The Zanata Stone (

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

: ''Piedra Zanata''), also known as the Zenata Stone, is a small stele with

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an in ...

s. The tablet is presumably of

Guanche Guanche may refer to: *Guanches, the indigenous people of the Canary Islands *Guanche language, an extinct Berber language, spoken by the Guanches until the 16th or 17th century *''Conus guanche ''Conus guanche'' is a species of sea snail, a ma ...

origin. It was found in 1992 near a mountain known as ''Montaña de las Flores'' (Mountain of the Flowers) in the municipality of

El Tanque El Tanque is a town and a municipality in the northwestern part of the island of Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands, and part of the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain. It is located 6 km west of Icod de los Vinos and 53 km west o ...

, located in the northwestern part of

Tenerife Tenerife (; ; formerly spelled ''Teneriffe'') is the largest and most populous island of the Canary Islands. It is home to 43% of the total population of the archipelago. With a land area of and a population of 978,100 inhabitants as of Janu ...

, Canary Islands. The Zanata Stone depicts a kind of fish. According to Rafael Gonzalez Antón, the director of the Archaeological Museum of Tenerife, its characters appear to be in

Tifinagh Tifinagh ( Tuareg Berber language: or , ) is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifinagh, is still favored by the Tuar ...

. The latter alphabet is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber script, and is used today by the

Tuareg The Tuareg people (; also spelled Twareg or Touareg; endonym: ''Imuhaɣ/Imušaɣ/Imašeɣăn/Imajeɣăn'') are a large Berber ethnic group that principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern Alg ...

. The Zanata Stone seems to have been related to the magical-religious traditional faith of the

Guanches The Guanches were the indigenous inhabitants of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean some west of Africa. It is believed that they may have arrived on the archipelago some time in the first millennium BCE. The Guanches were the only nativ ...

. Some Guanches of Tenerife were also known as '' Zanata'' or ''Zenete'', or "those with a cut tongue". The Zanata Stone is currently in the Archaeological Museum of Tenerife ( Santa Cruz de Tenerife).The Zanata Stone

References

Guanche Archaeology of Tenerife Metaphors referring to objects Multilingual texts Stones Archaeological artifacts Archaeological discoveries in Spain Steles {{Anthropology-stub

See also

References