Investigaciones arqueoastronómicas en Gran Canaria. La recámara equinoccial de la cueva de La Virgen de La Candelaria (Tara, Telde)

Abstract

The troglodyte village of Tara (Telde, Gran Canaria) brings together an important group of artificial caves from the ancient Canarians where, according to a certain tradition, the faicans or high priests of this part of the island resided, at least in the centuries immediately preceding the Spanish conquest of the island. In this work, we present an archaeoastronomical study of the cave of the Virgin, where we document the existence of a device designed to mark accurately the passage of the Sun and the Moon by a point on the horizon that aims to divide the intersolstitial interval into two halves. The fact that, surely, they were the same faicans who exercised their astronomical activities in Tara and the nearby mountain of Cuatro Puertas invites us to relate both places and propose their joint use with observational and calendrical purposes: the equinoctial observations would take place in Tara, and the solstitial ones in Cuatro Puertas. Our work points out some of the possible advanced objectives of these observations.