Island of Teneriffe/ View of the town and road of Santa-Cruz

Title

Island of Teneriffe/ View of the town and road of Santa-Cruz

Description

Map depicts the island Teneriffe, on inset map the city Santa-Cruz and the coastal road.

ca. 1700

Artist

Child

Historical Description

The Canary Islands consist of Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro. You are in the Atlantic in a geographic region known as Macaronesia. This also includes Cape Verde, the Azores, the Madeira Archipelago and the Ilhas Selvagens. In the period from the 4th century until the Europeans rediscovered the Canary Islands in the 14th century, different cultures developed independently of one another on the individual islands. Although these were based on the same principles, they had so many peculiarities that one cannot speak of a “Guanche culture of the Canary Islands”. There was the culture of the Majos on Lanzarote, that of the Majoreros on Fuerteventura, that of the Bimbaches on El Hierro, that of the Gomeros on La Gomera, that of the Canarios on Gran Canaria, that of the Benahoaritas on La Palma and that of the Guanches on Tenerife. The naming of the indigenous people of all islands with the name of the indigenous people of the island of Tenerife as Guanches, which was common for a long time, ignores the differentiated cultural developments on the different islands.