lucifer, Lug and other such luminous, fallen deities.

All such gods are invariably connected with Atlantis, and are said to inhabit volcanic peaks, which indeed deserve the name of "luminous". Such is the case of the Teyde volcano of Tenerife, whose name means "The Luminous One". Coincidentally or not, the fact is that the Teyde volcano is the legendary abode of Guayota, the luminous All-Creator of the Guanches. Guayota is the perfect counterpart of the above mentioned luminiferous gods, as well as of other chthonian, smithing gods such as Hephaistos and Maya, the great architect of Lanka. Lanka was the archetype of Atlantis, in Hindu traditions, and of all such fallen Paradises, including the Celestial Jerusalem.
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Copyright © 1997 Arysio Nunes dos Santos. Fair quotation and teaching usage is allowed, as long as full credit is given to this source, and its home address is given in full.