Last day + 1: Guimar pyramids

Jan and I like to see people off and check the hotel bill etc, and then spend a day checking up on places for future trips. This time we decided to check out the pyramids at Guimar and, just for fun, drove there along the old main road through Granadilla, Arico, Fasnia and so on. We drove along parts of this road quite a few times in the early years of doing this trip so things got quite nostalgic: towards the northern end there are good sections through the dorsal ridge basalts, and a superb view of the Guimar valley from the Mirador de Don Martin which sits right on the southern landslip scarp.

Guimar valley from the Don Martin mirador. Landslip scarp on left and back wall in distance

The pyramids are not straightforward to find - I was glad we had the satnav with us but once there there was ample parking and a very well laid out reception area, botanic gardens, exhibition area and, of course, the pyramids themselves.
Thor Heyerdal was very keen to promote a link between these and pyramids in the Middle East and in Central America but this is rather spoilt by discovery of 19th C pottery under one which was excavated. I've talked to an archaeologist friend of mine, David Jones, about them and he, like me, is supportive of the idea that there is a sort of 'convergent evolution' in pyramid, or ceremonial platform, building since this is the simplest way to create a raised area without using any sort of ladders or scaffolding. No need for the technique to be spread from one place to another. Sorry Thor.

Pyramids at Guimar. The recess at the bottom of this image is a cave below a lava flow which was lived in by Guanche between 680 - 1020 AD (C-14 dates).

 I got the impression that although not many of these structures exist here now, they may have been more plentiful in the recent past and I wondered whether the name of the village where we stay (La Escalona) is a reference to something similar? 'Escalo' means 'climb', 'escalera' is 'steps. However it seems very odd that there's no reference to these in 19th C literature. One suggestion is that they are heaps of stone from field clearance and I do rather wonder how much of their present regular shape is owed to the Spanish gift for detailed restoration of their ancient monuments - often hard to tell the old from the new!

An unexpected bonus here was the boulders of Dorsal Ridge basalts used to line the paths and build the walls in the garden: more pyroxene megacrysts!