Pyramids of Guimar
Guimar is about 20 miles southwest of Santa Cruz.. Really strange story this is .. the area apparently first came to the attention of scientists in the early 1990s when claims were made by a Tenerife newspaper that a pyramid had been discovered. The Norwegian anthropologist/explorer Thor Heyerdahl learned of this and became interested because he thought the Canary Islands might be a link between the Old World and the New World . He saw similarities between the pyramids at Guimar with those of Sicily, Mexico, Mesopotamia, Polynesia and Peru. They were all of the stepped type (not finished planes like the Egyptian ones) and his hypothesis was that they were all built to the same principles.
The usual case is that local people make extravagant claims for a feature or building which is then dismissed by the outside scientific community. The odd thing here is that the local archaeologists from the University of Laguna think that these stone formations are simply rock terraces built by pre-European peoples and their use was agriculture .. no more. Heyerdahl (and apparently others from USA and Europe) say that the orientation of the pyramids align for watching the rising and setting of the sun indicate a sophisticated understanding of the winter and summer solstices.
What we see today is a reconstruction of the pyramids according to Heyerdahl's theory and it is hard (as an amateur) to know which school of thought is correct. Certainly, the aerial photographs of the site provide strong evidence that these were not just agricultural boundaries. The site itself with the mountains in the background and Atlantic within view also lends itself to the idea that it had ceremonial significance.
In a curious way, what I found off putting was the fact that significant parts of the exhibition are given over to Heyerdahl's explorations. While these are interesting, there is no connection between them and the Guimar site. So it seems there is little evidence to support the case that these were pre-historic ruins.
On a less contentious level, this is an interesting site, well landscaped and it is easy to let the imagination wander and think that it was the site of ceremonies by the indigenous people ; Guanche Indians who inhabited these islands before the Spanish arrived in 1460s.
The fine print
Date of travel : January + February 2009
Country information : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife