Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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This Law Does Not Remind Us Of
The Simplicity Of The Homeric Age.
We are astonished to see the
useful labours of agriculture, and of pastoral life, exposed to
contempt at the very dawn of civilization.
The Guanches, famed for their tall stature, were the Patagonians of
the old world. Historians exaggerated the muscular strength of the
Guanches, as, previous to the voyage of Bougainville and Cordoba,
colossal proportions were attributed to the tribe that inhabited
the southern extremity of America. I never saw Guanche mummies but
in the cabinets of Europe. At the time I visited the Canaries they
were very scarce; a considerable number, however, might be found if
miners were employed to open the sepulchral caverns which are cut
in the rock on the eastern slope of the Peak, between Arico and
Guimar. These mummies are in a state of desiccation so singular,
that whole bodies, with their integuments, frequently do not weigh
above six or seven pounds; or a third less than the skeleton of an
individual of the same size, recently stripped of the muscular
flesh. The conformation of the skull has some slight resemblance to
that of the white race of the ancient Egyptians; and the incisive
teeth of the Guanches are blunted, like those of the mummies found
on the banks of the Nile. But this form of teeth is the result of
art; and on examining more carefully the physiognomy of the ancient
Canarians, Blumenbach and other able anatomists have recognized in
the cheek bones and the lower jaw perceptible differences from the
Egyptian mummies. On opening those of the Guanches, remains of
aromatic plants are discovered, among which the Chenopodium
ambrosioides is constantly perceived: the bodies are often
decorated with small laces, to which are hung little discs of baked
earth, which appear to have served as numerical signs, and resemble
the quippoes of the Peruvians, the Mexicans, and the Chinese.
The population of islands being in general less exposed than that
of continents to the effect of migrations, we may presume that, in
the time of the Carthaginians and the Greeks, the archipelago of
the Canaries was inhabited by the same race of men as were found by
the Norman and Spanish conquerors. The only monument that can throw
any light on the origin of the Guanches is their language; but
unhappily there are not above a hundred and fifty words extant, and
several express the same object, according to the dialect of the
different islanders. Independently of these words, which have been
carefully noted, there are still some valuable fragments existing
in the names of a great number of hamlets, hills, and valleys. The
Guanches, like the Biscayans, the Hindoos, the Peruvians, and all
primitive nations, named places after the quality of the soil, the
shape of the rocks, the caverns that gave them shelter, and the
nature of the tree that overshadowed the springs.*
(* It has been long imagined, that the language of the Guanches had
no analogy with the living tongues; but since the travels of
Hornemann, and the ingenious researches of Marsden and Venturi,
have drawn the attention of the learned to the Berbers, who, like
the Sarmatic tribes, occupy an immense extent of country in the
north of Africa, we find that several Guanche words have common
roots with words of the Chilha and Gebali dialects.
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