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Talk:Guanches

Modern-Day Guanches
Are there people today who claim to be mainly of Guanche ancestroy? If not, when did the last of the Gunaches cease to exist? I realize most assimilated with the Spanish settlers, but at what point did their culture cease to have a relevant presence? -98.221.133.96 (talk) 11:51, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Relations
Is it so generally acknowledeged the relationship between Guanches and Berbers? Davidme

"...they seem to have preserved racial purity..." I find objection to the term "racial purity" on the grounds of my basic knowledge of human population genetics. There is no such thing. It would be worth noting the isolation of the community, however. D.E. Cottrell

Cottrell, your objections make you unobjective, nobody knows what doy you know about human population genetics, so your comment is invalid and ideologically driven. the Guanche were always reproted as different to the visitors and that indicates lack or very little of continental or other "genetic traits". so population of guanches was relatively identical, relatively standarised or non-diverse thus constituting stable "pure guanche" etnos/race/group/. So your PC correct corrects are absurdity in itself. Extending your logic you can prove that Inuit are black. sourcing of this reasoning is below, unless the editors disagree with their own editing.

sourcing A 2003 genetics research article by Nicole Maca-Meyer et al. published in the European Journal of Human Genetics compared aboriginal Guanche mtDNA (collected from Canarian archaeological sites) to that of today's Canarians and concluded that, "despite the continuous changes suffered by the population (Spanish colonisation, slave trade), aboriginal mtDNA (direct maternal) lineages constitute a considerable proportion (42 – 73%) of the Canarian gene pool.

shemyaza

Image removed
The image itself contains a caption identifying it as a reconstruction of Cro-Magnon man, not a Guanche. The Cro-Magnons are just the earliest modern humans in Europe, so I'm kind of skeptical about the claim that the Guanches are particularly similar to Cro-Magnons; in any case, it's definitely not right to use an image of a reconstructed face from Cro-Magnon remains as if it were an image of a Guanche person. It would be equally valid to show the same image and label it "A Frenchman" or "An Englishman." --Reuben 00:26, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Appearance
Who is inventing about appareance? Please.. read books...

Like the Encyclopaedia Britannica? Please do. And please don't vandalise by removing linked English terms such as Cro-Magnon with Spanish/Italian Cromagnoide. Save it for the Spanish language article, where it might actually be understood.

Why this fear of the appearance of the original population? Some of the Canaries islands had people with dark hair, some islands had populations with fair hair.

This is interesting, and can be used to trace their origins.

Why do you wish to suppress this information? Ashamed of your Spanish ancestors behaviour? Don’t be, we are all descended from people who did horrible things; It’s always the victors who get to breed the next generation.

As to the statement that the Guanches still exist in the Canaries, that makes even less sense than saying that the Indians still populate North America. The Guanches had no place to hide from the Spanish.

Look at Argentina: Almost no Indians in their ancestry, just Spaniards and Italians with a smattering of other European and middle eastern people. Why? Just flat grasslands where the indigenous population could not hide from the mounted Spaniards. Then look at mountainous and forested Bolivia; Quite a lot of natives surviving. There you can say that the indigenous people still exist today. Indigenous Guanche people living in the Canary Islands today? Get real.. Please study a little bit and stop liying, everybody is tired of the black legend. In Argentina they killed he indians in the XX century, the spanish did not touch them.Just a small example to start study. [] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Miller33miller (talk • contribs) 01:08, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

OK, slight modification to the last bit. (slightly red ears) This site Aporte genético guanche a los canarios actuales states that DNA testing of the population indicates that 10% of the genes that are only passed down the paternal line are Guanche, and that 30%-40% of the genes that are only passed down the maternal line are guanche. Not sure about the accuracy of the site though.

Assuming the last number is 35% that means that about 22.5% of the genes in any given Canarian are from Guanche ancestors. For those not so good at percentages that means; between a fifth and a quarter of the ancestors (male and female) were Guanche.

Anyway, that percentage does not in anyway support your phrase change from "The Guanches, now extinct as a distinct people" to "The Guanches, now alive in actual canaries". Besides being factualy inaccurate it is fairly sloppy english (said by another non native speaker, now without spelling checker...).

The article goes on to state that what probably hapened was that the Spanish came and killed or enslaved all the males and thereafter took their women. Makes sense. Why bring with you a short frigid Catholic brunette all the way from Spain when you can rape your way through your personal harem of stately blondes. Of course, maybe they were nice about it. I bet some of them got married. This kind of thing has happened countles times before and will happen again. DNA testing of India's population indicates something similar Genetic evidence suggests European migrants may have influenced the origins of India's caste system. And then we have the not very gentle-men really, the Anglo-Saxons Saxon hordes ousted celts. Don't go researching your ancestors to far back, you might not like what you find...

The Europeans did not invent rape. All cultures practiced it. Remember Genghis Khan and the Mongols? They were not very European last time I checked.

again...
I have the enciclopedya brittanica too, but one of our is Canary, and arent you? I born here, I study my history, I speak whit the most important scientists about Guanches of actuallity, you based MY HISTORY, in desfased colonialist texts, maybe you must read cronists and source texts and then study what is truth, and then speak. Im so close to my precolonialist history, and if you arent some kind of scientist resident in canary, I think you cant speak about you dont know. You cant wirte about the history of a country, reading 5 minutes the enciclopedy brittanica.

Cro-Magnon in spanish is Cro-mañon, not cromagnoide, ( cromañoide in spanish ) is used to refeer to a certain genetic tipology.

The problem is the colonialist, who want to "europeist" canary islands, hehe, and there are not berbers blod whit blue eyes? That is the problem, and... what about the guanches hadnt place to hide from spaniards?? Gomera wasnt colonized, for example, to Gran Canaria, come 1000 colonist, and 300 died, 700 colonist and 35000 Canaries, in tenerife become 700 colonist, in a island of 30000 Guanches. Do you think that we are blonds cause europeans... HA HA, some centuries ago from Realejos peace, the most of the island was uncontroled by spaniards, for example, spaniards dont go more far than Güimar in XVI century.

I think you dont know nothing about my history.

http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/web/mleal/articles/africa/24.htm by Garcia Talavera, actual director of the antropology museum of Tenerife. ( Museo de la ciencia y el hombre )

You can see the most recent study made in canary, and the first whit a critteria ( to be grand father and grand matter canaries, and if possible his parents too, grangran father ? )

http://www.azarug.org/debate/viewthread.php?tid=1814

Is a forum post cause you must paid in EFE and "El dia" emerotec.

are you joking?
I dont know why do you want change our history.

1º Who said Guanchis or Guanchos... first time that i hear it, and im from Tenerife... 2º Guanches where the inhabitants of TENERIFE, not the first, cause the werent a homogenous population, Guanches were the mixture of some different berber tribes. 3º Origin urcentain? They are berber. 4º Guanchinet is a corrupted term, is well know that Achineche is the correct name of Tenerife, not Chinech, Chinet or Achinet/ch, I Thin you are not berber filologist, my source is. 5º Viera y Clavijo, inveted the guanches extincionist, no other cronist talk about that... Is scientifical demostred that guanches were the most of the population, and are present in the most of actual population. 6º Most of them where cristianized 7º Mummyes is a incorrect term, taht are called, XAXOS 8º Embalming is a incorrect term, that is called Mirlado 9º Europeans tryed along history, destroy Canary Culture, creating a "particular hate to ours", that guanches were all blond and atll, is a intent of convert guanches to european, and destroy a bit more our real naturally, that have no fundament, in fact is well know, that guanches were of all heigh and colours, like my description, and it is cause berber are so similar, you can see so many berber redhaired or blonds.

Dont be fanatic, dont change the history of others, or maybe I will visit some post about England and say the truth, that Nelson lost his arm in Santa Cruz, against milicians, not spanish army, they were Milicians, the same people who descent from guanches. Spanish wasnt the unique who lost men against us.

Changes to Appearance
The Appearance section of this article has been plagued with a lack of structure for some time. I have tried to organize it thus: 1) first accounts of the Canary Islanders' appearance 2) theories of their origin based on their appearance 3) facts (linguistic and genetic evidence linking at least some of the population to a northern African origin), existence of the oft-mentioned fair traits in modern northern African populations, and a related citation.

Throughout the article, there still remains some rather archaic language stemming from the original Britannica piece dating from about a hundred years ago (Until recently, it read as follows: it is due to the perseverance of D. Aquilino Padran, a priest of Las Palmas, that anything about the inscription on the island Hierro has been brought to light. In 1878 Dr R. Verneau discovered in the ravines of Las Balos some genuine Libyan inscriptions. Without exception the rock inscriptions have proved to be Numidic...). It's nice and flowery and all, but not really Wiki-propriate.

I'm much less concerned with the passions surrounding the racial background of the Canary Islanders than I am with presenting coherently what was observed, what has been theorized, and what has been established as fact. Twalls 07:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

"...however, it is generally accepted by modern Spanish historians that the Guanches as a whole, were dark or tan-skinned, dark-haired and dark-eyed, much like present day North Africans."

I think this statement is problematic. The Guanches as a whole? Which historians claim this? Also, are the historians referred to Spanish, or historians of Spanish history? Is this a question for historians or geneticists? Is there a reason for such a blanket dismissal of the original accounts? Citations, please - if they can make the case, great! Thanks! Twalls

Weaponry
I have changed this section:

1. The weaponry wasn't similar to the southern european paleolithic, but, to north África tradition, adaptated to the canarian enviroment (no metals) and evolutionated under the influence of medieval europeans. 2. There weren't differences in these matters between islands. 3. The weaponry is similar in all islands, but there light difference as i show. 4. No axes in Gran Canaria.

-Fco

disease
Roy Porter suggests that the Guanches had little resistance to European diseases such as smallpox, which the Spanish brought to the islands, and this was a major contributor to their rapid population decline - there appears to be no mention of this in the article 192.250.97.6 11:26, 4 December 2006 (UTC) Chris H 4 Dec 2006
 * This is an excellent point. Thanks for bringing it up! Twalls 23:07, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I have added a brief mention of the role of epidemics in reducing the Guanche population. This point is also discussed in Crosby, Ecological Imperialism.Chris k 00:57, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

"Fair traits" (Appearance and Origins)
The term "fair traits" is a bit puzzling. Fairness can be a trait, but in English you don't usually have "fair traits" or "dark traits." I suspect that the writer means "fair skin and fair hair" or some combination of traits normally associated with a supposed European or "Caucasian" type. This should be clarified with better terminology. Chris k 00:48, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Origin of Guanches
There seems to be alot of confusion and ingorance about this subject in the English wikipedia. If any editors speak Spanish, I suggest you erase the whole relevant section and translate it directly from Spanish wiki which is more accurate and elaborated as well as better sourced.--Burgas00 18:10, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

 * Yeah right, "this!" is more elaborate and well referenced? Permit me to raise an eyebrow in disbelief at your baseless assertion. I further strongly suggest you stop trying to erase sourced sections in English wikipedia and instead try to use some of those sources to get spanish wikipedia up to speed. The only thing of value I found there was this external link, which states things such as: "no debieron de sorprenderse mucho al encontrar a un pueblo rubio, de ojos azules, habitante de las cavernas y viviendo todavía en la Edad de Piedra.", They probably were not very surprised to encounter a people with blonde hair, blue eyes, living in caves at a stone age level.
 * "Ambos grupos, los trogloditas salvajes y los agricultores civilizados, eran rubios, de ojos azules, y de estatura muy alta, como los individuos de más pura raza germánica." Both groups, the hunter-gatherers and the farmers, were blond, with blue eyes, and very high stature, such as individuals of the purer Germanic race. "Cuando los últimos guanches libres ya habían desaparecido y el resto de la población, después de bautizada, se hubo mezclado con los españoles inmigrados, los normandos y los norteafricanos hasta formar un pueblo mestizo todavía bastante rubio y de tez clara." When the last free Guance was dead, and the remaing population had been christened, they were mixed with the immigrant Spaniards, the northeners and north-africans until forming a racially mixed people still today rather fair haired and with clear complexion. The text the seems to go on to list some of the theories of the Guanche origins, invluding the Berber theory. --Stor stark7 Talk 19:19, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I dont know what your level of understanding of Spanish is but that article is a historiography of the debunked myths developed in Europe (largely in pre nazi germany) on the origin of Guanches. It states clearly that all those theories are complete baloney.--Burgas00 19:31, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

As for the complexion of Guanches and modern Canarians: Guanches were a 100% berber population, no credible source advances any other possibility. It is proven by genetics, archeology and linguistics. Guanches were on average a dark haired and skinned people with a relatively large minority of people with fair complexions as is typical of north african populations. However, the frequency of people with these traits was higher than in modern north africa due to: 1) insularity which strengthens recessive genes and thus phenotypes (such as blondism), 2) the absence (until the Spanish conquest) of subsaharan admixture which exists at varying levels in present day North west african populations.

Modern day canarians have a mix of Iberian and Guanche ancestry and a smaller degree of northern european ancestry as a result of immigration from places such as holland, which occurred after the Spanish conquest, aswell as an even smaller level of North African and African ancestry, particularly in the Easternmost islands as a result of slavery. The Spanish element is, nevertheless, the dominant one. --Burgas00 19:44, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

 * The Spanish version is more compact and does make some good points, but saying "la total procedencia del norte de África de la población guanche" is rather assumptive. I think it's safe to state "a significant or majority contribution of Northern African peoples" but you can't say 100% with absolute metaphysical certitude. I will add something about linguistic similarities between Guanche and Berber numbering systems. Twalls 19:49, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Well where else do you think they came from? Or do you think a minority of them just crawled out of the sea? If all sources affirm that guanches were a berber population as proven by every relevant field of science, why imply otherwise? If you say "a majority" you are implying that some of them were not from North Africa which is, in plain language, make-believe. All you will acheive is give support to fantasy-theories on vandals and vikings... --Burgas00 15:09, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

 * If there are theories of Vandal influence, then it is our duty to include them. It is not our task to decide which theory is right, only to collect and present what scholars think. I believe however that the Viking theory is your imagination getting the better of you. Now if you bother reading some of the sources that you tried to erase, you'll note that the DNA evidence points at not one but several migrations of Caucasian peoples from north-Africa, possibly at different times. This would probably explain the presence of different types of aborigines on the Canary islands. Further, the DNA difference shows that although the original Canarians seem to be related with the Berber people of North Africa, there are important differences in their DNA that indicate that todays Berber people in north Africa are not all that closely related to the original North African populations that colonized the Canary islands. Therefore it would be better to say that DNA indicates that the Canary islands were populated by people living in north Africa 2,500 years ago, these ancient North Africans are to some degree related to the modern day Berbers of North Africa.  --Stor stark7 Talk 18:42, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

My friend there ARE no theories on the Vandals there WERE theories on Vandals in the same way that there were theories that the world was flat.

Quoting your source:

At a genetic level, the Berber origin of the Guanches, the aboriginal population of the Canary Islands, and their survival after the Spanish occupation, has been inferred from the high frequency of U6 lineages in its modern population (Table 2), similar to that of North Africa.

I dont understand why you are having so much trouble facing up to established fact.

--Burgas00 19:10, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

 * I see that reading the full text of the source was beyond you. Please try, and maybe you'll understand. --Stor stark7 Talk 19:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

 * I decided to take pity on you, here you have them served.
 * "Two autochthonous derivatives of these clades (U6b1 and U6c1) indicate the arrival of North African settlers to the Canarian Archipelago in prehistoric times, most probably due to the Saharan desiccation. The absence of these Canarian lineages nowadays in Africa suggests important demographic movements in the western area of this Continent."

 * "What remains enigmatic of the indubitable North African prehistoric colonization of the Archipelago is that it was carried out by people whose U6 lineages mainly belonged to the U6b subclade that has only been spotted in very low frequencies in the modern African populations of Morocco, Algeria, Senegal and Nigeria (Table 2). Moreover, the U6b and U6c insular haplotypes belong to the autochthonous U6b1 and U6c1 branches differing by substitutions 16163 and 16129, respectively, from all their African counterparts. As the most probable arrival of the first prehistoric Canarian settlers was around 2,500 ya, it is highly improbable that these mutations occurred on the islands. Therefore, we expected to find these Canarian lineages in some place of Africa. However, after extensive sampling they have still not been detected. It is possible that they are present somewhere in low frequencies but, in any case, this phylogeographic distribution suggests that Northwest Africa suffered important demic displacements in the past."

 * "Two autochthonous U6 lineages (U6b1 and U6c1), present today in the islands, attest the survival of those aboriginal North Africans until nowadays. The fact that these Canarian lineages have not been detected in Africa and that, in contrast to the ubiquitous U6a and U6a1, the U6b and U6c lineages are scarcely spotted in present African populations, may be clues of past important demographic movements in this western area."

 * So Yes, the ancient Canarians are related to the modern Berber, but they also have huge DNA differences indicating that you really cant say that todays Berbers are equal to the people who colonized the islands. There seem to have been huge population changes in North Africa since then. Next time, don't stop reading just because you found something that seemed to be useful to your POV.--Stor stark7 Talk 19:28, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes I have read that article a few months ago and dont worry population genetics is not difficult to understand.

The most common subclade of U6 in the canary islands in U6a which happens to be also the more common in modern north african berbers. The less frequent subclades U6c and u6b as you say are of authoctonous "origin" and have not yet been found in north africa (they probably will be at one point). This means that berbers started arriving 2500 years ago (which is not long ago in berber history and is nothing in population genetics) and continued arriving in more recent times.

Thus saying that Berbers are "to a degree" related to Guanches is somewhat of an understatement. Guanches were Berbers... full stop. That some of the less frequent lineages of (Berber) haplotype U6 found among Guanches are no longer common in North Africa is not contradictory to this straightforward fact.

And please show me the "huge genetic differences" between Guanches and Berbers. It seems from this statement that you do not have much understanding of genetics.

--Burgas00 19:39, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

 * 1. The Proto-Berbers that composed the Guanche arrived 2,500 years ago. The only berbers that "continued arriving in more recent times" were as slaves after the spanish colonisation.
 * 2. When you say that .."2500 years ago (which is not long ago in Berber history and is nothing in population genetics" it is obvious that you haven't gotten the point of the text. The proto-Berbers that contributed to the Guances were in time at least partly displaced from north Africa by other population groups. We are talking war and population replacements here, not the steady mutation rate of a population staying put at one place without outside interference.

"Two autochthonous derivatives of these clades (U6b1 and U6c1) indicate the arrival of North African settlers to the Canarian Archipelago in prehistoric times, most probably due to the Saharan desiccation. The absence of these Canarian lineages nowadays in Africa suggests important demographic movements in the western area of this Continent." The Sahara was dessicated by 2,500 BC, so there's a possibility the 2,500 "ya" is supposed to mean BC and not years ago. Since you seem to claim to be so good at population genetics, please explain how we are supposed to interpret important demographic movements. Other than that the people who used to live there don't live there no more. Just as most of the people who used to live in Argentina don't live there no more, although they probably to some degree can be traced in the genes of the current population.

"Moreover, the U6b and U6c insular haplotypes belong to the autochthonous U6b1 and U6c1 branches differing by substitutions 16163 and 16129, respectively, from all their African counterparts. As the most probable arrival of the first prehistoric Canarian settlers was around 2,500 ya, it is highly improbable that these mutations occurred on the islands. Therefore, we expected to find these Canarian lineages in some place of Africa. However, after extensive sampling they have still not been detected. It is possible that they are present somewhere in low frequencies but, in any case, this phylogeographic distribution suggests that "Northwest Africa suffered important demic displacements in the past."

"''In summary, the phylogeography, nucleotide diversity, and coalescence ages of U6 lineages show that this clade came back to Africa in Paleolithic times. Its most probable origin was the Near East and not Europe, and since then, its presence in North Africa has been permanent. The focus of the first African expansion, detected by the spread of U6a, was Northwest Africa reaching the Near East also in the Paleolithic. The posterior U6a1 radiation most probably occurred in Northeast Africa again extending to the Near East. This movement is correlated in time with the attributed origin and expansion of Afroasiatic languages. This U6a1 wave also arrived to the Maghrib, the Northwest African margin, where the more localized U6b and U6c lineages were spreading. This movement is in time frame with the Capsian culture. Based on archaeological and anthropological grounds, it has been speculated that these incomers slowly pushed away the aboriginal residents [2]. It could be in that time when U6b reached the south of the Iberian Peninsula from where it was displaced to the north where it persists today. The U6b and U6c diaspora also reached the Atlantic fringe from where they sailed to the Canary Islands. '''Two autochthonous U6 lineages (U6b1 and U6c1), present today in the islands, attest the survival of those aboriginal North Africans until nowadays. The fact that these Canarian lineages have not been detected in Africa and that, in contrast to the ubiquitous U6a and U6a1, the U6b and U6c lineages are scarcely spotted in present African populations, may be clues of past important demographic movements in this western area'."

The people who colonized the Canaries are mainly gone, replaced in North Africa by immigration or ethnic cleansing (albeit by a population with similar background), what remains in North Africa is at most their genetic cousins. I would liken it to the replacement of the Germans of Königsberg with the Russians of Kaliningrad. Being europeans of Indo-european origins the two populations probably share the same level of DNA similarities as the guanche and modern berbers, but they are not the same.

Just calling the Guanche "Berbers" is plainly wrong, as it implies a one-to one relationship between the ancient and modern populations. Proto-berber is much better.--Stor stark7 Talk 22:35, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Just a few points:
 * 1) . The Guanches began arriving in several waves between the 5th century BC and the beginning of the Christian era. If you do not know even this I don't know why you are even discussing on this article.
 * 2) . The desertification of the Sahara was an ongoing process not a sudden occurrence and the two factors which are used to explain the Berber colonisation of the island was this process and the push of the Roman Empire.
 * 3) . What remains in North Africa were people with berber genetic markers (Y-chromosome haplotype E-M81 and MtDna U6) and speaking a Berber language. Why one or two particular Mtdna U6 lineages are no longer found in continental Africa is not enough to assume "ethnic cleansing". Perhaps it was never that common to begin with.
 * 4) . Guanches spoke a berber language. Berbers are extremely diverse linguistically, but all their languages are related and all are considered Ethnic Berbers.
 * 5) . Any population on a continent may have suffered changes over the past thousand years. Tuareg berbers have greatly mixed with Subsaharan Africans and Algerian Qabyles have mixed with Mediterranean Europeans and Arabs. This does not mean that they cease to be berbers. How can the fact that Guanches had NOT mixed with other peoples until the arrival of the Spaniards make them less Berber? It is nonsensical. In any case they are more berber!
 * 6) . Finally, I have nothing against the use of the word proto berber, but such a word tends to denote much more distant relationship than the historical (rather than prehistorical) link between North African and Guanche berbers. Its like saying that Jews during the Roman Empire were Proto-Jews!!!

Thats pretty much it. Read some more on the subject and, unless you have some POV which you would like to impose, I am sure you will eventually agree with me. --Burgas00 00:14, 9 April 2007 (UTC) --Burgas00 00:14, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm wondering why you state "Guanches began arriving in several waves between the 5th century BC and the beginning of the Christian era." Why 500 BC as a start date? I've heard much earlier dates -- ca. 3000 BC. Furthermore, the Sahara started drying out much earlier - I don't think you can exclude the possibility of the Canaries being settled at any time from the last LGM forward - it's just that evidence of larger scale settlements starts showing up in the first millenium BC. Proto-Berber is probably more accurate, but it would be even more accurate to say Guanches and Berbers shared common ancestry. To say they were "Berber" would be off temporally, because you would be ascribing the Guanche peoples with a nationality that probably didn't exist at the time of initial settlement. It's not at all like saying Jews during the Roman empire were proto-Jews. To say Guanches were Berbers would be to claim that the Vandals or Visigoths were Germans. How do you feel about Mechta-Afalou? Cheers, Twalls 03:37, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Twalls 03:37, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Well there is no evidence whatsoever of any human presence in the canary islands before that time so I assume, as do all the other sources, that that is the time of their first arrival! If you want to speculate on possible earlier arrivals that is simply OR. Considering that Guanches were separated from other Berbers between 2500 and 1500 years ago, the paralelism with the Jewish diaspora is quite adequate, except that unlike the Jews, the Berbers did not mix with non-berber peoples until the arrival of the Spanish. Vandals and Visigoths were not Germans but they were Germanic. Saying Berber is akin to saying Germanic, Slavic or Turkic. Have a look at the subdivisions of the Berber languages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_languages

Berber is not a "nationality" it is an ethnicity which is subdivided into a number of subgroups spread throughout northern Africa. They call themselves Amazight and consider Guanches as a Berber people. They were simply unfortunate to not recieve a single state of their own in the period of French decolonisation.

As for Mechta Afalou and the Capsian diffusion:

Modern Berbers are carriers of the Y-chromosome E3b Haplotype E-M81 originating in East Africa around 10,000 years ago and the much older MtDna haplogroup U6 (of Paleolithic origin) which probably originated somewhere in Western Eurasia. U6 has thus been in Northwest Africa for over 30,000 years. The presence of E-M81 would correspond with the Capsian diffusion moving Westwards from East Africa and displacing the "Mechta Afalou" while mantaining the female carried line between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago. It is thought that it was the Capsian culture which brought the modern Afroasiatic berber languages to North Western Africa and these people, at this time, could be rightly called proto-berbers.

The Guanches are carriers of both Y-chromosome (Capsian) E-M81 and Paleolithic MtDNA U6, just as are modern berbers in Africa. Both are the result of the mixture of these two peoples 10,000 years ago, and both are (or were) as such "modern berbers".

--Burgas00 11:53, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 1 You stated that This means that berbers started arriving 2500 years ago (which is not long ago in berber history and is nothing in population genetics) and continued arriving in more recent times.. If you're going to get unpleasant, I might take you more seriously if you do so while getting your facts straight, it might give you more credibility. If you want to pretend that you by more recent times meant by the time of Christ, then go right ahead.

 * 2 According to Sahara the drying out started by 6000 BC, and by 2,500 BC Northen Sahary was as dry as today while southern Sahara became desertified more slowly. You saying people hung around in the desert for 2000 years before deciding, hey, lets go to the islands? And if contact with Rome pushed them out, how come they had such low technical development?

 * 3 The U6 lineage is found from the Near East, to North West Africa, including the Sahel-belt and Ethiopia, and also in Sisily, Spain and Portugal. Are all these people then Berber, from the Syrians and Ethiopians to the Kenyans? Having the U6 does not make you Berber, it just makes you related to the populations of North africa and the middle east. Besides, the influence of Berber populations seems to have been large after the Spanish colonisation. As this site points out "Berber slaves arrived in the eastern Canary Islands, the `moriscos' who served as crewmembers on Canary ships.  By the end of the 16th century, it is estimated that the `moriscos' constituted a majority of the population of Lanzarote." Also your comment "Why one or two particular Mtdna U6 lineages are no longer found in continental Africa is not enough to assume "ethnic cleansing". Perhaps it was never that common to begin with. ". If they were not very common to begin with, how come the Canary frequency of U6b1 is as high as 8.22%?. As you've pointed out, 2500 years is not much time for genetic drift to eliminate it in the north african populations. U6b is found in 13% of canarians, but only very rarely in populations in Morocco, Algeria, Senegal and Nigeria. That is quite a lot of difference, no matter how you try to downplay it.

 * 4 Language: Sure, most seem to agree that the randon scraps of Guanche that remain point to relation with Berber languages. Even if that turns out to be correct; So what? As far as I know most ethnic Berber speak Arabic nowadays. Speaking a language doesn't automatically mean you belong to a specific ethnic group, languages and genes need not travel together. The Indo-european language family is spread in Eurasia from Iceland through Persia to India. How closely related are all those people do you think just because they share a language with common roots? Or the Finnish and Hungarian peoples who speak a language from an asian language family that stretches all the way through siberia. Just because their languages have a common ancestry I would be careful about calling a Finnish person Asian, especially considering the strong component of Swedish genes in the population.

 * 5 In responce to this " Thus saying that Berbers are "to a degree" related to Guanches is somewhat of an understatement. Guanches were Berbers... full stop. That some of the less frequent lineages of (Berber) haplotype U6 found among Guanches are no longer common in North Africa is not contradictory to this straightforward fact. And please show me the "huge genetic differences" between Guanches and Berbers. It seems from this statement that you do not have much understanding of genetics.". First, as you should know by now, U6 is not exclusively "Berber". If you had actually read the text you'd know that, especially with your trumpeted "genetics knowledge". Second, U6 is present in the canarians in the following proportions 1.3%, 13.0% and 3.3% for U6a, U6b and U6c. I would say that that makes the virtual absence of U6b in Berber populations quite significant, as did those who wrote the study. I'm sadened to se you use the words "That some of the less frequent lineages...", when those are in fact the most frequent lineages. I'm however glad you saw som sence and accepted that the Berber populations have changed by mixing with other peoples, but simply mixing just lowers the frequency. To have the most common one in the founding population (U6b = 13%) virtually dissapear is indicative of more serious population changes. Third: "In any case they are more berber!" Thay is just plain wrong. This sounds like we are talking of a population in noth africa that has been negatively diluted. The Guaches came from a population in North africa that was then or sometime thereafter displaced. The populations that displaced the founders then mixed with other populations, creating the modern distinct Berber peoples of Today. There were no "Berber" in the modern sence when the Canaries were populated!

--Stor stark7 Talk 20:10, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 6 The DNA shows that there is quite a distance between them, even though they are related. As to the Jews, tha analogy does not apply. Judaism is largely a religion, no matter how much nazis and other have tried to make a "race" issue of it. There are ethnicly distinct groups of jews, with shared DNA characteristics (such as hereditary diceases), but I strongly doubt that the DNA of the modern day jews who ended up in Europe has much in common with the Jews who left Israel 2000 years ago. For example, as the study says, the north European Ashkenazic Jews picked up the U6 during their stay in Spain. No group is insolar. Genetically speaking I would guess that it would infact be correct from a hereditary sence to call the original jews proto-jews, who then branched out into various jewish subtypes such as the Ashkenazic, if it werent for the fact that it is mainly a religion!!! (I even heard somewhere, probably completely baseless, that the "jewish nose" was in fact picked up in Armenia on their way to Europe).

Stor Sark I don't want to get into a fight over this and you are right that at times my tone may have sounded unpleasant. Albeit, so has yours and from the very beginning of this discussion. First of all I want to admit that you are right, I did make a mistake confusing the different lineages of U6.

Responding to your points one by one:

 * 1) Yes I did mean up until the beginning Christian era, evidently.
 * 2) The issue of the lack of navigational skills and low level of technological advance is a mystery. One theory is that they are the descendants of North African prisoners of the Romans and/or the Numidian Kingdom of Juba I. This would explain how they got to the islands while not posessing navigational skills.
 * 3) The typically berber marker U6 is found throughout the extremely wide area of North Africa where Berbers historically lived. Its presence, at lower frequencies, in adjoining areas is only a natural result of historical population exchanges. Its presence in Spain is probably the result of both the Capsian diffusion during the Neolithic as well as the Islamic colonisation of Spain, fundamentally carried out by Berbers from North Africa.
 * 4) Speaking Berber is the ONLY thing which defines modern berber ethnicity. All North Africans (including Arabic speakers) largely share berber genetic markers but only Berber speakers (there are between 14 and 25 million of them throughout North Africa) are Berbers. Berber, as I have mentioned before, is not a language family equivalent to "IndoEuropean" as you say. The equivalent to IndoEuropean would be "Afro Asiatic" which includes the Berber languages, the Semitic languages (Arabic, hebrew etc...), Chadic, Cushitic and Omotic languages among others. The Berber language of families is akin to saying Romance languages for IndoEuropeans. There are 6 known Berber languages: These would be Guanche, Qabyle, Tamacheq, Zenaga, Tuareg, Northern Berber (Tamazight) and Eastern Berber.
 * 5) Maybe so but U6 is a northafrican berber marker. Which berber tribe they came from (North Africa is a big place and there are many of them) is a different question. Although I concede that there is much to talk about on the origin of these particular lineages of U6b and U6c, I doubt they were ever very common in Northern Africa and were perhaps very isolated lineages in some coastal settlement, explaining their absence today.
 * 6) Yes there are differences between modern day berbers (you only have to compare a Qbyle from Eastern Algeria with a Tuareg in Niger), again because North Africa is a very big place and different berber tribes have been in contact with different peoples and civilizations.

I still dont understand the logic for denying Guanches Berber ethnicity if they spoke Berber and had North African Genetic markers... --Burgas00 00:16, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Look, I don't want a fight either, and I appologice if I came out to strong, it's just that wikipedia seems to be littered with trolls that try to pretend to be "reasonable". (I do admit that I seem to have an inclination to end up in controversial pages to where trolls tend to flock). I don't deny the berber relationship, but I think proto-berber is a far better term for the founding population. Not even the Berber seem to call themselves Berber by the way. The DNA article mentions large demic displacements (or thereabouts, cant be bothered to look up the exact words right now) in the population that created the guanches. That does not seem to fit in with some coastal setlements that dissapeared, especially not since we seem to be talking about migrations that occured to the Canaries over a period of 500 years. Seems the setling population would have had to be larger and more robust than some coastal villages. As to what constitutes a Berber, some would dissagree with you Arabized Berber, the people seem to be roughly the same, just that the have taken the Arab culture as their own. But never mind, I can't be bothered anymore. Call them Berber if you will --Stor stark7 Talk 21:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

 * Both of you have made good contributions on the talk page and have made very good points, although I would lean towards using the term proto-Berber. I would also caution against referring to Guanche as a Berber language, although this might be a little bit complicated. While the few bits we know of do share affinities with different Berber languages, they also share elements with other Afro-Asiatic languages not found in Berber. To me, this would seem to indicate an origin that may predate the formation of later Berber languages. In fact, its pure Berber affiliation is questioned by some linguists (not necessarily by me - with some reservations, I think it might very well be a Berber or proto-Berber tongue). Also, it stands to be pointed out that the Lybico-Berber script found in the form of petroglyphs on a number of islands is not necessarily associated with the Guanches.

 * My surmisal is that there was an original proto-Berber population that came after the Sahara started drying out, followed much later by waves of visitation and settlement in larger numbers by other Mediterraneans and north Africans (Phoenicians, Numidians, Romans, Berbers). A big question that remains is when exactly did migration/visitation of the islands cease. To what extent did the visitors affect island culture? Did they impose their Berber language on the proto-Berber Guanches, much like the Norse coming to England and imposing many elements of one Germanic tongue on top of another, effectively merging the two? There are also petroglyphs (found in different places than the Lybico-Berber script) of boats with masts... things the Guanches did not have at the time of Spanish colonization.

 * The bottom line is that we don't know for certain all the answers to these questions, and it would be wise to choose our terms carefully and be measured in our conclusions. The Guanches were killed or assimilated, and studies of their culture, etc. have always been sparse. For God's sake, the majority of the Guanche mummies were ground up to be sold as aphrodesiacs! Thanks, Twalls 00:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok I agree. The only reason I really intervened in this article is that I was afraid too much weight was being given to now discredited theories. Many of these theories had, in the past, strong political implications. Albeit, I am neither Canarian nor berber and certainly not Guanche ;-) but intellectual rigour in the article's content must be mantained.--Burgas00 21:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of Paragraph and Sources in Origins Section
The FamilyTreeDNA, Biomed Central, archaeology.org and two Columbus' journal excerpts references are hardly garbage, Burgas00, but yes, the others are of little value. They also are references for other items in the main article, not just that paragraph. They should be properly formatted as per Wikpedia style. I think the paragraph should be put back in, even if it needs to be re-written. I'll also try reformat the better links as mentioned. Twalls 23:53, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I think more serious sources can be found, although I may have missed some good ones. I only read the first 4 and then gave up and deleted them all. --Burgas00 20:02, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Pliny, Hanno and the mauritanians
Pliny don't talk about Hanno but about the mauretanian expedition of the I century BC, as you can read here:

http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/lapalma/pliny.html

--Bentaguayre 21:37, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Arrival
Today any author defend any date before 500 BC, there are two main hypothesis, phoenician colonization around 500 BC, or roman colonization after 200 BC. In the past some authors proposed a 1000 or before date but with the time and the dates avalaible this hypothesis have been taking off. --Bentaguayre 16:52, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

 * I'm sorry, but I don't completely understand what you're saying. Phoenician colonization and Roman colonization are not mutually exclusive, nor are they synonymous with arrival of the Guanches to the islands. From the citations I've seen, artifacts have been dated to circa 1000 BC. These are the earliest finds to date, although there could have been earlier arrivals. Twalls 19:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

The first without doubt sign of human activity in the islands dat of around 250 BC with possible evidences of around 500, and an old date today put off from Tenerife around 800 BC. Anything from beforr those dates. Phoenician and roman hypothesis of course aren't mutually exclusive (some people defend an only roman hypothesis), but the main and original hypothesis was phoenician or roman, with many variations after that. --Bentaguayre 23:43, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

 * I think we need to be inclusive of the earlier dates because that is where the research is pointing. The ancestors of the Guanches may have very well arrived earlier than the assumed dates. Of course, there are theories that the Phoenicians or the Romans brought the ancestors of the islanders as slaves or prisoners, but then again these are just competing theories which are no more valid than the theory that they came on their own at an earlier date. I leave you with this quote from Jose Garcia's paper, which I think gives us a more objective perspective...

"Sin embargo, las fechas más antiguas obtenidas se remontan al primer milenio AC17. Así, se ha documentado la presencia humana en Tenerife, en los siglos VIII AC18, VI AC19, IV AC20 y I AC21. En Gran Canaria, en el siglo III AC22. Y en La Palma, en el siglo III AC23. En el resto del Archipiélago las fechas obtenidas se adentran todas en nuestra era (Arco et al. 1992). En base a estos datos y teniendo en cuenta que las fechas encontradas para Tenerife, Gran Canaria y La Palma corresponden a estadios de asentamiento con una adaptación al medio relativamente avanzada la cronología que se maneja actualmente sitúa el primer poblamiento de las Islas Canarias a principios del primer milenio AC, sin descartar la segunda mitad del milenio anterior (Onrubia 1992)."

 * Thanks, Twalls 14:31, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I have seen those dates right, and as i said before many authors don't agree with the very first dates of Tenerife, but is better for the article accept it because some others agree, so i recommend to show the mainstream view of 500 BC and to add possibly before, but not before 1000 BC like was in the article in the past, because anybody will support it today (in the past the main supporter was Celso M. de Guzmán). regards --Bentaguayre 19:02, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Guanches, a unique race that is extinct now
When the first spaniards reached the canary islands, the local guanches showed amazement and surprise because they believed that they were the only living humans in the world and rest of the world had sunk beneath the sea. Many people believe that canary islands, aswell as the azores and cape verde Islands are the remaining hilltops of the lost continent of 'Atlantis'. When the spanish arrived on the canaries, they found large 'cyclopean' buildings, but the locals only knew how to make huts out of straw and wood. They were also small pyramids and even the mummies were found! The spanish gave the description of guanche women as follows:'the native women are fair in complexion, with blonde hair and blue eyes and they are as beautiful as the European women' Another fact is that their language and rituals were very different from the world. Maybe there was a 'lost continent' in the atlantic, and guanches were the descendants of the civilisation of that island, but they lost the knowledge that their forefathers had. Well many historeans say that 'Atlantis' was just a myth, although no evidence has been found but the possibilty of a sunken continent can exist, because after the ice age the sea level did gradually rise, another possibilty is that there was a sudden rise in the level due to a presusmed meteor that struck the ice caps(that resulted in sudden melt down) or the continent itself, another theory is the 'shifting of poles'. Scientists suggest that early poles had different locations and there was a sudden change in the poles of the earth resulting in mass flooding of the earth, creating a worldwide myth of noah and his counterparts(gilgamesh,manu,aztlan,atlantis e.t.c). According to me the guanches are not related to Europeans or the Africans but instead they were a unique race. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.99.178.96 (talk) 07:02, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

 * Thanks. But who said that "Guanches never interacted with other people before the Spaniards"? -- FayssalF  -  Wiki me up®  07:24, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

 * Well, I don't know about the Atlantis talk but it is true that at the LGM sea levels were lower and the Canaries were that much closer to the continent at the time, theoretically making travel there much easier (making an arrival prior to 500 BC much more likely - I've cited studies that indicate the first millennium BC or earlier).

 * The idea that Canarian natives were another race is problematic, since using race to strictly delineate populations is no longer regarded as very meaningful. Genetic studies so far have indicated genetic proximity to North African/Mediterranean populations. They could have arrived in waves, been brought there, had some outside contributions over time, or the population could have come from an uneven mix of all of these. The problem is that there is a lack of comprehensive study and thorough samplings. Twalls (talk) 16:04, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

 * Let me clarify what I wrote - I don't mean to imply that since sea levels were lower during the Last Glacial Maximum, it was easier to reach the Canaries in 1500 or 1000 or 500 BC, dates long past that time. What the lower sea levels mean is that the islands could have been readily accessible in the more distant past, i.e. 5000 BC and before. We can't exclude the possibility of early visitation. The point is, we don't know who the first humans were to set foot on the islands. Twalls (talk) 01:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

New editor and minor edits
I have just put in a citation in the History section (to Pliny, Natural History). I am English and live on Tenerife and am very interested in the Guanches. I've also put an external link to a local website which has a great deal of - unfortunately unreferenced - information about the Guanches. I'm new to Wikipedia editing, so do excuse me if I've done anything incorrectly - tell me, and I will try to do better next time!--Guanche Lady (talk) 09:12, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

 * Well, we look forward to your contributions! Your cautious approach shows you'll be a good editor. Twalls (talk) 18:21, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

 * Thanks for those kind words! Something that I might be able to do usefully is to translate some of the info that is on the Spanish Wikipedia site. I know that this was suggested earlier but, as I've yet to read all this talk page (my own PC is down with a virus - I'm connecting via a friend's who is letting me use his for an hour or so for a few vital things), I don't know if anyone has begun working on this. If they have and would like a collaborator, I'm here! I'm not sure how Wikipedia would assess my level of Spanish, as I've learnt it informally. I certainly wouldn't feel competant to translate from English into Spanish, but the Spanish Guanche pages seem to be within my level of competance to translate into English.--Guanche Lady (talk) 09:47, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

 * mencey links back to exactly the same place in this article... Paul S (talk) 02:10, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Gods
I believe that deberia someone to edit the article of the gods: Achamán, Chaxiraxi, Guayota and Magec, aquie I leave some information them of them:

Achamán: Is the name started to the supreme god of the people guanche of Original inhabitant of the Canary Isles to the island of Tenerife.

Chaxiraxi: Is the name original inhabitant of the Canary Isles of an aboriginal goddess, who means in Castilian Madre del Sol. It is the name that receives in 1430 the image of the Virgin of appeared Candelaria this year in Güímar, in the island of Tenerife (Canaries, Spain). The goddess Chaxiraxi was one of the principal goddesses of the pantheon original inhabitant of the Canary Isles.

Guayota: Was the name that was receiving one of the mythological malignant entities in which there believed the original inhabitants of the Canary Isles, former settlers of Canaries. It was the principal malignant deity of the original inhabitants of the Canary Isles, the demon. To Guayota it his(her,your) demons' huésted was represented often as a black dog accompanied of the Tibicenas.

Magec: Was the god of the Sun and the light for the former settlers of the Canary archipelago, the original inhabitants of the Canary Isles. It is a question of one of the principal divinities.

I hope that someone edits it, me harian a great favor. Regards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.39.250.245 (talk) 17:37, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Anachronism in the Intro
"Europeans saw their culture as being neolithic when Europeans colonized the Canary Islands in the Middle Ages." It's not very likely that people in the middle ages saw the culture as "neolithic" when the concept and the word hadn't been invented yet. I don't see much point in saying what medieval Europeans thought about them anyway, especially without a citation. I'm going to clean up some of the English too, though there are some places where the wording is totally incomprehensible and I can't figure out what it was supposed to mean. Tarchon (talk) 03:24, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

 * The entry originally said something else and it was partially changed without noting this fact. This happens quite often on Wikipedia. Previously, the entry said the Guanches were at a Stone Age or neolithic level of development when they were encountered by continental Europeans; it didn't say the Europeans who discovered them described them as neolithic. I agree about the incomprehensible recent additions. I would have lent a hand but I've been out of commission for the last few weeks. Thanks, Twalls (talk) 21:55, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Guayota is the king of evil geniuses.
See it on the page in Spanish and their religion, also is called Guanche Mythology: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guayota

 * My friend - A genie es un ser fantastico. A genius es un persona con mucha inteligencia. Twalls (talk) 13:37, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Aboriginal
The Guanches were described as Aboriginal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.40.238.8 (talk) 14:28, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Animism
The religion or mythology guanche was animistic. And I think it should do a special article on the mythology Guanche, because it is very complex.

- Guanches and North Africa were polytheistic like the rest of mediterranean. There's no trace of animism.--Léandros (talk) 12:07, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

incorrect spelling
There are many spelling errors throughout this entire article. I would assume that when an article is written for public use to gain knowledge, the person writting it should double check their work. Little things like that make me question the information that I am reading.

Undoing edit revision 662515095 by 88.10.71.134
I have undone the above revision. The information appears to be well-intentioned, but there are serious language problems with it, to the point of incoherence. Sample sentences:

It is a little known feature of the aboriginals, but it has proven both archaeologically as chronic who performed both animal sacrifices and human sacrifices.

So in Tenerife during the summer solstice, the Guanches were accustomed to slay livestock and arrogarlo part of a bonfire until the smoke rise to the sky. 850 C (talk) 02:11, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

 * I've already arranged.--83.51.156.252 (talk) 14:59, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

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Removing matrilineality from this article
I am actually undoing (part of) an edit by User:Bentaguayre done at 12:49, 24 November 2010, where that editor inserted the phrase "by matrilineality" in this Guanches article's section "Political system", without providing the required source reference.

I have Googled this topic, Guanches, thoroughly, plus checking Library of Congress Country Studies's avenues, The World Factbook's avenues, and much more. I am unable to find any real or actual sources for matrilineality among the Guanches, who effectively were wiped out by the Spanish conquest of the Canary Islands in 1494-96, more than 500 years ago. The above-mentioned editor presumably was similarly unsuccessful, but was willing to violate Wikipedia's requirements for reliability of its encyclopedic information. I myself need and support the reliability of WP's information, and am glad that most editors do. Thus I am removing the unreliable phrase. If that editor happens to be descended from the Guanches, they perhaps could provide that information instead of the usual source reference, but they did not. That editor inserted the phrase without any support whatsoever. For7thGen (talk) 19:49, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, citation has been provided. You can find tons of them in Google Books. --Bentaguayre (talk) 22:02, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

 * , could you please cite it properly? Just an url isn't enough. I'll post guidance to your talk page. Doug Weller  talk 12:09, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Okay, Bentaguayre did provide a good 2014 book on current archaeology research in the Canary Islands, as his/her source ref, satisfying WP requirements just fine, with the help of other WP editors to get this Google Books source working well. The 2014 book simply makes the matrilineality statement, without any support of course, but that provides the only reliability possible in this case. So I am content, and the topic is closed. Now I'll undo my Guanches deletion in the Matrilineality article as well. For7thGen (talk) 11:42, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Guanches


text:
Talk:Victor of Aveyron

Previous discussions without headers
Does anyone know what parts of the movie diverge in important ways from Victor's real life? Here are a few conflicts:

 * 1) In the movie,v Victor never managed to escape captivity until he'd been in training with Itard for several months.
 * 2) In the movie, Victor has a much greater mastry over the spelling L-A-I-T than the pronunciation of lait. (He can pronounce it very strangely, but tends to do so only after he gets milk; he never uses it to request milk.)
 * 3) This article implies that people were, in general, nice to Victor. The movie implies that, though Itard and a few others cared for him, most people thought of him as a kind of circus freak, and refused to let him be.
 * 4) In the movie, Victor emerged from the woods and had to walk on all fours, and had to be taught to "walk upright". Did this really happen?
 * 5) Do the journal entries that Itard reads in the movie correspond to a real journal he kept? If so, how faithful are the journal entries we see the Itard character write during the film?

--Ryguasu 02:20 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

 * Yes, to the best of my knowledge, Victor was inclined to walk low to the ground, rather than upright. I've never seen the movie, and am not an avid study of Victor, so I couldn't say whether the movie's portrayal is accurate.  It was considered 'disappointing' at the time, as walking on 2 legs, upright, was seen as something uniquely human.  Between Victor's behaviour, and the discovery of Orangutans, that hypothesis was completely blown out of the water.
 * Please see this Saskatchewan Central i-School page for a full description of the early (pre-Itard) interactions with the boy. Although the commentary states that the boy walked upright, it makes no quotation to support this. In one quotation it says that he "stands four feet one inch tall", but again there is no reason to suppose that he preferred to walk erect from this. Still, I would say that if he did have a stooped gait, "walk low to the ground" or have quadrupedal motion, this would be remarked upon. Absence of comment would seem to be in favour of a normal gait. --Gruffling (talk) 16:48, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * As for Lait, Victor was never much of a speaker. Itard demonstrated that Victor was learning to listen and understand, to recognise and to read, but Victor never said more than a few words, and those were infrequent.  It's somewhat common for individuals without a primary language to have difficulty expressing anything more than the information about the present, or the very recent past.  Language tends to be more reactive than proactive when learned late, initially, though as Genie taught us, the information and desires are always there.  Genie is particularly notorious for, despite speaking significantly more than Victor, communicating her wants non-verbally.
 * Itard kept regular journal entries, and used them to write one, then another report. I could say 2 reports, but it's important to note that each was distinct, and spaced apart.  The movie is, to my understanding, based wholly, and fairly accurately, on the information contained within the first report.  The ending is still criticised somewhat, but at the time, things seemed pretty optimistic about Victor.  Shortly afterwards, though, Victor's progress rapidly dwindled, and Itard's second report is much more negative, and he recommends ending the study.  One of the key bits of information to remember is that at this point, Victor had just hit puberty.  14 perhaps?  I can't remember, but in any case, this is something he has in common with Genie.  Inappropriate public masturbation.  Itard would bleed Victor to 'help' deal with the sexual furor.  That's the most striking example, but just keep in mind, as with Genie, there are many more associated changes with adolescence that can make a youth challenging.

 * The above is based on recalled information from the documentary about feral children covering Victor and Genie, and Genie: A Scientific Tragedy by Russ Rymer, and some bits and pieces from Psychology textbooks. Again, I've never even read Itard's reports, so I'd take the above with a grain of salt.  Hope this helps, for all that it's about statements over 4 years old.  Im-Mersion

 * See Roger Shattuck's The Forbidden Experiment: the Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron (1980; paperback 1981), pp. 228-34, for a sustained discussion of the differences between the film and the historical record. Mark K. Jensen (talk) 22:16, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Name
Please note who named him Victor 06:52, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Content Lifting From The Secret of the Wild Child
A lot of this page's content sounds very similar to how it is presented in The Secret of the Wild Child, a NOVA documentary on Genie. A transcript of the documentary is available here:

To skip to the section about Victor, one may copy/paste "STACY KEACH: For the first time in her life" in their browser's find function. -Martinman 03:51, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Plagiarism is bad, but libel is worse. There are only two sentences that are at all similar in these works:

 * "Shortly after Victor was found, a local abbot and biology professor, Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre, examined him."
 * "Shortly after the boy was captured, a biology professor took a very careful look at him, name of Bonaterre."

 * "He removed the boy's clothing and led him outside into the snow, where, far from being upset, Victor began to frolic about in the nude, clearly accustomed to exposure and cold."
 * "One day, he took him and took off all his clothes, and the boy was thrilled to have his clothes taken off, and he started leading him into the outdoors, and it was surrounded by snow at that time. And Victor, far from protesting, was filled with joy."

 * This story may be apocryphal. Harlan Lane, whose Nova interview you suggest has been plagiarized, included what he claimed to be the first English translation of Bonnaterre's "Historical Notice of the Sauvage de l'Aveyron" in his 1979 book "The Wild Boy of Aveyron", but there is no mention of this particular experiment, and the only similar anecdote is Itard's, taken from "An Historical Account of the Discovery and Education of a Savage Man".
 * "One morning, after a heavy fall of snow, as soon as he awaked, he uttered a cry of joy, leaped from his bed, ran to the window, afterwards to the door, going backwards and forwards, from one to the other, with the greatest impatience, and, at length, escaped half-dressed into the garden. There he exhibited the utmost emotions of pleasure; he ran, rolled himself in the snow, and taking it up by handfuls, devoured it with an incredible avidity."

 * I suspect both authors are relying on some third undisclosed source for this story. However, it's beyond me how you decided that this constitutes plagiarism.

 * You'd best not cast stones, young scholar, unless and until you've done your homework. Yappy2bhere (talk) 06:45, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Posthumous commentary: Victor and the critical period for language acquisition
To say that Victor is evidence of anything in the question of whether a critical period exists for language acquisition is simply wrong. He may likely have had an underlying organic deficit, it's not known how old he was when he was abandoned or when he was found, and he had obviously been abused before he was abandoned. Certainly he's influenced the thinking of philosophers and linguists in his day, but not in the way that was stated. Yappy2bhere (talk) 07:20, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Later life?
The article currently takes us up until 1805. If Victor passed away in 1828, what transpired in final 23 years? Morganfitzp (talk) 01:44, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
 * As I understand it, he lived the rest of his life, mute, forgotten by the rest of the world, in the doctor's home, looked after by the housekeeper.

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"Influence of colonialism" section
This section is totally speculative and irrelevant.98.167.42.163 (talk) 15:55, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

 * Agreed that this section needs work. There is one citation there, but I have added citation needed tags to some of the other statements which come after the citation. I think that if this section was sourced properly, it would have more validity within the article. It should also be noted that the corresponding article in French makes no mention of this idea. Redtree21 (talk) 12:06, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Victor of Aveyron


text:
Rumours (album)

Rumours is the eleventh studio album by the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 4 February 1977 in the United States and on 11 February 1977 in the United Kingdom by Warner Bros. Records. Largely recorded in California in 1976, it was produced by the band with Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. The recording sessions took place as the band members dealt with breakups and struggled with heavy drug usage, both of which shaped the album's direction and lyrics.

Recorded with the intention of making "a pop album" that would expand on the commercial success of the 1975 album Fleetwood Mac, the music of Rumours contains a mix of electric and acoustic instrumentation, accented rhythms, guitars, and keyboards; its lyrics concern personal and often troubled relationships. Its release was postponed by delays in the mixing process. The band promoted the album with a worldwide concert tour. Rumours became the band's first number-one album on the UK Albums Chart and also topped the US Billboard 200. The songs "Go Your Own Way", "Dreams", "Don't Stop", and "You Make Loving Fun" were released as singles, all of which reached the US Top 10, with "Dreams" reaching number one.

Rumours was an enormous commercial success, selling 13 million copies worldwide by 1980. It garnered widespread acclaim from critics, who praised its production quality and the vocal harmonies of the band's three singers, which since have inspired musical acts in various genres. It won Album of the Year at the 1978 Grammy Awards and received Diamond certifications in several countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, and in the US, where it is certified 21× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). As of February 2023, Rumours had sold over 40 million copies worldwide.

Often considered Fleetwood Mac's magnum opus, Rumours has frequently been cited as one of the greatest albums of all time. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2003, and in the following year was remastered and reissued with the addition of "Silver Springs", which had been excluded from the original release, and a bonus CD of outtakes from the recording sessions. It was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2017, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress. In 2020, Rumours was ranked 7th in Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

Background
After the guitarist Bob Welch left Fleetwood Mac in 1974, the drummer Mick Fleetwood, the keyboardist and vocalist Christine McVie, and the bassist John McVie were joined by the guitarist and singer Lindsey Buckingham and the singer Stevie Nicks. In July 1975, Fleetwood Mac released its eponymous tenth album to great commercial success, reaching No. 1 in the U.S. in 1976; the record's singles "Over My Head", "Rhiannon" and "Say You Love Me" all reached the Top 20 there.

But the band's success belied turmoil amongst its members. After six months of non-stop touring, the McVies divorced, ending eight years of marriage. The couple stopped talking to each other socially and discussed only musical matters. Buckingham and Nicks were having an on/off relationship that led them to fight often. The duo's arguments stopped only when they worked on songs together. Fleetwood faced domestic problems of his own after discovering that his wife Jenny, mother of his two children, was having an affair with his best friend.

Press intrusions into the band members' lives led to inaccurate stories. Christine McVie was reported to have been in the hospital with a serious illness, while Buckingham and Nicks were declared the parents of Fleetwood's daughter Lucy after being photographed with her. The press also wrote about a rumoured return of original Fleetwood Mac members Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, and Jeremy Spencer for a tenth anniversary tour. Despite false reports, the band did not change its lineup, although its members had no time to come to terms with the separations before recording for a new album began. Fleetwood has noted the "tremendous emotional sacrifices" made by everyone just to attend studio work. In early 1976, Fleetwood Mac crafted some new tracks in Florida. Fleetwood and John McVie fired their producer Keith Olsen because he favoured a lower emphasis on the rhythm section. The duo formed a company called Seedy Management to represent the band's interests.

Recording
In February 1976, Fleetwood Mac convened at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, with the engineers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. The three parties shared production duties, while the more technically adept Caillat was responsible for most of the engineering; he took a leave of absence from Wally Heider Studios in Los Angeles on the premise that Fleetwood Mac would eventually use their facilities. The set-up in Sausalito included several small recording rooms in a large, windowless, wooden building. Most band members complained about the studio and wanted to record at their homes, but Fleetwood did not allow any moves. Christine McVie and Nicks decided to live in two condominiums near the city's harbour, while the male contingent stayed at the studio's lodge in the adjacent hills. Recording occurred in a 6 by room equipped with a 3M 24-track tape machine, a range of high-quality microphones, and an API mixing console with 550A equalisers; the latter were used to control frequency differences or a track's timbre. Although Caillat was impressed with the set-up, he felt that the room lacked ambience because of its "very dead speakers" and large amounts of soundproofing.

The record's working title in Sausalito was Yesterday's Gone. Buckingham took charge of the studio sessions to make "a pop album". According to Dashut, while Fleetwood and the McVies came from an improvisational blues rock background, the guitarist understood "the craft of record making". During the formative stages of compositions, Buckingham and Christine McVie played guitar and piano together to create the album's basic structures. The latter was the only classically trained musician in Fleetwood Mac, but both shared a similar sense of musicality. When the band jammed, Fleetwood often played his drum kit outside the studio's partition screen to better gauge Caillat's and Dashut's reactions to the music's groove. Baffles were placed around the drums and around John McVie, who played his bass guitar facing Fleetwood. Buckingham performed close to the rhythm section, while Christine McVie's keyboards were kept away from the drum kit. Caillat and Dashut spent about nine days working with a range of microphones and amplifiers to get a larger sound, before discovering they could adjust the sound effectively on the API mixing console.

As the studio sessions progressed, the band members' new intimate relationships that formed after various separations started to have a negative effect on Fleetwood Mac. The musicians did not meet or socialise after their daily work at the Record Plant. At the time, the hippie movement still affected Sausalito's culture and drugs were readily available. Open-ended budgets enabled the band and the engineers to become self-indulgent; sleepless nights and the extensive use of cocaine marked much of the album's production. Chris Stone, one of the Record Plant's owners, indicated in 1997 that Fleetwood Mac brought "excess at its most excessive" by taking over the studio for long and extremely expensive sessions; he stated, "The band would come in at 7 at night, have a big feast, party till 1 or 2 in the morning, and then when they were so whacked-out they couldn't do anything, they'd start recording".

Nicks has suggested that Fleetwood Mac created the best music when in the worst shape, while, according to Buckingham, the tensions between band members formed the recording process and led to "the whole being more than the sum of the parts". The couple's work became "bittersweet" after their final split, although Buckingham still had a skill for taking Nicks' tracks and "making them beautiful". The vocal harmonies between the duo and Christine McVie worked well and were captured using the best microphones available. Nicks' lyrical focus allowed the instrumentals in the songs that she wrote to be looser and more abstract. According to Dashut, all the recordings captured "emotion and feeling without a middle man ... or tempering". John McVie tended to clash with Buckingham about the make-up of songs, but both admit to achieving good outcomes. Christine McVie's "Songbird", which Caillat felt needed a concert hall's ambience, was recorded during an all-night session at Zellerbach Auditorium in Berkeley, across San Francisco Bay from Sausalito.

Following over two months in Sausalito, Fleetwood arranged a ten-day tour to give the band a break and get fan feedback. After the concerts, recording resumed at venues in Los Angeles, including Wally Heider Studios. Christine McVie and Nicks did not attend most of the sessions and took time off until they were needed to record any remaining vocals. The rest of Fleetwood Mac, with Caillat and Dashut, struggled to finalise the overdubbing and mixing of Rumours after the Sausalito tapes were damaged by repeated use during recording; the kick and snare drum audio tracks sounded "lifeless". A sell-out autumn tour of the US was cancelled to allow the completion of the album, whose scheduled release date of September 1976 was pushed back. A specialist was hired to rectify the Sausalito tapes using a vari-speed oscillator. Through a pair of headphones which played the damaged tapes in his left ear and the safety master recordings in his right, he converged their respective speeds aided by the timings provided by the snare and hi-hat audio tracks. Fleetwood Mac and their co-producers wanted a "no-filler" final product, in which every track seemed a potential single. After the final mastering stage and hearing the songs back-to-back, the band members sensed they had recorded something "pretty powerful".

Lyrics
Fleetwood Mac's main songwriters—Buckingham, Christine McVie, and Nicks—worked individually on songs but sometimes shared lyrics. "The Chain" is the only track on which all members, including Fleetwood and John McVie, collaborated. All songs on Rumours concern personal, often troubled relationships. According to Christine McVie, the fact that the lyricists were focusing on the various separations became apparent to the band only in hindsight. "You Make Loving Fun" is about her boyfriend, Fleetwood Mac's lighting director, whom she dated after splitting from John. Nicks' "Dreams" details a breakup and has a hopeful message, while Buckingham's similar effort in "Go Your Own Way" is more pessimistic. After a short fling with a New England woman, he was inspired to write "Never Going Back Again", a song about the illusion of thinking that sadness will never occur again once content with life. The lines "Been down one time/Been down two times" refer to the lyricist's efforts when persuading the woman to give him a chance.

"Don't Stop", written by Christine McVie, is a song about optimism. She noted that Buckingham helped her craft the verses because their personal sensibilities overlapped. McVie's next track, "Songbird", features more introspective lyrics about "nobody and everybody" in the form of "a little prayer". "Oh Daddy", the last McVie song on the album, was written about Fleetwood and his wife Jenny Boyd, who had just got back together. The band's nickname for Fleetwood was "the Big Daddy". McVie commented that the writing is slightly sarcastic and focuses on the drummer's direction for Fleetwood Mac, which always turned out to be right. Nicks provided the final lines "And I can't walk away from you, baby/If I tried". Her own song "Gold Dust Woman" is inspired by Los Angeles and the hardship encountered in such a city. After struggling with the rock lifestyle, Nicks became addicted to cocaine; the lyrics address her belief in "keeping going".

Music
Featuring a soft rock and pop rock sound, Rumours is built around a mix of acoustic and electric instrumentation. Buckingham's guitar work and Christine McVie's use of Fender Rhodes piano or Hammond B-3 organ are present on all but two tracks. The record often includes stressed drum sounds and distinctive percussion such as congas and maracas. It opens with "Second Hand News", originally an acoustic demo titled "Strummer". After hearing Bee Gees' "Jive Talkin'", Buckingham and co-producer Dashut built up the song with four audio tracks of electric guitar and the use of chair percussion to evoke Celtic rock. "Dreams" includes "ethereal spaces" and a recurring two note pattern on the bass guitar. Nicks wrote the song in an afternoon and led the vocals, while the band played around her. The third track on Rumours, "Never Going Back Again", began as "Brushes", a simple acoustic guitar tune played by Buckingham, with snare rolls by Fleetwood using brushes; the band added vocals and further instrumental audio tracks to make it more layered. Inspired by triple step dancing patterns, "Don't Stop" includes both conventional acoustic and tack piano. In the latter instrument, nails are placed on the points where the hammers hit the strings, producing a more percussive sound. "Go Your Own Way" is more guitar-oriented and has a four-to-the-floor dance beat influenced by The Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man". The album's pace slows down with "Songbird", conceived solely by Christine McVie using a nine-foot Steinway piano.

Side two of Rumours begins with "The Chain", one of the record's most complicated compositions. A Christine McVie demo, "Keep Me There", and a Nicks song were re-cut in the studio and were heavily edited to form parts of the track. The whole of the band crafted the rest using an approach akin to creating a film score; John McVie provided a prominent solo using a fretless bass guitar, which marked a speeding up in tempo and the start of the song's final third. Inspired by R&B, "You Make Loving Fun" has a simpler composition and features a clavinet, a special type of keyboard instrument, while the rhythm section plays interlocking notes and beats. The ninth track on Rumours, "I Don't Want to Know", makes use of a twelve string guitar and harmonising vocals. Influenced by the music of Buddy Holly, Buckingham and Nicks created it in 1974 before they were in Fleetwood Mac. "Oh Daddy" was crafted spontaneously and includes improvised bass guitar patterns from John McVie and keyboard blips from Christine McVie. The album ends with "Gold Dust Woman", a song inspired by free jazz, which has music from a harpsichord, a Fender Stratocaster guitar, and a dobro, an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more metal cones.

Promotion and release
In Autumn 1976, while still recording, Fleetwood Mac showcased tracks from Rumours at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. John McVie suggested the album title to the band because he felt the members were writing "journals and diaries" about each other through music. Warner Bros. confirmed the release details to the press in December and chose "Go Your Own Way" as a December 1976 promotional single. The label's aggressive marketing of 1975's Fleetwood Mac, in which links with dozens of FM and AM radio stations were formed across America, aided the promotion of Rumours. At the time, the album's advance order of 800,000 copies was the largest in Warner Bros.' history.

Rumours was released on 4 February 1977 in the US, and a week later in the UK. The front cover features a stylised shot of Fleetwood and Nicks dressed in her "Rhiannon" stage persona, while the back has a montage of band portraits; all the photographs were taken by Herbert Worthington. On 28 February 1977, after rehearsing at SIR Studios in Los Angeles, Fleetwood Mac embarked on the Rumours Tour, which visited North America, Europe, Oceania and Asia. Nicks has noted that, after performing mostly Rumours songs during gigs, the band initially encountered poor receptions from fans who were not accustomed to the new material. A one-off March performance at a benefit concert for United States Senator Birch Bayh in Indiana was followed by a short tour of the UK, the Netherlands, France, and Germany in April. Nigel Williamson of Uncut called Fleetwood Mac's performances "rock's greatest soap opera". "Dreams", released in March 1977, became the band's only number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 that June.

For their 2009 concert tour, the band proffered an expanded release of the album with "Silver Springs" included with the original album and an extra disk of "Roughs & Outtakes, Early Demos and Jam Sessions". For the album's 35th anniversary in 2013, a deluxe edition of the album was released. In addition to "Silver Springs" and 2004's extra disk, this release added a disk of "More From The Recording Sessions", a 12-track disk of live songs from the Rumours Tour and a DVD of The Rosebud Film, a 1977 documentary about the album.

Critical reception
Rumours has been acclaimed by music critics since its release. Robert Christgau, reviewing in The Village Voice, described it as "more consistent and more eccentric" than its predecessor. He added that it "jumps right out of the speakers at you". Rolling Stone magazine's John Swenson believed the interplay among the three vocalists was one of the album's most pleasing elements; he stated, "Despite the interminable delay in finishing the record, Rumours proves that the success of Fleetwood Mac was no fluke." In a review for The New York Times, John Rockwell said the album is "a delightful disk, and one hopes the public thinks so, too", while Dave Marsh of the St. Petersburg Times claimed the songs are "as grandly glossy as anything right now". Robert Hilburn was less receptive and called Rumours a "frustratingly uneven" record in his review for the Los Angeles Times, while Juan Rodriguez of The Gazette suggested that, while the music is "crisper and clearer", Fleetwood Mac's ideas are "slightly more muddled". The album finished fourth in The Village Voice's 1977 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which aggregated the votes of hundreds of prominent reviewers.

In a retrospective review, AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave Rumours five stars and noted that, regardless of the voyeuristic element, the record was "an unparalleled blockbuster" because of the music's quality; he concluded, "Each tune, each phrase regains its raw, immediate emotional power—which is why Rumours touched a nerve upon its 1977 release, and has since transcended its era to be one of the greatest, most compelling pop albums of all time." According to Slant Magazine's Barry Walsh, Fleetwood Mac drew on romantic dysfunction and personal turmoil to create a timeless, five-star record, while Andy Gill of The Independent claimed it "represents, along with The Eagles Greatest Hits, the high-water mark of America's Seventies rock-culture expansion, the quintessence of a counter-cultural mindset lured into coke-fuelled hedonism". In 2007, the BBC's Daryl Easlea labelled the sonic results as "near perfect", "like a thousand angels kissing you sweetly on the forehead", while Patrick McKay of Stylus Magazine wrote, "What distinguishes Rumours—what makes it art—is the contradiction between its cheerful surface and its anguished heart. Here is a radio-friendly record about anger, recrimination, and loss."

Commercial performance
Rumours was a huge commercial success and became Fleetwood Mac's second US number-one record, following the 1975 eponymous release. It stayed at the top of the Billboard 200 for 31 non-consecutive weeks, while also reaching number one in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. It re-entered the Billboard 200 chart at number 11 in May 2011, and the Australian ARIA chart at number 2, after several songs from the album were used for the "Rumours" episode of the American TV series Glee. It re-entered the Billboard 200 top ten in October 2020 in the wake of a viral TikTok by Nathan Apodaca which showed him skateboarding while "Dreams" played, even prompting Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks to create similar videos. The album was certified platinum in America and the UK within months of release after one million units and 300,000 units were shipped, respectively. All three major US trade publications—Billboard, Cash Box, and Record World—named it Album of the Year for 1977. After a debut at number seven, Rumours peaked at the top of the UK Albums Chart in January 1978, becoming Fleetwood Mac's first number one album in the country. In February, the band and co-producers Caillat and Dashut won the 1978 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. By March, the album had sold over 10 million copies worldwide, including over eight million in the US alone.

By 1980, 13 million copies of Rumours had been sold worldwide. As of 2017, sales were over 40 million copies. , Rumours has spent over 1,000 weeks in the top 100 of the UK Albums Chart. It is the 11th-best-selling album in UK history, and is certified 14× platinum by the British Phonographic Industry, the equivalent of 4.2 million units shipped. The record has received a Diamond Award from the Recording Industry Association of America for a 20× platinum certification or 20 million copies shipped, making it,, tied for the 11th-highest certified album in US history (by number of copies shipped). Rumours was the UK's bestselling album on vinyl during 2020, with the Official Charts Company confirming 32,500 annual sales in the format.

Legacy
Mick Fleetwood has called Rumours "the most important album we ever made", because its success allowed the group to continue recording for years to come. Pop culture journalist Chuck Klosterman links the record's sales figures to its "really likable songs" but suggests that "no justification for greatness" is intrinsically provided by them. In 1997, The Guardian surveyed renowned critics, artists, and radio DJs, who placed the record at number 78 in the list of the 100 Best Albums Ever. In 1998, Fleetwood produced and released Legacy: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, an album that consisted of one cover of each song off Rumours by an act influenced by it, including alternative rock bands Tonic, Matchbox 20, and Goo Goo Dolls; Celtic rock groups The Corrs and The Cranberries; and singer-songwriters Elton John, Duncan Sheik, and Jewel.

Other acts influenced by Rumours include baroque pop artist Tori Amos, hard rock group Saliva, indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, and art pop singer Lorde, who called it a "perfect record".

Rumours has frequently been considered one of the greatest albums of all time. In 1998, Q placed it at number three—behind The Clash's London Calling and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon—in its list of 50 Best Albums of the 70s. In 1999, Vibe featured it as one of 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century. In 2001, VH1 ranked the record at number 16 during its 100 Greatest Albums countdown, while Slant included it as one of 50 Essential Pop Albums. The same year, USA Today placed Rumours at number 23 in its Top 40 Albums list, while Rolling Stone ranked it at number 25 in its special issue of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", in 2003, the highest Fleetwood Mac placement, number 26 in a 2012 revised list, and number 7 in the 2020 and 2023 lists. In 2000, it was voted number 31 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2006, Time named it in its All-TIME 100 Albums shortlist, while Mojo featured it in its unnumbered list of 70 from the 1970s: Decade's Greatest Albums. The record is included in both The Guardian's "1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die" and the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. For the 2013 reissue of the album, Pitchfork's Jessica Hopper gave the album a rare 10 out of 10, earning it a "best new reissue" designation.

Track listing
"Silver Springs", written by Stevie Nicks, has been included on some reissues as either track 6, 7 or 12 of the album, depending on the pressing.

Many cassette releases swapped the positions of "Second Hand News" and "I Don't Want to Know".

Personnel
Adapted from the album's credits, AllMusic and MusicRadar.

Fleetwood Mac
 * Lindsey Buckingham – guitars, vocals, percussion
 * Stevie Nicks – vocals
 * Christine McVie – keyboards, vocals, vibraphone on “Dreams”
 * John McVie – bass guitar
 * Mick Fleetwood – drums, percussion, electric harpsichord on “Gold Dust Woman”

Production
 * Ken Caillat – producer, engineer
 * Richard Dashut – producer, engineer
 * Fleetwood Mac – producers
 * Chris Morris – assistant engineer
 * Ken Perry – mastering
 * Charlie Watts – mastering
 * Chris James – Immersive (Atmos) mixing
 * Brad Blackwood – Immersive (Atmos) mastering

Artwork
 * Desmond Strobel – design
 * Larry Vigon – calligraphy
 * Herbert W. Worthington – photography

Certifications and sales
! scope="row"|Iceland (FHF)
 * Platinum
 * 10,000‡

title: Rumours (album)