From the cliffside path that leads down to the sea, about four kilometersaway, I come to a halt. This is the spot: a cave, its entrance barely visible. Ilook up at the looming face of the rock. I sense it staring back at me,beckoning with its stash: hundreds of caves, built over the centuries fromthe lava flows of Mount Teide.
Any one of them could be the cave we’relooking for—here, history has not yet been written.Within this gorge in southern Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands,a stunning cave was found in 1764 by Spanish regent and infantry captainLuis Román. A contemporary local priest and writer described the find in abook on the history of the islands: “A wonderful pantheon has just beendiscovered,” José Viera y Clavijo wrote. “So full of mummies that no lessthan a thousand were counted.” And thus the tale of the thousand mummieswas born. (Read about the different types of mummies found worldwide.) Few things are more exciting than navigating the ambiguous edge betweenhistory and legend. Now, two and a half centuries later, in the gorge knownas Barranco de Herques—also called “ravine of the dead” for its funerarycaves—we find ourselves in the place that most local archaeologistsconsider to be the mythical “cave of the thousand mummies.” There are nowritten coordinates; its location has been passed on by word of mouthamong a chosen few. The hikers who venture along the path are abivious to its existence
In the company of islander friends, I feel privileged to be shown the placewhere they believe their ancestors once rested. I crouch toward the narrowopening, turn on my headlamp and drop to the ground. To find this hidden realm, we crawl in on our stomachs for a few claustrophobic meters. Butthere’s a reward for subjecting ourselves to the tight squeeze: a tall, spaciouschamber suddenly opens before me, holding the promise of a journey to theisland’s past.“As archaeologists we assume that the expression ‘thousand mummies’ wasprobably an exaggeration, a way to suggest that there were indeed a lot, awhole lot—hundreds,” says Mila Álvarez Sosa, a local historian andEgyptologist.
In the darkness, our eyes slowly adjust. We survey the spacefor the telltale signs of a necropolis in the meandering lava tube, part of anextensive system across the island.These weren’t the first mummies to be unearthed on the island. Butaccording to local lore, a large sepulchral cave like this one held thepantheon of the nine Mencey kings who ruled the islands in precolonialtimes.The cave’s location was a scrupulously guarded secret.
And there was norecord of it, which only served to elevate it as the holy grail of Canarianarchaeology. Locals maintain they don’t disclose the location in order toprotect the memory of their ancestors who rested there, the Guanches, theIndigenous people of this island—no distinct Guanche population remainstoday. Others say it was lost to a landslide, buried forever. (Go beyond thebeaches in the Canary Islands.)What may have been a certainty for those 18th century explorers morphedinto legend when the mummies were plucked from their resting place andtheir location was lost. But the precious few—from that cave and others—that remain intact and are held in museum collections are helping scientistsunravel the story about the archipelago: when and where the first inhabitantscame from, and how they honored their dead.
Preserving the deceased for eternity, Tenerife became the last island in the archipelago to fall under the Castilian crown, beginning in 1494. It wasn’t the first encounter the islanders had with Europeans, but it would be the last. Álvarez Sosa paints a vivid contrast when, at the end of the 15th century during the dawn of the Renaissance, soldiers arrived on ships with swords and horses, facing a people just emerging from the Neolithic era, cave dwellers clad in animal skins and using rudimentary tools. Yet, they held a deep respect for their departed, meticulously preparing them for their final journey, preserving them.
The colonists’ fascination with death drove them to meticulously document the funerary rituals. “That’s what mainly captured the attention of the Castilian conquerors,” says Álvarez Sosa. They were particularly intrigued by the embalming process—known as “mirlado”—that readied the xaxos (Guanche mummies) for an eternal existence.
In the dimly lit cave, one can’t help but imagine the awe that must have gripped Luis Román, imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment, as he ventured into the necropolis with local guides on a mission to collect specimens for study. He transported these bodies to Europe, where, by the 18th century, mummies became both a scientific curiosity and a novelty, capturing the interest of scholars and collectors.
The moment when Román raised his torch, unveiling hundreds of bodies suspended in time, must have been a mixture of sacrilege and exhilaration. Interestingly, the writer who summarized their visit omitted the cave’s location, but sadly, this effort to protect the cave from plunder ultimately failed, as multiple sources confirmed by 1833 that no bodies remained.
As I stand up, shaking the white dust from my hands and knees, my headlamp faintly illuminates the cave walls. While I know the odds are slim, a part of me still hopes to discover a xaxo (pronounced “haho”) tucked away in some hidden corner, just as Viera y Clavo once described.
The process of preserving these bodies against the relentless forces of time and nature was surprisingly straightforward. “It’s the same process you would use with food,” explains Álvarez Sosa. “The bodies were treated with dry herbs and lard, left to dry in the sun, and smoked over a fire.” This process took only 15 days to prepare a xaxo, in stark contrast to the 70 days required for an Egyptian mummy (40 days to dehydrate in naturally occurring natron salt, followed by 30 days of embalming in oils and spices before filling the cavity with straw or cloth and wrapping in linen). Another notable difference was the fate of the xaxos, as Álvarez Sosa suggests, “Some may have ended up at the bottom of the sea, thrown overboard during the journey to the Continent when warm conditions activated the decomposition process. Others traveled worldwide, finding homes in museums and private collections or even ground into aphrodisiac powders.”
Despite having one intact Guanche mummy and remains from three dozen others, very little is known about their tombs. “No archaeologist has ever found a xaxo in its original environment,” explains María García. In 2016, a CT scan of the same mummy, the best among 40 in museum collections, allowed researchers to peer into its interior without damaging its structure.
This isn’t my first journey to the Canaries in search of answers. Eight years ago, I descended a cliff to explore caves in the gorge, researching the legend and consulting experts to unravel the origins of the early Canarians. These islands were considered the mythical Fortunate Isles, where ancient Mediterranean seafarers had once set foot. When Europeans encountered these isolated populations in the Middle Ages, they found that, unlike other Atlantic archipelagos, these islands had been inhabited for centuries. Chronicles spoke of tall Caucasians, sparking various now-disproven theories about their ancestry. Leaving the island without conclusive answers, modern technology has now put an end to centuries-old enigmas, with the Guanche mummies revealing their secrets. One night in June 2016, under tight security, the mummy was taken to a nearby hospital for a CT scan, providing data that debunked several hypotheses and unveiling the remarkable preservation of the Guanche mummy, including the intact condition of its organs. Radiocarbon dating in 2016 revealed the mummy to be a tall, healthy male, possibly from the elite, given the condition of his hands, feet, and teeth.
