Gabriel D'Anunzio Baraldi (1938-2004) was born in Italy, and moved to Argentina when he was 22. He later relocated to Brazil and later, to Europe. He was known as the "Last Atlantean", having published Os Hititas Americanos — The American Hittites, (1997) and A Descoberta Doc.512 — The Discovery Doc. 512, (1997).
In his first book, he wrote about supposed Hittite inscriptions on a rock in Paraíba, in Brazil, linking them to Atlantis. He also managed to involve extraterrestrials in his theory. His second book dealt with a lost city that he discovered in northern Brazil, called Ingrejil, which he believed was the mysterious "lost" city that Percy Fawcett had been searching for when he vanished in the Mato Groso jungle in 1925. (I will discuss this in my next post).
The Pedra de Inga
The pedra (stone) do Ingá: (of Ingá) is a large rock shaped like a wall, that is 24 m long (75 ft), located in the state of Paraíba, in northeastern Brazil by the town of Ingá (see map). It has 497 inscriptions. Baraldi claimed to have translated these symbols which he says should be read from bottom to top, and from right to left. Baraldi says they are written in the language of the Hittites and this is proof of the arrival of "proto-Hittite" people to America c.1350 BC. He also added that the Tupi language of the Guarani people of South America, is an archaic form of Hittite.
The Hittite civilization flourished in Anatolia, in what is now Turkey, during the Bronze Age (1,650-1,150 BC). They adopted the use of iron earlier than their rivals, the Egyptians and the Assyrians, and built an empire that challenged them. Pharaoh Ramsses II clashed with them, and after the battle of Kadesh in Syria, both powers sought peace (1274 BC). The Hittites are not known for the navigation expertise. They were land-based people. So, how did they reach America?
According to Baraldi, the Atlanteans fled from their island-city of Atlinatis when it was destroyed by a great cataclysm. He says that the stone inscriptions mention the volcanic eruption that covered a city built with stones, on the Atlantic coast, with ash, and that it was very intense, the fleet of the empire was at risk, so the sailors set out to sea to save their ships and the lava nearly burned them. The Atlaneans took refuge in Brazil where they carved the monolith. Only later did they head back east, across the Atlantic and settle in Anatolia, becoming the Hittite empire.
Below is a comparison of Rapa Nui (right) and Ingá (left) symbols (Source), and Hittite inscriptions (c. 1500 BC) (Source).
Of course, andy similarity is coincidential. For instance, I made out some Latin letters an M (row 4), a U (row 4 col.2), a W (row 5), and even a Y (row 8), which goes to show that coincidences exist, and that the human mind loves finding patterns and similarities even if there are none.
Anyway, Baraldi used Laroche's table of Hittite hieroglyphs to decipher the text (for those interested in Laroche's work, you can see the symbols here, online, as Fig. 2)
The stone is made of hard metamorphic rock like granite, and the deep grooves of the symbols (1 cm deep and 3 cm wide - 0.4 and 2.25 in) would have been very hard to carve using stone tools. Some have suggested the use of metallic tools, which the natives lacked. Baraldi said that the inscriptions had been made by using molds pressed into the hot lava that issued from a now extinct volcano, that had been channeled here by the proto-Hittites while it was fluid.
But the rock was never fluid lava running from a crater. Instead it was altered deep inside the Earth, and like most rocks, it extruded, intruded, to the surfaceo (see the image above showing the rock — Source). It is known as biotite-granodiorite, a compact, fine-grained igneous rock with high hardness (Source).
Not an original idea
Baraldi was not the first to imagine a pseudoscientific origin for the stone. Gilvan de Brito wrote a book about it (Journey into the Unknown) Viagem ao desconhecido os segredos da Pedra de Ingá: inclui outros registros rupestres, in 1988. In it, he mentions similarities with Hebrew, Toltec, Hittite, and Rapa Nui symbols, he also imagines it is a calendar and that it involved extraterrestrials. 1994 Zilma Ferreira Pinto suggested that the stones had Muslim, Jewish, and Christian inscriptions. A Kabbalistic stone.
Facts
The rock is the work of local natives, who painstakingly engraved and polished the stone. They probably used iron oxide to stain the symbols (Source). Erosion, and visitor vandalism has erased some of them. The work is probably up to 6,000 years old. No UFOs, no Hittites, no molten lava printing, just plain Native Americans.
Further Reading
Those who want to learn more about the stone can read these two books online (In Portuguese):
- Maria Tereza Santana de Costa Rodrigues Almeida, 2009, A Pedra do Inga: A Reproducao do Mito, A Reproducao da Fe, a thesis with a scientific point of view.
- Vanderley de Brito, 2009, A Pedra do Inga, Itacoatiaras na Paraíba, a serious scholarly review of the stone.
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