After centuries of solemnly Europeans "re-discovered" the Fortunate Islands in the first half of the XIVth century. They found living there a people who later came to be known as the Guanches, and who are still the object of great mystery. They had to have arrived by sea and they arrived with their domesticated animals: goats, sheep, pigs and dogs. They brought with them wheat and barley. They came from North Africa, originating from the same stock as the Berbers of the Atlas mountains.

The ancestors of the Guanches arrived by sea, colonized the islands... and then "forgot" how to sail! When the Europeans landed on the Canaries, they discovered a stone age culture based on shepherding, fruit gathering and a very limited agriculture. This same base was common to all the islands, but each island had developed into its own microcosm to the point where even the language had differentiated into distinct dialects. The islands were cut off one from the other as the natives did not know the art of navigation.

They fished only in coastal tidal pools. This is one of the great enigmas of the Guanches. How was it possible for a race of people to reach the shores of these tiny islands by sea, live surrounded by ocean with - on several islands - enormous forests of tall trees for raw material and yet ignore the sea, living as it were with their back turned to it? Several possible answers to this mystery have been offered. Perhaps the people of the Canaries were simple shepherds who had been transported to the islands by a sailing people and later forgotten and left to fate. Other explanations might be found in the extraordinary difficulty of navigating the oceans surrounding the Canaries due to the strong currents flowing to the West and the trade winds blowing as strongly almost year round.