During the last four years there has been a team of Canarian archaeologists working on excavations around the island of Lanzarote, their findings were announced in July 2009. The group included archaeologists, historians and biologists from the University of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria and were directed by professor Pablo Atoche Peña (ULPGC). Their mission was to collect data and materials that could establish when humans first settled on the island of Lanzarote, their findings show that humans were here more than ten centuries prior to our recorded history.
During the excavations, the archaeologists found ceramic containers, metallic copper objects, vitreous bronze, iron and glass beads. Samples of carbon 14 were sent to the laboratories in Florida, USA, it is now believed that this is evidence of navigators coming to the islands from the old Mediterranean, Phoenician-Punic first and then Roman.
It was also interesting to find that Lanzarote landscape three thousand years ago, was very different to the one we know today. There was proof of ample vegetal cover with old pollen deposits, such as the canary pine tree (Pinus canariensis). The establishment of the rich vegetal matches the islands description from the account of historian Plutarco which was the year 83-82 ac, during the stay of the Roman general Sertorio in the opening of the Betis.
The works were part of the project “Efectos de la colonización insular. Transformaciones culturales y medioambientales en la Protohistoria de Lanzarote” which has the support of the Consejería de Educación, Cultura y Deportes, Gobierno de Canarias and the Ayuntamiento de Teguise.
For more historical information regarding Lanzarote and the Canary Islands:
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