The society of the Canary Islands seems to have run all the gamut from slavery to that of an entrenched nobility and priesthood and absolute rulers, back of whom was a very com plicated mythology forming part of the govern mental machinery of the classes. On some islands the chief ruler seems to have been abso lute; on others the chiefs and nobles had a council which acted as a check on the power of the ruler; while on the more primitive of the islands the people were broken up into numerous petty tribes without any unity or any over-lord having command over more than his own tribe.
The origin of the Guanches has long been and is still a much disputed question. It is even uncertain whether the people found on the islands when they first came under the notice of the continental races were the de scendants of the original races who have left traces of their life and long residence there. The evidence in hand,, however, would seem to show that they were a very mixed race, long in possession of the islands and frequently acted and reacted upon by the maritime races of Europe and Africa. Some investigators have maintained that the original race of the Canaries was the Cro-Magnon, similar in every respect to the early inhabitants of southwestern Europe at the end of the Magdalenian epoch.
Bibliography.— Berthelot, S., 'An tiquites canariennes> (Paris 1839) . • 'Histoire naturelle des iles Canaries) (in collaboration with Baker Webb, Paris 1839) •, Broca, P., d'antro pologie' (1874) . • Chil y Naranjo, historicos, climatolicos y patologicos de las Islas Canarias> (Las Palmas 1876439) ; la pluralite des races humaines de l'archipel Canarien> (Paris 1878) ; Espinosa, Alonso de, 'The Guanches of Tenerife' (Hakluyt Society, Markham's translation, 1907) ; Faidherbe, mots sur l'ethnologie de l'archipel Canarien> (Paris 1875) ; Luschan, 'Anhang iiber eine Schadelsammlung von den Canarischen Meyer, H., 'Die Insel (Leipzig 1896) ; Sergi, (The Mediterranean Race' (London 1901) i Verneau, les Semites aux iles Canaries) ; 'Sur les anciens habitants de la Islata Grande Canarie> (Paris 1881) ; mission scientifique dans l'archipel canarien> (Paris 1887) • annies de sejour aux iles Canaries' (Paris 1891); Virchow, (Schlidel mit Carionecrosis del Sagittalgegend> (1896).