The Guanches were the indigenous inhabitants of Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean some 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of Africa. It is believed that they may have arrived on the archipelago some time in the first millennium BC. The Guanches were the only native people known to have lived in the Macaronesian archipelago region before the arrival of Europeans, as there is no evidence that the other Macaronesian archipelagos (the Cape Verde Islands, Madeira and the Azores) were inhabited. After the Spanish conquest of the Canaries starting in the early 1400s, many natives were wiped out by the Spanish settlers, while others interbred with the settler population, although elements of their culture survive within Canarian customs and traditions, such as Silbo (th