Holidays To Tenerife – The Pyramids Of Guimar

In Tenerife, the biggest island in the Canaries in the Atlantic Ocean, is a small town called Guimar. Part of the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, it is located at the southeastern area of Tenerife. It can be reached through the new TF1 Motorway superhighway. It is also connected with the older highway that also links up Arona and Santa Cruz City.

What is so unusual about this place that makes it a beautiful place to visit when enjoying holidays to Tenerife? Well, Guimar, particularly in the district of Chacona, is the area where the mysterious Pyramids of Guimar. Unlike the pyramids of Egypt, the Pyramids of Guimar is a collection of six rectangular terraced structures that are constructed out of lava stone without the use of a binding agent like People said that these terraces are used for agriculture in the past. However, modern excavations and studies have proved that they may be more than just agricultural structures.

The Pyramids of Guimar were first seriously researched by Thor Heyerdahl, a famous and publisher. He hypothesized that due to the fact the Guimar pyramids posses a like architecture to the pyramids in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the Guimar pyramids might be a ceremonial structure.

A year later, Canary Institute of Astrophysics archaeologists Juan Antonio Belmonte Aviles, Antonio Aparicio Juan, and Cesar Esteban Lopez conducted a second analysis. They observed that the long sides of some of the terraced pyramids pointed to the direction of the planet’s solstices. They also observed that by standing on the peak of largest pyramid during the day during the summer solstice, it is possible to see a double sunset. An observer standing on the pyramid’s peak can see the sun go down behind a mountain peak, emerges from that mountain’s side, then goes down again behind a nearby mountain. Other pyramids feature stairs that point to the direction where the sun rises on both solstices. Thus, they guessed that the structures were ancient apparatus of some type for astronomical observation and study.

Then between 1991 and 1998, excavations near the structures revealed ancient remnants of potteries. Thus, they believed that the pyramids were once ancient markets where vendors sell their products.

What were these pyramids really for? For now, their purpose remains a mystery.

Don’t forget to drop by the Pyramids of Guimar in Tenerife when enjoying cheap holidays to Spain.