The Mystery of the Tenerife Pyramids: Who Built Them, When and Why?

In my last video I looked at the amazing Caves of Valeron on the island of Gran Canaria, which was home to the native people we call the Guanches, before the Spanish conquest of the 15th century destroyed their culture. But on the neighbouring, and larger island of Tenerife, as well as hotels, bars and beaches, as well as an enormous and still active volcano, there are in fact pyramids.

Known as the Pyramids of Guimar, these sub-rectangular pyramid-shaped, terraced structures have long been the subject of speculation. Who built them? Just how old are they? Can they be tied to Ancient Egypt, or even Ancient Mesoamerica?

Well, I have to say that these pyramids are some of the most interesting, controversial and mysterious structures I’ve ever researched, and in this video I’ll explain why. Were they the work of the native, indigenous Guanches people, or were they in fact more modern creations by Spanish farmers? Watch the video to learn more.

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#ancientarchitects #pyramids #archaeology

[DangrMouSe]

Thx for covering this. If you like a tiny bit of controversy, I suggest the following:

-the recently destroyed pyramid in Australia
-the ancient STONE pyramid in the US that was destroyed early during the settler period

-or my personal favorite, the hundreds (maybe thousands) of cairns in the NE of the US labeled as early European settler cold storage despite not matching any techniques of that time, the use of massive stone lintels & the vast majority aligning to the solstice with some creating a lightbox effect at sunrise. Despite all this they've been (imo intentionally) mislabelled & unrecognized allowing for their destruction during human construction. The reason I believe it's intentional is due to our strict construction laws regarding possible ancient artifacts.

[randywise]

People that sail from the Mediterranean to the Americas usually stop at the Canary Islands before crossing. Trade winds and currents. Prehistoric crossings cannot be ruled out.

[bardofely]

Thank you so much for including me in this! A friend just told me about your video. When I was on Tenerife I realised that the Guimar pyramids were getting all the attention because of Thor Heyerdahl's connection, so I wondered what about all the other ones, like those in the Icod area? I invited Philip Coppens to the island and he gave a talk in Los Cristianos with Sam Osmanagich, who he already knew, was on the island at the same time, and is known for his discovery of the Bosnian pyramids, which are also very controversial. There is a film by Raphael Biss entitled Savages In Foreign Lands, in which I have a starring role. Biss came to the Canary Islands to investigate the Guanches. His film is about this.

[Gainn]

I lived just down the road from these in the 90's. The current pyramids are a modern thing, but the locals all say that there was something smaller there before and it was just massively expanded in the early 1800's.
The oldest part (according to them) is at the other side of the site from the cave -and it's also somewhere the investigations never looked.

[tassia]

There are ancient pyramids in Greece and by the way pyramid is an ancient Greek word meaning pyr-πυρ =fire +amis that means pot! The meaning is to put a pot with fire on a structure high enough for ships to navigate in the night or give signals to people and information about sertain occuring incidents about outcome of war fights or the enemy's coming!I don't know if the word is the same in ancient Egyptian language maybe because there were some Greek ports and cities.This was found out recently.The city was called Heracleion on the banks of the Nile's Delta that found sunken!But about pyramids in Peloponnese especially and on some islands are a very recent concern because of the many ancient sights that need exploring!I like your documentaries they are very informative!I wish I could go to the canaries islands.They look so beautiful!My daughter has gone and love them.Thank you !I believe pyramids are older than we people think.They recently found in Uzbekistan! There's so much we have to learn about our world I am old and I have a thirst for knowledge !!!

[DavidCastillaGil]

Tinerfeño here (meaning from Tenerife). You are probably the first foreigner I've ever heard pronounce Güímar perfectly. It got me by surprise.

On one hand, the terraces are a very typical occurrence among the islands. Farmers use them to allow creating planting fields where the terrain is too steep to allow enough soil for crops. The islands have lots of mountains and deep 'barrancos', kind of very steep valleys, so it makes a lot of sense to build these terraces with stone walls to retain the soil.

But, these specific structures in Güímar are not for planting, they are too narrow and it wouldn't make much sense where they are located. Also, guanches didn't build mounds like other cultures did as burial sites. Deceased were buried in caves usually high ni the mountains. There are old stone structures that show that guanches did indeed build sites for religious and astronomical reasons, this is proven.

What I would like to recommend though, is to investigate the Berber relationship and the mummies. Those are interesting topics. For once, guanches were berbers, and I don't think they have been asked about the islands enough. When I was in Morocco once I had the pleasure to know some berbers and I believe I learned more from history from them than I ever did in school. They seem to have populated the islands a long time ago and they still recognize and understand the symbols the guanches left on rocks here. So I really think we should find and ask elder berbers in Morocco and Sahara and we might get new information westerners didn't even consider. The other topic are mummies. I don't think there are many instances of people being buried as mummies, and guanches did it! This has always baffled me since its the clearest link to Egypt.

[JMMRanMA]

This video highlights what I like about Matt's approach. Data is presented, and various, often opposing, hypotheses are discussed. Matt, points out supporting and contradicting evidence, and the matter is left open, as is Matt's mind. Matt does not run with a fascinating hypothesis, refusing to consider all other hypotheses and making cash by milking the fascination of people with Atlantis and Ancient aliens. No, like M. Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, Matt uses critical thinking and withholds judgement when it clearly needs to be held off. This is scientific investigation, and Matt has definitely become a master of this. Keep up the excellent work Matt!🏆🎖🥇🥇🥇

[peterlarkin]

Apart from pyramids, there are ancient groves and mounds in El Hierro and La Gomera. The Guanche had such a rich culture and lots of resources, I wouldn't be surprised if they had built some rock mounds that were elaborated upon by later settlers that added more stone.

[PryonN]

There are identical pyramids in the Azores islands. The Portuguese archeologists that studied the place also say they were made in recent times by local farmers…

[robertpyrosthenes]

I'm in the raised growing bed camp. Take a look on GE at the areas surrounding the main complex. There are hundreds of trees and plants thriving in the basins between the stone walls. These may be water management structures.

[BARBARYAN.]

I’m from the Canary Islands and have native DNA and can confirm we have lots of influences ethically but we all have colorful eyes and blonde to black hair. Like Phoenicians.

[KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking]

Wake up babe! _Ancient Architects dropped a new video!_

[rockycave]

Conquistadors used the Canaries as rest stops/trade etc.
In this video I can also see terracing, especially in the Ariel photos. Terracing was used by the Aztecs closer to Mexico’s mountains similar to what you see in South America.
Slavery although eventually made illegal happened early on with the native Americans/Aztecs by the Conquistadors. I can imagine those slaves were sold to Spanish farmers on the canaries and terracing/pyramid building could have organically started to happen.

[loke]

I did visit a pyramid in Gran Canaria some years back. The guy at the museum I also visited claimed it was around 1500 years old, he actually had some mummies in terrible shape as well.
And yeah, it is about as likely that farmers built them in the 19th century as Heyerdal's theories. More likely is that the Free mason dude was an antiquarian that had them renovated because the ones in Tenerife looks in a whole lot of better shape then all the others. That together with a bit shoddy archaeology could explain the odd dating pretty well.

I am not sure of the guy in the Museum in Gran Canaria's sources but he seemed to know what he was talking about (I visited around new Year 2008-2009) and he did have a lot of artifacts from pre Spanish times.

We can of course not be 100% sure that the Free mason dude wasn't impressed by some older pyramids and wanted to build his own but that seems pretty unlikely to me since I would have expected him to add a bit of Egyptian flair to it if that was the case but if he was history interested, hiring some locals to renovate them wouldn't be that strange. We do seems other places getting renovated at the time and a bit later, like Newgrange in Ireland for instance.

And yeah, it is also possible the dude added more things when he was renovating.

[fromthegroundtotheclouds]

I love Tenerife, I’m back there in a weeks time 😎🤙🏻
The pyramids of guimar are an amazing sight, they say that they are only 500years old but we all doubt that lol…
I’m even looking at emigrating to that exact area on Tenerife 👌🏻 great to see someone talking about these

[himwo.]

Thank you so much for this video! I've been to Tenerife back in 2004 or so, and I was genuinely intrigued by them ever since. The theory that it's just "piled up rubble from the farmers" never made sense to me, it sounded too convenient as well as ignorant (the story of the island of Corvo shows an example of said ignorance from a local neighbor!) to me. I'm really grateful that people haven't settled for such a silly theory, and I didn't expect there to be any other pyramids on any of the Canaries! I hope that there could be more investigation into these... best case, your video may help!

[djedUVprojector]

This looks like a "Bread fruit" growing station paid for by the East India company or the dutch. Each stage in growing process catered for from seedlings to vulnerable plants on to mature plants before being shipped out.
The 8 stage pyramid structures are sorting stations were the potted maturing plants are categorised with smaller younger at top and most mature larger plants on lowest stage.
It makes use of early morning rising clouds to moisture (air water) the individual plants. The stacked porous volcanic rock sucks in and traps the water vapour from these early morning rising mist clouds.
Id suggest setting up a permanent web cam & data loggers for time lapse monitoring the site over a full season year. Also notice it geographical location between the 2 main avenues up from the church which leads into the main road down to the docks. Also it's just offset from the main rain channel. If you do terrain view on Google you'll notice this is possibly the best "Tree nursery" location on the whole of Tenerife but is now an un-used dead "archeological site".

[GonzaloCalvoPerez]

In the islands of Mallorca and Menorca there are similar constructions, and indeed there is evidence of arrival of sailors of the Kingdom of Aragon to the Canaries since the 13th century, before the colonization of the Kingdom of Castille, in the 15th century. The balearic constructions, though, are of two very distinct periods, one modern and one ancient. The ancient, the so-called "talaiots", date from the 2nd millennium BCE, and are mainly funerary and watching towers, probably influenced by the egyptian pyramids. The talaiots were reused afterwards until the roman conquest, in the 2nd century BCE. They are typically subcircular, although a few are square or rectangular, and stepped. The modern balearic "pyramids" exist only in Menorca, are relatively smaller than the canarian, and correspond to the development of intensive agriculture and cattle raising. They are called, "barraques", meaning "shacks", and date typically of the 19th century. This style of building of walls, in the balearic islands, is called "pedra en sec", meaning "dry stone". Anyone visiting the Balearics has seen them, particularly creating terraces, in abrupt slopes. These terraces are typically from the medieval Islamic period, in many cases, although it is also difficult to know if there are older examples.

[charlesmaurer]

One thing that would mess with any dating of soil is the Terraces were built and used for farming even to modern day, that would be overturned every year or two. Would need a sample from under the works to get a good base date.

[Ziri]

There are 13 pyramid-shaped ones in the town of Frenda in northern Algeria plus the tomb of King Imedghassen in the town of Batna which probably date back to the kingdom of Numidia with similar structures, the Numidians are the ancestors of the Algerians and they are part of the large family of Berbers like the Guanches or the Moors