Physical anthropology

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This room preserves its original layout, dating from the first decades of the Museum's existence.  The display of the large collection of cranea is designed to draw attention to a particular fact: from the end of the 19th century to well into the 20th century, an important part of the research into the prehispanic past of the islands was focused on metric and morphological analyses of skeletal remains -mainly cranea- of the aboriginal population, with the aim of establishing a typological classification. Two large groups were accordingly identified, a population with cro-magnoid features and a population with mediterranoid features, which were thought to have arrived on the islands on two separate waves of immigration and to which distinct cultural manifestations were attributed. This led to a biological explanation of aboriginal society, not superseded until relatively recently, and which  impaired the development of knowledge of the ancient Canarian's way of life.