Recovered identities: The population of San Marcial de Rubicón (Lanzarote, Canary Islands), the first European city of the Atlantic expansion

Abstract

The process of the European Atlantic expansion, in its search for new territories to dominate and exploit, was consolidated in the 15th century, with the earliest setting of this expansion being carried out in the Canary Islands. The first European settlement in the archipelago, a small enclave known as San Marcial de Rubicón, was established on the island of Lanzarote in 1402 and achieved city status in 1404. This place represents the starting point for the admixture process that would lead to the formation of the colonial society, involving the intermixing of Canarian natives, European colonizers and enslaved people brought to the islands from Africa. To better understand this process, we performed bioanthropological and paleogenomic analyses on five individuals from San Marcial de Rubicón. Bayesian radiocarbon data modeled based on available historical evidence indicate that these individuals are confined to the 15th century and, according to bioanthropological and genetic analyses, correspond, at least, to two males and two females. Paleogenomic data show that the two males have a global ancestry consistent with a European origin, which could be associated with the Andalusian population that reached the island during and after the conquest. The ancestry of the two women is associated with North Africa, most probably related to the Morisco population that was brought to the island as workforce. In this way, the individuals at San Marcial de Rubicón represent the first encounter of two of the main characters that would be the germ of the Canarian colonial society, highlighting the potential of multidisciplinary archaeology to shed light on complex demographic processes derived from the European Age of Discovery.