The Guanches are the pre-Hispanic indigenous population of the Canary Islands. Their original term, properly applied to the inhabitants of Tenerife, has been generalised in modern usage to cover the indigenous populations of all seven islands, who in fact carried distinct names — the Bimbaches of El Hierro, the Gomeros of La Gomera, the Auaritas of La Palma, the Canarii of Gran Canaria, the Majos of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.
Linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence places their origin on the African mainland in successive crossings during the first millennium BCE and the first millennium CE. Their language is extinct but partially reconstructed from Libyco-Berber rock inscriptions on the islands, from preserved place names — Tenerife, Tegueste, Tamadaba — and from word lists recorded by Spanish chroniclers; the reconstructed forms align with continental Berber, particularly Tachelhit and Zenaga.
Material culture varied across islands. Common features included cave dwellings, domesticated goats and sheep, terraced agriculture, mummification of the dead on Tenerife and Gran Canaria, and on La Gomera the whistled register, Silbo, used to communicate across the deep ravines and inscribed by UNESCO in 2009.
The Castilian conquest unfolded over almost a century, from the seigneurial expedition of Jean de Béthencourt to Lanzarote in 1402 to the surrender of Tenerife in 1496. The indigenous population was reduced by warfare, enslavement, and epidemic disease; survivors were assimilated into the colonial population, leaving a substantial substrate in Canarian place names, vocabulary, and genetics.