Archive for the 'Guanches' Category

Dragon tree reputed to be a thousand years old

Monday, April 2nd, 2007
dscf1950.jpg The Dragon Tree, or Drago, is one of the iconic symbols of Tenerife. It is very slow growing, but when it attains maturity it usually has a thick trunk which is crowned by a thick umbrella-shaped canopy of dagger-like leaves. It gets its popular name from the secretion of a reddish resin, know as dragon’s blood, which appears when either the bark or leaves are cut. It is thought that the original inhabitants of the island, the Guanches, used the blood-red sap from the tree in medicines and as an embalming fluid. Because it grows so slowly, generally taking ten years to reach a height of one metre, many of the taller specimens are believed to be hundreds of years old. The oldest, in the town of Icod de los Vinos (pictured above) in the north of the island, is ...

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Posted by Ken

Comments: Leave a Comment » Categories: All about Tenerife, Guanches, Icod de los Vinos, Nature, Photo-Blog, Science, Tourism

Head banging is hardly a new phenomenon

Saturday, March 24th, 2007
It seems that head banging is nothing new on the island of Tenerife. Long before holiday revellers brought head banging from the London clubs to the nightspots of Playa de las Americas, Tenerife had its own variation of the phenomenon A study of the skulls of the island’s original inhabitants by scientists at the Canarian Institute of Palaeopathology and Bioanthropology in Santa Cruz found that fractures were common among males in their 20s and early 30s, according to the Journal of Paleopathology. The scientists examined over 400 skulls pre-dating the Spanish invasion of the island in 1496. Some 10 per cent of the skulls showed circular cranial fractures, an injury rarely found among archaeological human skeletons. The pre-Hispanic inhabitants of the island, the Guanches, had weapons similar to the Argentinean bolas – two or more heavy balls attached to ...

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Posted by Ken

Comments: Leave a Comment » Categories: All about Tenerife, Guanches, Playa de las Americas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife