Until now, there has been no debate about who the first “settlers” to settle in the Canaries were. The story has basically told of the Berbers, a group from North Africa who were the first and brave inhabitants of the Canaries. But new research published in PNAS is changing all previous ideas. The study shows that the first arrivals were the Romans.

Rome makes a flag. The study carried out by researchers and scientists from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and La Laguna (ULL), led by historian Jonathan Santana, solves this in the 1st century BC. C. The Romans discovered and explored the Canary Islands. And yes, then came the Berbers (Amazigh population), who spread throughout each of the islands for 200 years between the 1st and 3rd centuries.

New chronology. The researchers started from a vantage point that had never been done before. There were models of how islands were colonized, but they only covered one or a few islands. “This is the first proposal that covers the entire archipelago,” Santana told Canarias.7

What did you do? They created Bayesian colonization models using the most accurate radiocarbon data available, providing a hundred new sites with very few dates.

Not only that. As the historian put it, they applied what they call the “chronometric hygiene protocol”, focusing on materials that are radiocarbon dated and also clearly associated with human activities. The goal: to obtain the most accurate and reliable data possible that will allow us to understand the possible reasons behind the migration adventure.

Key: carbon 14. The study therefore provides the most comprehensive corpus of carbon-14 dating in the archaeology of the Canary Islands, which has overlooked previous studies and results. The problem until now has been the distortions caused by carbon-14 dating, the radioactive isotope present in the atmosphere and the “criterion” used to measure the age of plant remains or bones.

In humans it is not that simple. We accumulate the isotope by breathing or eating, and since it breaks down more or less regularly, its analysis allows us to calculate the time elapsed since the death of the organism. But while the method is reliable on land, it is not so reliable on oceanic islands, where an effect occurs that makes it more complicated.

Marine reservoir effect. Consider the ocean. The buildup of radioactive isotopes is different there. As the study notes, “animals are not only capturing molecules from when they were alive, but also molecules that have dissolved in the water over time.” In other words, a radiocarbon analysis of a mollusk will not give a very precise or reliable age. In fact, even for analysis of human remains, if they had a rich diet in the marine world, the isotope will be older than what they were breathing in the atmosphere.

Santana also adds that there are problems interpreting some of the radiocarbon data from the deposits: “If someone makes a bonfire with wood that they collect from the forest, the big trees will live for hundreds of years, if we date the charcoal from that firewood, it’s not telling us when the fire started, but rather when the rings of the wood grew, which could be older.”

The first was Lanzarote. The analysis showed that the first to discover the Canary Islands were the Romans and that “the Berbers arrived shortly after, between the 1st and 3rd centuries of our era”, arriving first in Lanzarote and spreading throughout the islands in less than 200 years, arriving at iron and La Palma almost simultaneously.

According to the study, this means that “without the presence of Romans in the central or eastern islands and with the presence of Berbers, the peoples of North Africa adapted to coastal environments, exploitation of marine resources and seafaring.” However, they note that it is possible that the Berbers had knowledge of the islands “from the Romans.” “It is possible that human presence stimulated the migration experience.”

Local people. In any case, they point out that the Roman and Berber populations did not overlap in practice, or if they did, it was for a short time. According to genetic data, there were “a few hundred individuals deliberately dispersed to the islands, along with domesticated animals and plants, to make the area a possible habitat.” These populations were the indigenous peoples encountered by Europeans in the Middle Ages.

Despite all this, they conclude by recalling that this is “the first study to lay the foundations for when we can start blaming humans for changes in the island’s ecological systems. We can now distinguish between human-related effects and those resulting from natural causes or climate fluctuations.”

Image | IsoCAN, NASA

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