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Gustavo Sánchez Romero

Gustavo Sánchez Romero was born on Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Tenerife, Canary Islands, in November 1972. He holds a B.Sc. in Biology (minor in Geology) from Western Michigan University, USA, 1994. He also holds a M.Sc. in Museum Science and Cultural Management from la Laguna University, Tenerife, 2014. In March 2020 he completed a 50-hour introductory course on Canarian Archaeology, Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands.

Gustavo has been interested in the archaeology of the Canary islands, and specially on Guanche culture, since childhood, after receiving from his parents a series of popular books, and graphic novels, on these topics. Since then he has acquired specialized monographs and classic texts, both in English and Spanish, about the ancestral inhabitants of the Canarian archipelago, the Guanches. These were northern Africa Amazigh clans, mainly from Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania or Libya, that established themselves on the islands since, approximately, one millennia BC.

Driven by this profound interest, he has been exploring many “off the beaten track” archaeological sites on the island (and others), basically photographing and documenting them, specializing, in a way, on the step pyramids that can be found in many corners of the Canaries. Some of his Guanche discoveries, and part of his research, have been published at the Almogaren, the archaeological publication of the Vienna based Institutum Canarium. The IC was founded in 1969, and has acquired considerable renown as an international and interdisciplinary scientific society dealing with the cultural history of the Canary Islands, and the adjacent Mediterranean. Gustavo´s work has been published in the International Journal of Modern Anthropology. He also has a keen interest in animal legends and mythical creatures, and lives in Icod de los Vinos, northern Tenerife.

History

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1494 The Battle Of Acentejo:  A Gaunches Victory At Tenerife Over The Castilians

1494 The Battle Of Acentejo: A Gaunches Victory At Tenerife Over The Castilians

A battle at the end of May 1494, on the north slope of the island of Tenerife, between the Castilian troops of the belligerent Catholic Monarchs of Fernando II of Aragon and Isabel I of Castile and a...
Reconstruction of a Guanche settlement of Tenerife (CC BY-SA 3.0) and reconstructed face(Provided by author) Deriv.

The Face Of A Canary Island Guanche Woman, Reconstructing Ancestors

The narratives of history relate the fates and dates of nameless, faceless people who came before us, often reduced only to numbers, but when forensic facial reconstruction puts a face to history,...
Famous Gaunches Mummies Drenched In Dragons’ Blood Like A Stradivarius Violin

Famous Gaunches Mummies Drenched In Dragons’ Blood Like A Stradivarius Violin

From 1494 to 1496, the island of Tenerife was beset by a military invasion. The conquerors and soldiers of the Castilian kingdom of Castile and Aragon deployed numerous troops to subdue the hardened...
Reconstruction of a Guanche settlement of Tenerife. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Ancient Guanche Solar Worship And Fertility Rites In The Canary Islands

The Canarian laurel forest is a prehistoric forest about 20 million years old, present in many enclaves on the north coast of Tenerife. This wonderful and ancient forest formation treasures great...
Reconstruction of a Guanche settlement of Tenerife (Wouter Hagens/ CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Fan Pyramid of Tenerife, A Guanche Stone Solstice Marker

A peculiar pyramid with a ‘fan structure’ stands as an ancient stone solstice marker in Icod de los Vinos, a municipality on the island of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands (Spain). The precolonial...