Posted on 08/18/2006 11:57:12 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
A Spanish Senate committee wants Madrid's Anthropology Museum to return remains of a member of the Canaries' aboriginal Guanche people which arrived in mainland Spain in the 1700s, said Rafael Gonzalez, of Tenerife's Museum of Nature and Man... Gonzalez, the Tenerife museum's head of archaeology, was not sure when the Madrid mummy would return. But he told Reuters he wants the Canary Islands to recover all remains of the Guanches -- a people related to North African Berbers who were conquered by Spaniards in the 15th century. "We want mummified remains of indigenous Canary people to come home. We don't care about archaeological artefacts, but the people who created the culture should be here," Gonzalez said. The Guanches mummified important personages and the Madrid remains, dating from before the Spanish conquest, are now on display in a glass case. An Argentine museum returned two Guanche mummies in 2003, and Gonzalez said he would like a museum in Manchester, England, to send back another.
(Excerpt) Read more at today.reuters.com ...
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The original mummy site?
Guanches are an interesting roup of people.
Too bad the Spanish wiped them out, or nearly did so.
Yes, too bad. And, in spite of this article, it is not settled whether they were descendents of Berbers or some other group of people who found the islands by accident. They were described as blond haired and blue eyed by the original conquistadors. So were Berbers deep in the Atlas Mountains in North Africa, but some think they may have been Celts or even descendents of the original population of Europe before the Indo-European invasion, like the Basques.
I like your tagline. I think they should be restricted to flying carpets.
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