Land and People of Lanzarote and the Canarian Archipelago
Mythological backgrounds
Mythological backgrounds
Towards the end of the 8th century BC Homer wrote of the Elysian Fields in his Odyssey; these were interpreted as being the Canary Islands. Herodotus (around 490 – 425/420 BC), the founder of Greek historiography spoke of the Garden of the Hesperidins. According to the myth, it was Atlas’, the ruler of Mauretania’s, cone shaped mountain which bore the weight of the firmament. Hesperia bore him seven daughters, called the daughters of Atlantis or even the Hesperidins. They were banished from the islands, where they are said to have invented night to protect their golden apples from thieves. It was also thought that Platon’s (427 – 347 BC) sunken Atlantis, described in the dialogues “Kritias” and “Timaios”, had been discovered here. In the book of Genesis and the book of Ezekiel the Bible calls the islands Elysa or Elysis and the crimson isles. The philosopher and historian Plutarch (around 50- 125 AD) spoke of the Islands of the Saints in his “Life of Sertorius”. In the year 24 AD the Mauritanian King Juba II sent out an expedition to discover more about these islands shrouded in legends, but the reports of it have been lost. In the texts of the Roman author Elder Pliny (in the first century AD) – who had never actually seen the islands – one finds the first details of the vegetation. He wrote of dragon trees and pine woods. He named the archipelago the “Purpurariare”, an allusion to the purple dye the islands produced, just as, long before him around 1100 BC, the Phoenicians had. They set off from Gades, today’s Cádiz, on a voyage of discovery along the African coast, came across Lanzarote and Fuerteventura and took from there the Orchilla lichen (Roccella tinctoria) from which they gained crimson. The Carthaginians also visited the islands. Despite the numerous visitors, the Canaries were forgotten at the beginning of the early Middle Ages, as early as the 2nd century AD the mathematician, astronomer and geographer Ptolemy (around 85 -160 AD) took the island of El Hierro, the island the furthest from the sunset, in the Punta de Orchilla, for his prime Meridian. He thus integrated the Canary Islands into the first latitude and longitude grid of the inhabited world and it was only later that the prime meridian was moved to Greenwich. Thus, under the name of insulae fortunatae the Canary Islands were part of a world map long before they fell into obscurity.It is uncertain where today’s name for the archipelago comes from. In old writings the island of birds Canora (lat. Canere – to sing) was mentioned. It is more likely that Canaria comes from the tall dogs, which the discoverers found here (lat. Canis – dog): thus island of dogs.
(Author: Wolfgang Borsich)
