Celtic navigators and the New England stone chambers

A few days ago I wrote about the Minoans and the hypothesis that they visited America and traded native copper (pure metal) from Lake Superior in USA to the Mediterranean. I don't agree with that theory. Among the evidence put forward by those who do believe in it, was the existence of stone buildings in the northeastern states of the U.S.

There are stone structures found in different parts of New England and New York that have been attributed to European visitors. They are considered to sophisticated to have been built by the Native Americans who lived there, or by the later wave of settlers that came from Europe starting in the 1600s.

So, who built them? According to an article that has studied these structures (Lost Histories: The Story of New England’s Stone Chambers by Benjamin Lord, Northern Woodlands, Vol 20, No. 4 Winter 2013, p.24), some believe that they are the work of ancient European mariners, such as Celts.

The hypothesis is that thousands of years ago, Celts from Europe, crossed the North Atlantic and built these stone buildings in America.

Those who support this idea mention the stone structure at Mystery Hill, in Salem, New Hampshire, USA. or the Upton Chamber in Upton Massachusetts. They discard a colonial construction, or even a later origin (they may have been built as root cellars in the late 19th century) and consider that the natives couldn't have built them. So the explanation is that they are megalithic sites, similar to those erected by the Bronze Age Europeans 1,500 to 3,500 years ago.

Mystery Hill

This site is located at 105 Haverhill Rd, Salem, NH. It is a private site or park, known as "America's Stonehenge". It was acquired by William Goodwin, an archaeologist in 1936 and following his death in 1950, it was acquired in 1956 by an entrepreneur named Robert E. Stone, who charged an admission fee to see the massive stone structures. He also wrote some "papers" studying the site. The place is still operated by the Stone family. Below is a plan of the site (Source):

Goodwin believed that the site was built by Culdee Monks, who had crossed the Atlantic from Ireland (see my posts on Irish monks and America) around 1000 AD.

Stone, on the other hand promoted another origin, he asserted that the stones were aligned with astronomical points. Below I summarize on of his articles, published in 1971.

The site has many massive, stone structures and covers an area of 12 acres (6 ha). It has wells, stone walls, buildings, carvings, drains, and chambers. One stone slab was named with the eye-catching name of the "Sacrificial Table", located inside the site's largest structure. There are "monoliths" around the site that Stone argued were set with "astronomical alignments, similar to "Stonehenge" in England, are quite impressive. Thus far, the winter and summer Solstices for both rising and setting of the sun are very accurate, when viewed from the exact center of the site; the "Sacrificial Table", 500 feet away. Setting of the sun during'the Equinox also lines up on a dolmen-like structure built into the outer wall" Source.

Stone provides a historic timeline for the site: The Pattee family lived near it from 1823 to 1847, they built a house on it which burned down in 1855. The Pattees quarried the site, destroying up to 40% of it. Some slabs ended up as curb stones in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Following Stone's acquisition, the newly formed New England Antiquities Research Association (N EARA) in 1964, the site was excavated and radiocarbon dated.

Stone gave an age of 180 BC and 1045 BC and asserted that they "are indicative that a previously unrecorded megalithic culture was in existence in this hemisphere... This culture... not only included sites like Mystery Hill, but various other stone-constructions that we are documenting, such as dolmens, tunnels, strange non-Colonial walls, unusual wells and many other oddities."

Some views of the site, the "monolith" with the sign is one of those said to mark astronomical positions.

Views of Mystery Hill. Source

Barry Fell, in 1975 visited the site and coincidentially, Stone found a tablet inside one of the chambers at Mystery Hill with inscriptions that Fell immediately recognized as Ogam, an ancient Celtic sript. He also concluded that one of them was written in Libyan while the other was Phoenician or Iberian Punic script. According to Fell, one of the buildings had been dedicated to Baal by Canaanites who reached this spot.

Fell wrote a book about ancient European visitors to America (America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World) mentioning other similar sites and Celtic inscriptions in New England and further inland, like the Davenport tablets. Fell says that Celts from what is now Spain, reached America 3,000 years ago establishing their kingdom, Iargalon, there. Source

Mystery Hill has been radiocarbon dated to around 2,000 BC, but this age is compatible with Native American occupation. A calendar aligned with the position of the sun (Solstices and equinox) is unknown among the Algonquian tribes so it is probably a coincidence. But, they were capable of building large structures like the massive earth mounds (see my posts on mound-builders).

Mainstream archaologists consider that "America's Stonehenge" is the work of either American natives or later settlers, and was not built by Bronze Age Europeans. (Source)

Mystery Hill Tourist Attraction

The official website of the America's Stonehenge tourist attraction states that:

"Unfortunately, the original builders of America's Stonehenge remain unknown. While we do know that early construction happened here about 4,000 years ago, no diagnostic artifacts from that time have been discovered. The earliest diagnostic artifacts, attributed to the Pawtucket people, are dated to about 2,000 years ago. Similarities to megalithic structures in Europe, as well as the discovery of possible Old World inscriptions, has led some researchers to believe that there may be a connection between this site and ancient Western European or Mediterranean cultures. In the ongoing research of this site, we strive to keep an open mind. Before forming any conclusions about the origins of this site, it is important to follow where the evidence leads. Hopefully, with continued study, we can reveal who actually built these structures and what culture or cultures used the site over its thousands of years of history."

We must point out that diggings at the sie have discovered many Native American objects including a dugout canoe, a teepee, stone tools and ceramics, but no Celtic, Irish or Phoenician or Carthaginian artifacts, except for the "inscribed stone" the Baal Stone discovered in 1975 and deciphered by Fell. Pictured below:

Baal Stone. Source

It has what appears to be chiseled lines on it, in a random and disorganized way. Not a neat inscription or glyphs. Fell says it reads: "To Baal on behalf of the Canaanites this is dedicated." (Source).

This website has a list of the astronomical alignments mentioned for this site, and also includes pictures of the place.

Finally, there is a paper online that mentions a blue-light beams spotted at the American Stonehenge site common to all stonehenge-type buildings as well as pyramids. But they are not ghosts but "Manitou" that "can perhaps be categorized as signals generated by geophysical events... the equivalent modern descriptor would be that there are no “ghosts", or haunted houses, or TV's which tip over by their influence —there is only causative electromagnetic field!" (see Edward and Roger McLeod, 2001, America's Stonehenge, (A.S.), As a Prototype For Expected Phenomena At "The" Stonehenge, and Also For Psychophysical Events and Native American "Manitou."). The McLeods also mention this site regarding "Stellar Gravitational Neutrino Interactions (see their 2009 abstract online). The title may sound like real physics, but it seems to be nonsense. They report that neutrino flux from stars and quasars pass through the Earth (up to here it is true) and as they "cannot penetrate these graviton-like strings. They ... project... stick figures within instruments like the Watch House at America’s Stonehenge, and perhaps the chamber beneath the Great Pyramid..." I would have tended to agree with geophysical processes that form lights in the sky (see my posts about earthquake lights), but neutrinos somehow focused by quantum particles in certain ancient structures is beyond science.

Closing comments

I stand by the findings of a serious research article by Feathers et al, 2022 (Luminescence dating of Enigmatic rock structures in New England, USA, Quaternary Geochronology, Nov. 2022, 101402, Vol 73, doi 10.1016/j.quageo.2022.101402): "Enigmatic rock structures in the form of walls, chambers, tunnels, and cairns are common archaeological features in northeastern United States, but the age of their construction is mostly unknown. Debate persists as to whether they are colonial or pre-colonial in age. Luminescence dating ... place their construction in the late 16th century, just before sustained colonial settlement... The evidence suggests a pre-colonial construction, by ancestors of modern native Americans." Clear and simple, nobody came from Phoenicia, Carthage or Ireland, these structures were built by local Native Americans.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Did King Arthur sail to Iceland and subdue it?

Welsh prince Madoc wasn't the only British royal to sail the Atlantic. Mythical King Arthur also sailed across it and conquered Iceland.

Geoffrey of Monmouth (c.1095 – c.1155 AD) in his work History of the Kings of England (see chapter 10, page 158) states that English King Arthur sailed to Iceland. He wrote the following:

"The next summer he fitted out a fleet, and made an expedition into Ireland, which he was desirous to reduce. Upon landing there, he was met by King Guillamurius before mentioned, with a vast number of men, who came with a design to fight him; but at the very beginning of the battle, those naked and unarmed people were miserably routed, and fled to such places as lay open to them for shelter. Guillamurius also in a short time was taken prisoner, and forced to submit; as were also all the other princes of the country after the king's example, being under great consternation at what had happened. After an entire conquest of Ireland, he made a voyage with his fleet to Iceland, which he also subdued. and now a rumor spreading over the rest of the islands, that no country was able to whithstand him, Doldavius, King of Gothland, and Gunfasius, King of the Orkneys, came voluntariliy, and made their submission, on a promise of paying tribute. Then, as soon as Winter was over, he returned back to Britain, where having established the kingdom, he resided in it for twelve years together in peace."

See the same book and quote but translated slightly differently from Latin here.

King Arthur is a mythical figure, probably based on a minor British warlord who fought against the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain in the late fifth, early sixth centuries AD. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote about Merlin, the legendary Excalibur sword, and his wife, Gwinevere. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, he conquered Norway, Iceland, and some regions of France, and created a vast empire. He went to Insula Avalonis (Avalon) to heal a mortal wound, it was also the place where Excalibur was forged. Later additions included Camelot, Lancelot, and the round table.

Arthur is supposed to have lived around 450–550 AD.

If Arthur was a chieftain of the post-Roman Britons who had to defend their territory from the onsalught of Anglo-Saxons, and Jutes from the coasts of what is now Denmark and Northwestern Germany. These Britons were Latinized, Christian Celts who had to fend for themselves after Rome withdrew its last legions in AD 410. They were more civilized than the barbarians that attacked them, but they fared badly as the Germanic tribes settled in eastern England and pushed the locals westwards into Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria and the western Lancashire.

pre-Viking Celts in Iceland c.500 AD?

It is interesting to point out that according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Iceland was inhabited at that time ~450-550 AD.

The official records state that a Viking named Naddodd discovered it by chance ~861 AD (300 to 400 years after the dates given by Geoffrey of Monmouth!) and it was not settled until 874 AD when Arnarson arrived from Norway and established himself in Reykjavik.

There is of course an ancient account about Thule (Iceland) by the Greek explorer and navibator Pytheas of Massalia (~350 BC) who recorded in a book (now lost), On the Ocean his voyages. Scraps of this work were quoted by later writers. So we know from Strabo, about "Thule (which Pytheas says is a six days' sail north of Britain, and is near the frozen sea)" (source, also see footnote). He added that " Now Pytheas of Massilia tells us that Thule, the most northerly of the Britannic Islands, is farthest north, and that there the circle of the summer tropic is the same as the arctic circle.⁠163 But from the other writers I learn nothing on the subject — neither that there exists a certain island by the name of Thule, nor whether the northern regions are inhabitable" (Source).

But what has survived of Pytheas' account does not mention inhabitants in Thule.

Later, Roman scholar Tacitus wrote about General Agricola's conquest of the Orkney Islands, and that his fleet almost reached Thule: "Under Agricola a Roman fleet first navigated the shore of the furthest sea [84 AD], and confirmed Britain as an island, in the same voyage reaching the unexplored islands known as the Orcades and claiming them. Thule was merely sighted, as their orders took them only thus far, and winter was approaching. But they declared the waves sluggish, resistant to the oar, and likewise unresponsive to the wind, presumably because mountainous land, the cause and origin of storms, is scarcer, and the unbroken mass of deeper water is harder to set in motion." (Source)

Pliny the Elder also mentions Thule in his Natural History (source), as well as the the Orkney Islands (see § 4.103), and notes that the British Celts sailed to another island called Mictisis, he also mentions other islands from where people embark for Thule. It surely had inhabitants then (Source) - I have not found any other reference about Mictisis by any other author, ancient or modern. Try searching it in Google!

"The most remote of all that we find mentioned is Thule, in which, as we have previously stated, there is no night at the summer solstice, when the sun is passing through the sign of Cancer, while on the other hand at the winter solstice there is no day. Some writers are of opinion that this state of things lasts for six whole months together. Timaeus the historian says that an island called Mictisis within six days' sail of Britannia, in which white load is found; and that the Britons sail over to it in boats of osier, covered with sewed hides. There are writers also who make mention of some other islands: Scandia, Dumna, Bergos, and, greater than all, Nerigos, from which persons embark for Thule. At one day's sail from Thule is the frozen ocean, which by some is called the Cronian Sea. "

What was "white load"? Did they use hide-hulled osier boats? Pliny had mentioned them before; they are baskets made with flexible willow shoots (osier) covered with hides, or coracles. Rather flimsy to navigate the North Atlantic. White load is tin: "§ 34.156 [47] The next topic is the nature of lead, of which there are two kinds, black and white. White lead (tin) is the most valuable; the Greeks applied to it the name cassheros, and there was a legendary story of their going to islands of the Atlantic ocean to fetch it and importing it in platted vessels made of osiers and covered with stitched hides. It is now known that it is a product of Lusitania and Gallaecia found in the surface-strata of the ground which is sandy and of a black colour." (source)

There is no tin in Iceland or the Shetlands, Faroe, or Orkneys. The only source of tin other than Cornwall in the Sothwest of Britain, was in Nova Scotia (East Kemptville), it was the largest mine in the world until it closed. (Source).

But, the question is was Iceland inhabited in 450-550 AD, during Arthur's time?

There are written accounts by the Vikings that tell of Irish monks in Iceland when they arrived. For instance (Source): "Islendinga Bok c. 1. «Anciently there lived here Christian folk whom the Norsemen ealled Papar they afterwards went away as they could not endure the society of heathens and they left behind them Irish books bells and pastoral staves so that one could ascertain therefrom that they were Irish». Landnamabok «But before Iceland was peopled by the Norsemen there were folk here who were called by the Norsemen Papar they were Christians and it is thought that they came from the West over the sea for they left behind them Irish books bells and staves and many other articles from which one might conjecture they were West-men.»."

The Irish gaelic monks had established themselves in heathen Ireland starting in 431 with Bishop Palladius and Saint Patrick in 432 AD. Monasteries were built in the sixth-century ~500 AD, by St. Finian, St. Brendan, St. Comgall, St. Kieran, and St. Enda. They probably went north into the Faroe Islands and onwards to Icealand with an escort of Christian Celts ~500 AD (Source).

John Dee and English claims over America

This information was used by John Dee (1527-1608), a well known mathematician, astronomer, cartographer, and scholar of magic and the occult, to promote the English claims over America. He was a favorite of English Queen, Elizabeth I, acting as her adviser and astrologer. He coined the term "British Empire", championed the cause of exploring and claiming North America for England, and was an activist in favor of the Gregorian calendar (which was finally adopted by Britain in 1752).

Spain and Portugal had split the globe between themselves using the meridian that passed through a point 300 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands (Tordesillas Treaty, signed in 1494). Pope Julius II ratified this treaty in 1506. However, other nations like the Dutch and the English ignored it, especially after the break with Rome during the Protestant reformation.

Dee came up with the voyages of Welsh Prince Madoc, and the domination of Iceland and the Norsemen's territory by King Arthur, to set a precedent and legal priority for England's claim to North America, and the territories later occupied by the Vikings (Iceland, Greenland, Vinland, Markland), and the land mentioned by the Zeno brothers (Frisland and Estoitland).

He also used information from an account known as Inventio Fortunata which tells about an English Franciscan friar who was a mathematician at Oxford, who sailed to the North Pole on his own, in 1360 during the reign of Edward III of England. More details on this voyage in a future post.

Since Elizabeth I was a Tudor, and had Welsh roots (The House of Tudor came from the Tudors of Penmynydd, a noble family from Wales), Dee outlined her family tree showing that she was related to Arthur and Madoc!

Dee prepared maps for the English privateers and navigators like John Davis, Francis Drake, Martin Frobisher, Walter Raleigh, and Humphrey Gilbert, below is one of them, a North Pole view of the world, notice the ice-free Arctic Ocean, the magnetic mountain on the pole, and the many channels cutting across North America. Dee was convinced that a northern passage existed between Europe and the Far East. The map below was given by Dee to Gilbert in 1582-83. It can be enlarged by clicking on the source link.

John Dee's map for Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 1582-83. Source (click for interactive map)

For those interested in Dee and his British Empire project, I suggest reading the following paper published in 2024: The Artic Arthur and the American Avalon: John Dee’s Brytanici imperii limites (1578) and the North Atlantic island imaginary, by Stewart, B.; Buskes, G.; Cobben, F.; Geerts, W.; Nolten, M.; Verkoren, J. Leidschrift, 39(Februari (1) Er was eens… Sprookjes, folklore en mythes door de eeuwen heen Sprookjes, folklore en mythes door de eeuwen heen), 33-55. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4198826.

Avalon in America

It is interesting to note that the southwestern tip of Newfoundland was named Avalon peninsula. Which is no other than the mythical island of King Arthur! This spot was the earliest site of English voyages (by Sebastian Cabot), temporary and later, permanent settlement. By chance it was named with an Arthurian placename.

It was named Avalon by Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, (1580-1632), who received a grant from the Crown to settle there in 1621 (many years after Dee's death), by chance, he chose the name Avalon because it was the land where St. Joseph of Arimathea was said to have landed in his mission to christianize Britain ~63 AD.

Back in 2014 I posted about mtDNA C1e haplogroup found only in Iceland. Amerindians have mtDNA C1b, C1c, and C1d but those who may have met the Vikings in Greenland (Innuit - Eskimo) don't carry it. They are unrelated to the Icleandic variant. mtDNA C1a is found in East Asia, and C1f found at extremely low frequencies in the eastern Baltic area. But neither are associated with the Iceland haplogroup. The options are: C1e has an Eurasian root and reached Iceland with its Viking peopling wave, or it is a Native American variant not yet detected in America. Considering its tree (see Fig. 3 in this paper), with C1e equidistant from C1f and C1d, I opt for an Amerindian variant, one that was thriving ~500 AD when Irish, English, or Scottish people navigated to and from America and Ireland and mixed with the natives, bringing it back to Iceland with them. It survived there and ended up in modern Icelandic people. The original Amerindian clade died out in America during the "Great Dying" after the discovery and conquest starting in 1492. However, C1d is particularly prevalent in South America, and at lower frequencies in Central and North America! (see heatmap here).

My next post will look into another Medieval English Polar explorer who sailed in 1360 to the North Pole.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

"White" Indians the facts

A lot has been written about Native Americans with European appearance, the famous "White Indians". There are plenty of websites, with different European homelands for the origin of these white Amerindians, see the following examples: webpage I (Knights Templar), webpage II (Welsh), webpage III (white indians), webpage IV (Mormons), webpage V (Celts), Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans.

By the way, what is "white"? Personally I disagree with classifying people. The Americans, on the other hand, love it. The US Census classifies people by race and color in categories (!): White, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and also Hispanic or Latino ethnicity (?).

So what is a person born in Galicia, Spain, with Celtic background (blue-eyed, fair haired, typical Celtic look)? Hispanic? Latino? White? or all? And a dark-skinned Indian from Tamil-Nandu? Black? or Asian?

I hope I made my point.

Europeans in America before Columbus

The Vikings did reach the shores of America from their villages in Greenland, setting up a small base on Terranova at L'Anse aux Meadows c.1000 AD, but after 20 years they had to quit, the hostilities with the natives was something they couldn't cope with. They used it to obtain wood and the climate was better than in Greenland. But the brave and fearless Vikings met their match in Terranova. And, it should be noted, they didn't mix with the locals.

Carthaginians and Phoenicians may have strayed across the Atlantic by chance, pushed by a storm, or traded goods sourced from America. I find it difficult to believe they would have settled in the new world. Even if they did, any genetic signal they left behind must have surely diluted away over the years. The "Great Dying" after 1492 would have also erased the evidence.

Spanish chroniclers in Chile: concern with "White Indians"

The Spanish conquistadors moved into the Inca Empire's southernmost provinces (Modern Central Chile) after defeating the Incas in Peru and Cusco, the heart of the empire. The conquest of Chile took place in 1540 under the command of Pedro de Valdivia (1497-1553). During the long war that ensued, he was captured by the Mapuche natives, and executed. But in the end, the Spaniards prevailed, at least north of the Bio Bio River.

There are plenty of accounts written by those who took part of the Conquest or visited the area later. They all tell us about "white Indians". Below are some of these reports written by contemporary eye witnesses.

Father Molina wrote about them in his book Ensayo sobre la historia Natural de Chile (p.206 - Spanish), published in Italy in 1810:

"The complexion of this people is commonly a reddish-black color, which seems to be unnatural to them, because in people who are not frequently exposed to air and sun, it is decidedly white. The inhabitants of the province of Boroa, located in the center of the Araucanian state, at 39° south latitude, are generally white and red, have blue eyes and blond hair, like those of Europeans, who are born in the middle of the northern temperate zone. This effect perhaps comes from the physical constitution of that province, which is surrounded by high mountains and irrigated by the great Cautín River.

He didn't attribute the European features (bluer eyes, white skin, fair hair) to interbreeding with Europeans. He believed it was the geography of the area that caused it. Interesting theory!

Right at the beginning of the Spanish conquest, Alonso de Góngora Marmolejo (1523-1576) wrote about his experiences during the invasion and occupation of Chile in 1540, and the war against the Mapuche people that took place then, and for the next few decades in his Historia de Chile (see page 2 - Spanish). He described the natives they encountered in 1540 as follows: "They are people with a pleasant appearance, mostly white, well disposed."

Claudio Gay in his Historia Física y Política de Chile (see Vol. 1 page 225 - Spanish) published in 1846, transcribed the notes of José Antonio Pérez García from the 1780s, who described the natives in the area around the town of Valdivia as follows: "They are of good understanding, all white, the women beautiful." This version was based on records he had obtained on an expedition by Chilean Governor Hurtado de Mendoza to this region some time between 1556 and 1561.

In 1600, Father Diego de Ocaña in his journal, Relación del Viaje a Chile, año de 1600 wrote that "The women are beautiful though some are whiter than those of other places" (see p. 30 - Spanish). He included an illustration in color (below), shown below of a Mapuche chief, Lautaro, and his native wife Guacolda. The woman's image is captioned: "beautiful Guacolda, clothes of Chilean women, from Coquimbo to the Valley of Arauco.

"Beautiful" Guacolda (c.1530s-1557) was a Mapuche, the wife of the Chief Lautaro who led an uprising against the Spaniards in 1557. Her name in Mapuche language means "red corn" meaning her hair was probably fair or red. We have the following portrait of her and her husband, from Diego de Ocaña's book. Both died in 1557 when the rebellion was brutally quelled by the Spanish forces.

Lautaro and Guacolda, by Diego de Ocaña (1600). Source

Then we have Cieza de León, who wrote in 1553 about the Chachapoyas, and yes, he said they were the whitest! (La Crónica del Peru): "These native Indians of Chachapoyas are the whitest and most graceful of all those I have seen in the Indies that I have traveled through, and their women were so beautiful that, simply for their grace, many of them deserved to be enslaved by the Incas and taken to the temples of the sun; and so, we see today that the Indian women who remain from this lineage are extremely beautiful, because they are white, and many of them are very handsome." (see p. 259 - Spanish).

Dutch genes?

Paul Treutler, a Prussian (1822-1887) lived in Chile for more than a decade, and wrote a book about his experiences (Andanzas de un Alemán en Chile 1851-1863 - Adventures of a German in Chile. See p.311.) In it he mentions the fair and white-skinned natives of Boroa (the same that Molina had mentioned), and provides an explanation for their unusual trait:

"Furthermore, there is a tribe living a little north of the Toltén River, the Boroa, who have fair skin, blue eyes, long blond hair, slender stature, good physique, and noble manners, giving them a strong resemblance to the Germans. However, their character, customs, and culture are very similar to those of the Araucanian tribes, with the only difference being that they are, precisely, among the most savage and cruel indigenous people and least susceptible to civilization. Furthermore, they maintain few relations with other tribes and only marry among themselves. There are contradictory opinions, one of which is that they are considered descendants of the crew of a European ship that was shipwrecked on the neighboring coast, since Boroa is not very far from the sea."

They were endogamous, and the original source may have been the castaways from a shipwreck. Dutch, English, and even American ships sailed down this coast towards the Strait of Magellan or The Drake Passage, and shipwrecks were not unusual.

Why were the Colonial Spaniards so concerned with whiteness?

There were many men but few Spanish women in the Spanish colonies of America because decent women stayed in Spain, they didn't want to suffer the hardships of the colonies. It was not civilized in the European sense, it lacked safety, comfort, and all that an upper class Spanish woman would expect. It was tough, rough, dangerous, and uncomfortable. Few Spanish women ventured across the Atlantic into the New World. The Spanish conquistadors therefore married the native women. They mixed joyfully with the natives, and a new group appeared, the mestizo - creole people of Latin America, with Spanish surnames but 50% Amerindian genes, and 100% mtDNA from their mothers. Father Y-Chromosomes was European.

The Spaniards introduced a caste system in their colonies, especially in Mexico (Nueva España) and Peru, people were set in strict categories depending on their genetic mix of White, Black (African slaves) and Native Americans. It was not as strict as we'd expect, but it separated the "pure" Spanish upper classes from the mestizo creoles of the middle and lower ones.

The image below shows a Spaniard (White) and a Native American (Indian) that had a "mestizo" child. (Source). Whiteness status could be purchsed and wealthy mestizos did so. Whiter skin helped a lot too.

Spanish and Indian produce a Mestizo. Source

If white native women were available, then their offspring would be whiter and could have a better social standing. That is probably why so much emphasis was put on promoting native women's white skin.

As you'd expect, there is a high content of Amerindian genes in the current Latinamerican population. The following image also shows the African content (slave trade), which in several cases is even higher than the Native American share (Source). The remaining share, to make 100% is mostly European, with a tiny share of Asian admixed.

Indigenous and sub-Saharan African descendant populations in Latin America and the Caribbean in 21st century. (-) represents a lack of data.. Source

The following image is interesting because it shows the prevalence of European ancestry in certain regions, and Amerindian in Others. I am not sure about its sources or accuracy. (Source).

These maps show how complex it is to try to find specific information on the "real" Amerindian DNA, and its diversity. The average Latinamerican is the outcome of 500 years of epidemics, war, slavery and forced relocations of local people coupled with massive African slave trade and, after 1850, in certain locations, an influx of Europeans.

A Critique of the Prehispanic Europeans Theories

For a very good, well structured and referenced criticism of the "White" or "European" settlement in Pre-Hispanic times (Vikings, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, etc.) see: Schobinger, J. (1977). Mediterráneos, semitas, celtas y vikingos en América: Ojeada sobre algunas modernas expresiones de hiperdifusionismo transatlántico (Spanish).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall © 

The Peruvian Chachapoyas or "white indians"

The Spanish conquistador Pedro Cieza de León (1520 - 1554) wrote a chronicle in which he described Peru at the time of Spanish conquest. His "Crónicas del Perú" also recorded the history of the local native groups and, of course, the Incas and the tribes that they had subjected.

See this 2025 update: Genetic Diversity Among Chahapoyas (published 03.Oct.20225).

He mentions a certain group of Indians, The "Chachapoyan" natives [1], that lived in the Andes, in what is now Northern Peru, right next to Ecuador, in the Cachapoyas District of the Department of Amazonas. Theirs was an area with high mountain ranges: the Calla-Calla range in the south reaching 4,300 m (14,100 ft.) and the Cordillera Oriental to the east with 3,500 m. (11,500 ft.), with forests. The Marañon River flows through the area, draining towards the Amazon. (See map below).

The Chachapoyan region has been inhabited for over 8,000 years, but the group we know as Chachapoya, arrived much later: their most relevant cultural remains date back to 800 C.E. and their society peaked during the eleventh century C.E. (Their buildings at Olán, Yálape, Congó and especially Cuélap are monumental). They were subdued by the Inca around 1470 and incorporated as a province of their Empire after a though campaign. Many Chachapoyans were uprooted and sent to Cuzco and other parts of the Empire, where they were resettled and given new land to grow their crops on (This was a usual practice of the Incas, to dilute local resistence). [4]

After the Spanish conquistadors arrived, they too dominated the Chachapoyans (1535), it was during this period that Pedro Cieza de León visited the region and recorded his encounter with them. He described them as:

"These Indians that live at Chachapoyas are the most white and good looking of all those that I have seen in my travels through the Indies [America] , and their women were so beautiful that merely due to their good nature, many of them deserved to be women of the Incas and be taken to their temples of the sun; and so we see nowadays that the remaining Indian women of this lineage are extremely pretty, because they are white and very well built..." [1]

Text quoted above. From [1]

The "White" natives, true or false?

I have read some posts and articles that imply that these people have a Pre-Hispanic European origin, that is, that they somehow reached America long before Columbus did. And that is why they were "white skinned". I am skeptical about this, because trans-Atlantic communications probably did take place (I have posted about possible Phoenician, Greek, Micenian and Carthaginian navigators reaching the eastern coasts of America), but from there to the Andean foothills of Peru there is quite a distance and a long stretch of inhospitable Amazonian jungle. I doubt that the Chachapoyans were stray Phoenicians or similar sailors.

The official version is that they were a Native American group of people: The symbols that they used to decorate their buildings and the manner in which they mummified their dead suggests that the ancestral Chachapoyas may have reached their territory from the coastal areas of Peru or, from the northern mountain ranges [4].

Little is known regarding their pre-Inca or pre-Hispanic history. The oldest written reference about them dates back to January 14, 1538 in a letter from Alonso de Alvarado to the Spanish leader, Francisco Pizarro after his campaign to conquer the region.

The meaning of the word "Chachapoyas" is uncertain, and it is definitively not a Quechua or Aimará word, (which is what the Incas spoke). Little is known about the language spoken by the Chachapoyas before their conquest by the Inca, so we cannot shed any light on the matter from that angle.

There are of course many theories regarding its meaning: the local chronicler, Garcilaso de la Vega wrote in the 1600s that a Jesuit priest who accompanied the Spanish invaders in 1535 said it meant "Land of strong men", Lecuanda in 1792 suggested that it meant "Mountain of clouds", but these are only conjectures. [3]

They, like most of the American Natives suffered a dramatic population drop after the initial contact with the Spanish conquerors (they were decimated by the epidemics of measles, small pox, and plague that took place in 1546, 1558-59, 1585-91, 1614, 1618-19 and 1721). The population which in 1549 was nearly 88,000 strong, fell to 2,200 by 1793. Many Chachapoyans ran away into the junges to avoid being subjected to the forced-labor of the Spaniards. [3]

This must have bottlenecked the population considerably. Add to this the fact that many of them had been transplanted to other parts of the Inca empire after their defeat in 1470, and that other groups were placed in their homeland. The consequences of this dispersal and impantation plus massive population loss is that the original aboriginal Chachapoyan stock has been seriously diluted since 1470.

Below is a photograph from a book [5] which puts forward the theory that the Carthaginians escaped the destruction brought upon them by Rome after the Punic wars and reached America, and their descendants are... the Chachapoyans! The fair children among the Chachapoyans are known as "gringuitos", diminutive for "gringo" which is the way that Americans (from the U.S.A) are given in Latinamerica. But, wouldn't Carthaginians look like North Africans or Middle Eastern People (darker skinned, dark eyes, dark hair) instead of being blonde?

I posted about this in February 2011, so it does not surprise me. But, as I said above, it is hardly probable that they would have reached the western shores of South America.

To assume that contemporary fair haired children living in that region as "white" caucasoids with a pre-Columbian origin is an over simplification of complex facts. There may have been considerable European admixture during the Colonial period and later, as the population recovered during the nineteenth and twentyeth centuries. Only by studying the genes of their ancestors may we glean some useful information on their origins.

Fortunately the Chachapoyas mummified their dead, so we have plenty of material with a potential to yield useful genetic sequences.

The Mummies

Samples taken from seven Chachapoyan mummies were sequenced in a genetic study; only three yielded viable mtDNA which were assigned to haplogroups B2, M and D1, the others had insufficient coverage. [2]

The haplogroups B2 and D1 are a clear indication that the maternal lineage was American. Haplogroup M is quite strange because it is not one of the founding lineages of American Natives. It is found in Asia and only one other study mentions haplogroup M in the New World. Perhaps future studies will find more cases of it.

Anyway all three haplogroups are of a East Asian origin. This is ratified by a principal component analysis of SNPs overlapping between modern populations and the Chachapoyans which places them clearly in the "Amerindian" group together with the Aymara and Mayas, far from the Europeans and admixed hispanics (Colombian, Puerto Rico and Mexicans from Los Angeles) and closer to the East Asian groups. These people were definitively not "white" Europeans, they were Native Americans with ties to Eastern Asia. Below is an example of two of the samples that were sequenced:

Of course the alleged European origin is sustented by the fact that some of the mummies exhibit, as one blog states: "... Chachapoyas had curly brown or red Caucasoid hair, and not stiff black Mongoloid Amerindian hair.... the individual had red or reddish-brown Caucasoid hair". Below is a photo and some links to photographs of these mummies, so you can see them and decide for yourself:

Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3, Photo 4, Photo 5.

The hair is indeed wavy not straight. The color... well it seems to be brown, not the usual jet-black of the Amerindians. But, does this necessarily imply pre-Columbian European admixture?

The mummies are not dated. Are they older than 1535 or more recent? If older then we can assume that their brown hair is not due to post-discovery admixture. But even then it does not imply European ancestry.

I have posted extensively on Red Haired Native Americans during January 2014 and as I posted in my criticism to the Paracas cone heads, I believe that Neanderthal genes may be responsible for red or brown hair among pre-Hispanic Native Americans.

Red hair is a feature found in several Native mythical hominins (This post links to several posts on red haired hominins). and the reason for this, I believe is some ancient memory of their interaction with Neanderthals in America.

So maybe Europeans and Chachapoyans share a similar origin for their hair color: a common Neanderthal ancestry.

Sources

[1] Pedro Cieza de León, Obras Completas 1984, Cavileño, Madrid, pp. 104
[2] Meredith L. Carpenter, et al., (2013) Pulling out the 1%: Whole-Genome Capture for the Targeted Enrichment of Ancient DNA Sequencing Libraries. The American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 93, Issue 5, 7 November 2013, Pages 852–864. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2013.10.002
[3] Inge Schjellerup, (2005). Incas y españoles en la conquista de los chachapoya. Fondo Editorial PUCP.

[4] Kauffmann Doig, Federico. (2000). Primera expedicion arqueologica a los mausoleos chachapoya (s) de la laguna de las momias (Dpto. de Amazonas, Perú). Chungará (Arica), 32(1), 49-54. Recuperado en 06 de agosto de 2014, de http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0717-73562000000100009&lng=es&tlng=es. 10.4067/S0717-73562000000100009.
[5] Hans Giffhorn, Wurde Amerika in der Antike entdeckt?: Karthager, Kelten und das Rätsel der Chachapoya, C.H. Beck. 2013.
Further Reading on Chachapoyans: An Overview of Chachapoya Archaeology and History, by Adriana von Hagen.

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