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It is widely believed that Lanzarote was the first Canary Island to be settled at around 1100 BC.
The Greek writers and philosophers Herodotus, Plato and Plutarch already described the garden of
Hesperis, the land of fertility where fruits and flowers smell in the middle of the Atlantic. After
the fall of the Roman Empire, the Canary Islands were abandoned until 999 AD when Arabs arrived. In
1336, a ship sailed under Lancelotto Malocello from Lisbon down to the islands and about 70 years
later a fort was built in the area of Montaña de Guanapay near today's Teguise.
Jean de Béthencourt arrived in 1402 on a private expedition to the Canary Islands: slavery was
introduced to the islands as well as new raw materials. Bethew volcanoes with a stretch of 18 km.
The minister of encourt first came on land in the south of Lanzarote at Playas de Papagayo. Two
years later in 1404, the Spaniards came and fought a rebellion against the local Guanches. In the
17th century, pirates raided the island which forced 1,000 inhabitants into slavery in the Cueva
de los Verdes.
In 1730, the island was hit by a volcanic eruption. The eruption created 32 new volcanoes with a
stretch of 18 km. The minister of Yaiza Don Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo has documented in detail until
1731. The eruption lasted for 2,053 days and ended in 1736. The lava covered a quarter of the
island's surface, under the most fruitful soils on the island and eleven villages. 100 volcanoes
were founded in an area of Montañas del Fuego in which the name originates from the catastrophe.
In 1768, the drought affected the island and winter rain did not fall. Much of the popoulation
emigrated to Cuba and the Americas. Another volcano eruption occurred within the range of Tiagua in
1824 which was not as worse as the major eruption between 1730 and 1736. In 1927, Lanzarote as well
as Fuerteventura became part of the province of Gran Canaria.
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