Risco Caido
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How it came to be
Risco Caído is a cultural landscape of about 18,000 hectares in the mountainous centre of Gran Canaria, taking in most of the Tejeda basin and the Tamadaba massif. Berber peoples from North Africa reached the island around the beginning of the common era, and their culture developed in isolation until Castilian settlers arrived in the 15th century.
The cliffs and ravines hold many cave dwellings, granaries and cisterns. Risco Caído itself is a group of 21 caves cut into a cliff of the Barranco Hondo, the ravine between Artenara and Gáldar. One of them, known as C6, has a domed roof with an artificial opening through which the dawn light falls across triangles and other figures carved on its wall.
UNESCO describes two sacred places, Risco Caído and Roque Bentayga, where seasonal ceremonies were held and which may have been linked to a cult of the stars and Mother Earth. It was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (archaeological zone) in 2017 and inscribed as a World Heritage site on 7 July 2019. Critics such as the mathematician José Barrios argue that the idea of an astronomical observatory lacks scientific support.
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