Fawcett's Lost City & Ingrejil the "lost City" of manuscript 512

In my previous post, I mentioned Gabriel D'Anunzio Baraldi (1938-2004) an Italian amateur archaeologist and paranormal researcher, who believed in Atlantis, who reached Brazil, and were proto-Hittites. He wrote about this, and also about a Lost City in northeastern Brazil in his book A Descoberta Doc.512 — The Discovery Doc. 512, (1997), which ties up ancient megalithic builders with Percy Faucett's lost city of the Amazon. Interesting stuff, that makes for good-selling books aimed at gullible readers who believe in this sort of trash.

Percy Fawcett

Colonel Percy Harrison Fawecett (b. 1867 - disappeared 1925), and pictured above (Source), was a man of his Victorian and Edwardian times. He was born in Britain, and his career as military took him to Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), he was also a surveyor and geographer, member of the Royal Geographic Society. In 1902 he visited Morocco as a British spy with an cover as an archaeologist, and in 1906 the border dispute between Bolivia and Brazil took him to South America, which he explored between 1906 and 1925. He was fascinated with the idea of a lost civilization in the Amazonian jungles and set out to discover its ruins.

In 1925 he set out with his son, Jack, and one of his son's friends, Raleigh Rimmel, to discover the Lost City that he called "Z". It was located in the South-central Amazonian region, along the basin of the Paraguay River in a region known as Mato Grosso. They vanished without a trace and were never seen again. The jungle, disease, and the natives were surely the cause of their disappearance.

Fawcett was persauaded of the existence of "Z". South America had its Eldorado and Lost City of Caesars, and Hiram Bingham III had discovered Machu Pichu (well, taken there by a local native guide) in 1911. Why couldn't there be a lost city hidden in the jungles of Brazil?

Manuscript 512

Furthermore, Percy is said to have seen a document known as Manuscript 512. This document is archived at the Livraria Publica da Corte (nowadays the Biblioteca Nacional or National Library of Brazil). The author is unknown, but it is attributed to a Portuguese bandeirante (men who organized and led incursions into the jungles to capture natives that were then sold as slaves), by the name Joao da Silva Guimaraes.

The manuscript was discovered by chance in 1839 by Manuel Ferreira Lagos, a naturalist. Nowadays it is known as "512" with the title "Relação historica de uma occulta, e grande povoação antiquissima sem moradores" (the manuscript's text is included as Annex 4, you can also read it here, in Portuguese), the name can be translated as "Historical narrative of a large, occult, and very ancient town without residents".

The bandeirantes, during one of their indian-hunting incursions in 1753, came across the ruins of a city, with arches, statues and temples. The narrative does not disclose where the city is located, but describes it in detail.

They came across a bright mountain (due to the crystals it contained), following an albino deer they found a narrow path that let up the mountain where they came across the city. Three stone arches marked its entrance (Arches were unknown to Amerindian constructors, they used beams for dorways, Romans invented the arch). There were inscriptions on the stone. The houses were built with bricks, and empty, no furniture or decorations. The town had a main square with a black column on which there was a statue pointing north. The corners of the squares had needles. There were large buildings around the square, one was a temple with many sculpted figures, crows, and crosses. The place seemed to have been struck by an earthquake. Nearby there was a large river. They followed it upstream and by a waterfall, three days later, they came across many caves with slabs of stone and inscriptions. There, they found a gold coin: "Our companion, named Joao Antonio, found in the ruins of a house some gold money, round in shape, larger than our six thousand four hundred coins: on one side with the image, or figure of a young man kneeling, and on the other side a bow, a crown, and an arrow.". They had explored the region of the Una and Paraguacu rivers in Bahia. One of the bandeirantes wrote a letter to the authorities in Rio de Janeiro telling about their adventure. It originated the manuscript. Source.

The interior of the state of Bahia in Brazil has a region (now a National Park), on the Paraguacu River, with caves, waterfalls, and plateaus (Chapadas) it is known as Chapada Diamantina (the second part of its name is due to diamonds found in the area). The place has great scenery and rock formations that could induce you to imagine that there is a city somewhere in those mountains.

However, Percy didn't head into the interior of Bahia, site of the manuscript's lost city. His city was located in South-central Brazil, in the Mato Grosso (Thick Jungle) region along the Xingu River. World War I delayed his plans, and his 1920 expedition failed, so he set out again in 1925, and vanished.

Map showing Percy Fawcett's last expedition to the Lost City of "Z". Source

Ingrejil the Lost City

This "city" was discovered in 1984 by Gabriele D'Annunzio Baraldi together with two archeologists: Aurelio Abreu and Luis G. Moreira Jr. It is located in Bahia, and it was immediately linked to the city mentioned in manuscript 512.

The discovery became known in Sept. 1984, when the media announced that "A Brazilian archaeologist Sunday said he has discovered ruins of a legendary stone city dating from Incan times and sought by explorers for centuries in the country's remote interior. Aurelio Abreu, vice president of the Sao Paulo Archaeology Institute, said he and two researchers found 'ruins of a structure of stone giving the impression of a fortress and dating from remote times' in the mountains of Bahia state 700 miles north of the capital."

This city was very far from where Fawcett was trekking, it is northeastern Brazil, 25 km from the town of Brumado, 1400 km - 900 mi from Percy's "Z". See it in Google Maps.

Baraldi described the archaeological site as heavily altered by miners (searching for diamonds). The terrain had been artificially leveled, and there were large stones arranged in lines, they could be the foundations of large buildings or markers for some kind of astronomical or solar observatory. Some stones are set at right angles, there are some mounds shaped like pyramids, which he interpreted as temples. Abreu said that the "ruins" were very different from the work of paleoindians. He believed that the city's residents had come from Peru during the Inca period, or even earlier, and they settled there in the mountains of Bahia because it was similar to their Andean homeland. Baraldi, on the other hand, thought it was 4,000 years old, far older than the Inca empire.

A paranormal researcher, Yuri Leveratto wrote a book about American mysteries (Exploracoes na America do Sul 2006-2011) in which he suggrests that Ingrejil is much older than what Baraldi believed, Leveratto says it is at least 10,000 yers old and that due to the climate change prompted by the end of the Last Ice Age, the inhabitants of Ingrejil migrated west, into the Andes, and were the ancestors of the later Andean cultures. Sounds like the pre-Clovis advanced civilization in North America, in a South American version.

Natural or man-made?

The images below seem to indicate that the dolmens, menhirs, arches, and walls are natural geological formations. Rocks that form part of the ladnscape in the Serra das Almas. The locals named the place "Ingrejil", which is a deformation of the Portuguese word igrejinhas: "small churches" due to the shapes of the rocks.

The Brazilian Centro Nacional de Arqueologia, IPHAN has listed it as a site, and describes it as follows: "ruins of an unknown civilization. They are located on a plateau in the Serra das Almas [Range of Spirits] in the municipality of Livaramento de Nossa Senhora - BA. In the leveled area there is a water spring, menhirs, foundations, artificial hillocks and a parabolic rock."

But I could not find one single formal research paper about Ingrejil, no archaeologist or researcher has written any papers about this "city", no excavations, nothing!

Some images of the Lost City of Ingrejil

I did find some photographs, which you can see below. See many more images here. They seem to show natural rock formations, like eroded volcanic dikes, and jagged rock crests.

The first image depicts rocks that seem to have been placed in groups of three, upright in the ground (Source):

The next two images (Source) show a Dolmen, Pedra do Bandeira (Flag Rock), and the three-fold menhirs:

Below are two more views (Source) with the "parabolic antenna" and a the hillside with a rock "wall".

The final image (source) shows the valley with the stone "structuress".

Closing Comments

The tale of the lost city described in the manuscript is interesting, the gold coin is unexpected, but lacking a better description we couldn't say where it came from (was it an Inca jewel, or some European coin, or even older?). Fawcett was blinded by his zeal to discover his own lost city, and that led to his death in the jungle.

Ingrejil is a natural rock formation, it isn't a lost city. There were rumors of a similar lost city in Patagonia, where the Chelep dwarves lived, and where Aonikenk Chief Papon found a large gold nugget, a story repeated by a professor Wolf - Wolff or Wolfe who saw it in 1922. However, it turned out to be a natural lava formation with walls that were lava dikes.

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

The ~25,000-year-old Santa Elina Site in Brazil

Santa Elina is an archaeological site located deep inland, roughly 100 km (60 mi.) from Cuaiba, the capital of the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, close to the border with Bolivia (see Google map) it is a rock shelter that has provided evidence of human presence there 25,000 years ago, or more.

See: Vialou D, Benabdelhadi M, Feathers J, Fontugne M, Vialou AV. Peopling South America’s centre: the late Pleistocene site of Santa Elina. Antiquity. 2017;91(358):865-884. doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.101

Having mentioned in a previous post the recent article that suggests a recent (4-8 ky) age for the Monte Verde site in Chile, which had been dated to 18.5 ky, I am glad that there are many more older sites in America that suggest an early date for human colonization.

Early and distant Population

It is located far from the Atlantic and Pacific coastal routes, deep inside Brazil, in an area south of the Amazon forest, yet covered with thick jungles. It is near the Cuaiba River, which forms part of the Paraná-Río de la Plata Basin, and could have helped people move through the region.

Excavations began here in 1984 and yielded remains of a giant sloth (Glossotherium) whose bone osteoderms (that formed part of its thick protective hide) have been dated to 27,000 ±2000 years ago. Charcoal remains have also been dated to 23,120±260 years ago.

There have been later occupations (~9,000 to 10,000 years ago), with more tools, ornaments, and sloth remains. Researchers conclude that: " The dates indicate two periods of human occupation, with a date of 23120±260 BP for the first, and a date of 10120±60 BP for the beginning of the second. These dates confirm the association between archaeological artefacts and Glossotherium bones. Subsequent occupations terminated around 2000 BP.!

Figure 1. Location and general view of the study area. (a) General location of the site (base map adapted from Google Earth); (b) location of the site in Brazil, the Mato Grosso State, and distribution of the major regional biomes; (c) general overview of the Serra das Araras in the studied region; (d) view of the location of the Santa Elina rock shelter (at the base of the rock wall that appears in the center of the photograph, as indicated by the arrow). Map and photographs by Caroline Bachelet. (Color online).
From Rita Scheel-Ybert and Caroline Bachelet, 2020

A study of the ecology and plants of the site by Rita Scheel-Ybert and Caroline Bachelet, 2020 gives information about the climate conditions during the occupation periods mentioned further up: "Since it was first occupied, the Santa Elina rock shelter has been part of the cerrado biome [Cerrado is a tropical savanna located in Central Brazil, with grasslands, forests, and shrublands]. At about 27,000 cal BP (AZ-1) the site was surrounded by a forested environment. The small charcoal sample does not allow for further climatic inferences, but previous paleoecological studies corroborate the existence of a cold and humid climate in Central Brazil between about 27,000 and 20,000 BP (Salgado-Labouriau et al. 1997). This same study demonstrated a decrease in humidity from about 18,500 BP onward, with a very dry climate until about 11,500 BP (Salgado-Labouriau et al. 1997). During this interval, evidence of human occupation in Santa Elina shelter is scarce or nonexistent (Vialou et al. 2017)... Between about 11,000 and 10,000 cal BP (AZ-2) the occupation resumes; "

Charcoal remains in the cave mean that there was fire, and fire seems to imply human presence, although natural fires are not uncommon and don't require a human agent. Sheel-Ybert and Bachelet write that "Fire is an ancient and important ecological agent in the cerrado (Coutinho 1990). Natural and anthropogenic fires have coexisted in its domain for thousands of years (Miranda et al. 2009): cerrado fire events have been recorded in Central Brazil since 32,400 yrs BP (Salgado-Labouriau et al. 1997). Some authors question the human presence in this region before about 11,000 yrs BP (e.g., Schmitz 1990), thus precluding the possibility of human-induced fires before the Holocene, but the chronology of the earlier occupation in Santa Elina pushes back the antiquity of human colonization."

But, regarding the cave's charcoal, they state that "The anthracological assemblage of the earliest occupation of Santa Elina rock shelter (SU-III), dated at about 27,000 cal BP, consists of a set of 16 samples, each one presenting between one and six taxa. This result is consistent with short-term human occupations, in which case temporary combustion activities would have likely produced these charcoal samples. Yet, we cannot exclude the possibility that this evidence could also have been produced by natural fires... [However,] We therefore argue that the charcoal retrieved in this unit was produced in short-term combustion features related to episodic and sporadic human activities, one of which might have involved the butchering of giant sloths."

Conclusions

The evidence seems to suggest ancient human presence. Of course, human remains would be much better, but fire, tools and butchered giant sloths are strong evidence of an early human presence in south-central South America. It also prompts us to explore and find more similar places. There must be many undiscovered sites hiding in plain site in the jungles of South America, possibly even older than Santa Elina.

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

Early discovery of Brazil and its relationship with St. Brendan (Brandaõ)

As mentioned in a previous post, Brazil, in South America, was officialy discovered by chance, by the Portuguese navigator Cabral in the year 1500 AD, eight years after Columbus discovered America. However, several authors in the 1800s and 1900s have suggested that the Portuguese knew about Brazil's existence from much earlier, and in an interesting twist it has a link with the story of St. Brendan mentioned in yesterday's post.

In the Historia de la Nación Argentina, Vol 2, p. 355, published in 1936, Max Fleiuss wrote about the discovery of Brazil and included the following comments a letter written by Master John (Maese Juan), to the King of Portugal informing him of the discovery of Brazil, he wrote it in Vera Cruz, an island, where Cabral landed in 1500:

"This letter, dated like that of the scribe of the Calcutta trading post, in Veracruz on May 1, 1500, was found by Varnhagen in the archives of the Torre do Tombo and published in the Revista del Instituto Histórica Brasileira in 1843. The following paragraph perfectly elucidates the question of the prior knowledge that the Portuguese discoverers had of Brazil: «As for the location of this land, Your Highness should order a world map to be drawn, which Pero Vaz Bisagudo has, and in this way Your Highness will be able to see the location of this land.»
That planisphere by Pero Vaz de Cunha, the Bisagudo, is one of the oldest, as Master Juan points out to the king; and it was traced on the "Portuguese Map of the Vatican Secret Archives" of 1343. Emperor Charles V of France ordered it to be reproduced in 1375 by one of the most skilled Spanish cartographers from Majorca and ordered it to be corrected and enlarged according to the explorations made from that year 1343 onwards. A copy of it is now in the National Library of Paris."

Maese Joao is telling the king to look at the map owned by Pero Vaz de Cunha known as The Bisagudo, one of his navigators and officers. Bisagudo as a nickname referred to Pero Vaz de Cunha's shap features, from the Portuguese words viso agudo, acute face. He had been sent by King John II of Portugal to build a fortress in Senegal, Africa, but the mission took a nasty turn involving Pero executing one of his comrades. The Crown never again required his services after this. (Source) another reference says his nickname was due to his cunning and sharp intelligence.

The letter of Maese Joao says that an ancient map from 1343, showed where Brazil was located.

Max Fleiuss then adds that the map was traced from the secret Vatican files, and also copied in 1375 by the French King, Charles V, and that a copy can be found in the French National Library in Paris!

Fleiuss continues (highlight is mine, because Sancho Brandão, is, as we will see further down, linked by his same-sounding name, to St. Brendan).

"On February 12, 1343, during the reign of Alfonso IV, the Valiant, son of King Dinis, in Portugal, he informed Pope Clement VI, in a letter written from Montemayor-el-Novo (Vatican Archives), that Captain Sancho Brandão had reached a land he believed to be an island and that he was taking wild animals, livestock, and brazilwood back to Lisbon, and that he had had it surveyed by several ships. On maps from the 15th and 16th centuries, the legend "Isla de Brandam" [Brandam's Island] is also applied to "Isla del Brasil." [Brazil Island] This island appeared in the Medici Atlas as early as 1351.
Capistrano de Abreu tells us that some medieval maps give the name to a single island, in the shape of a perfectly regular circle... or in the shape of a crescent moon; others give the name to two semicircular islands separated by a strait. In Pisigano's map of 1367, there are three Bracir islands. Nenrod Krestalimer, in his study of medieval maps, found the word Brazil written with the following variants: Brazí, Braciri, Brazil, Brasiel. Brasil, Brazile, Braziele, Braziel, Bracil, Bracill, Bcrsill, Braxil, Braxiili, Braxiel, Braxyiili and Brigilge.
On the map of Charles V [the one mentioned further up, from 1375] and on the world map of Banulph Hyggeden, designed in 1360 (British Museum, London), that island has more or less the same shape as it does on the map of Bisagudo; an island that is still found on the geographical charts of Nicoló Zeno (1380), of Becario (1435) and of André Bianco, original of 1436 and copy of 1448. In the latter, it includes the legend according to which its maritime distance from the Cape Verde archipelago is calculated at 1500 miles, or approximately the distance between Cape Verde and Cape St. Augustine.[more on Bianco's map further down]
In addition, this information appears in Paulo Toscanelli's letter. Furthermore, on Martin Behaim's globe, dated 1487, the "Island of Sancho Brandõo or Brazil" is marked. This astronomer and cartographer from Nuremberg resided for a long time in Lisbon and died there in 1507. Sancho Brandõo, captain of the 1343 expedition, would therefore be, chronologically, the original discoverer of Brazil.
Among the autographs that belonged to Lord Charles Stuart's archive, there was found the letter from Pedro Alvarez to Dom Manuel in which he announced, along with the scribe, the astronomer, and all the ship commanders, the discovery of the Brazilian land. These letters were sent by the vessel under the command of Gaspar de Lemos. Cabral addresses the king in the following passage: «Obeying Your Highness’s instructions, we sailed west, and took possession, with authentic title, of Your Highness’s land, which the ancients called Brandam or Brazil» (Torre do Tombo Archive, Lord Stuart Archive Register).
Renowned authors, such as Luciano Pereira, Faustino da Fonseca, Lopes de Mendonga, Brito Rebello, Jayme Cortezão, Capistrano de Abreu, João Ribeiro, Pandiá Calogeras, Rodolfo García, and the American Henry Vignaud, considered one of Columbus’s best biographers, acknowledge that Duarte Pacheco Pereira was Cabral’s predecessor."

Andrea Bianco's Map

Plenty has been written about Bianco's maps. See this excellent reproduction of the 1436 map (Zoomable), in it, Brazil Island can be seen west of Portugal, at the latitude of Cape St. Vincent in southern Portugal, half way across the ocean towards Antillia Island (the map has the text upside down, rotate it to read some of the names). Regarding the 1448 map you can see it here, also zoomable (requires free registration to view). Below is a copy of it, from Fleiuss' article. His original caption is included.

Land located in the Portolan chart of Andrea Bianco (1448), 1500 miles west of Cape Verde Islands.

The map shows Cape Verde (the two points on the right), two islands, Dos Ermanes Islands (Two Brothers? Islands, which probably depict the Cape Verde Islands), and on the lower left side, cut by the end of the parchment is a piece of land, possibly an island, or the coast of some continental area, with a rather illegible text written in ancient Venetian. This text has been interpreted in many different ways, as we will see below

Bianco's Text

Below is a detail of Bianco's 1448 map, showing the text written on the island Source. The upper line gives the name of the island, the bottom line its location.

Fleiuss says the inscriptian reads "Authenticated Island, 1,500 miles away to the west" and asserts that "Portuguese navigators apparently found a land located 1,500 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands—more or less where the South American coast is located—which they later named Authentic Island."

A very interesting online source written by Michael Ferrar reads this text as: "Ixola A(n)tarticha, Xe longo a ponente 1500 mia" and gives it the following interpretation (I summarize his text): While reading Gavin Menzies book ("1421, the year China discovered the world") he read on page 277 that the text «Andrea Bianco’s map of 1448 referred to, “Ixola Otinticha. Xe longa a ponente 1500 mia” with a translation reading “a genuine island is 1500 miles west of here (West Africa)”» Ferrar consulted an expert on ancient Venetian writing who read "Ixola A(n)tarticha. Xe longo a ponente 1500 mia”, that could be translated from Venecian to English as: “The Antarctic Island. It has 1500 miles long to the west”." This expert suggests that the island is a reference to the mythical Antarctic continent or Terra Incognita Australis, legendary like the dos ermanes islands.

An older version, from 1895 (A Pre-Columban Discovery of America, by H. Yule Oldham, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Mar., 1895), pp. 221-233, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773930) shows this same map and refers to the mysterious text as follows: "at the lower edge of the map, south-west from Cape Verde-that is, in the direction of Brazil— there is to be seen a long stretch of coast-line with this singular inscription in the Venetian dialect: "isola otinticha," that is authentic or authenticated island. It is difficult to believe that this can refer to anything but Brazil... Owing to lack of room on the parchment on which the map is drawn, only a corner of this island is shown, on the very edge of the skin, but still much closer to Cape Verde than Brazil actually is. As if, however, to prevent any misconception, the cartographer has added under the words "ixola otinticha" the qualifying statemen, "xe longa a ponente 1500 mia.""

Oldham argues, with a lengthy explanation in the footnote, that "longa" in old Venetian means "distant" and that the text should be interpreted as: "authentic island is distant 1500 miles to the west."

Opposing View

A publication (Um suposto descobrimento do Brasil antes de 1448 —A supposed discovery of Brazil before 1448— by Tomás Oscar Marcondes de Souza in the Revista do Instituto Historico e Geografico de Sao Paulo, vol XLVI, p. 211, 1948, suggests that the idea of a pre-Cabral discovery is a fantasy. Among other things, it analyzes Bianco's map, and includes two images of the relevant text, that we show below, and adds the following comments about these texts.

"While studying the issue related to the discovery of the islands of the Cape Verde archipelago in 1944, we came across, between pages 98 and 99 of the book published by the Ministry of Colonies of the Portuguese Republic, entitled: - "Letters from the islands of Cape Verde, by Vindim Fernandes", by A. Fontoura da Costa, a photographic reproduction of a part of André Bianco's map from 1448, precisely where the much-discussed "Ixola Otinticha" is drawn.
Our surprise was enormous when we verified in this photographic reproduction the existence of another legend, already mentioned by us, on the island under study, with words, partly illegible, but perfectly distinguishable, these final words: "a ponente /500 / mia", which can be verified in the cliché that we publish here." [this is the upper text in the image further up]
As an example, we reproduce here the adulterated legend of "Isla Otinticha" published in volume 1, page XXXII, of "History of the Portuguese Colonization of Brazil". As is easily verified, the falsification consisted of altering the number of miles indicated in the legend of the island in question from 500 to 1500, considering that the real distance between Cape Verde and Cape São Roque in Brazil is approximately 1520 miles." [bottom text in image above]

"

The author concludes: "Thus, the infamous "Ixola Otinticha" from André Bianco's portolan chart of 1448 is perfectly identified with the current island of Santiago, one of the Cape Verde archipelago, and at the same time one of the great proofs that Brazil was discovered by the Portuguese before Columbus's feat and Cabral's voyage to Calicut is annulled."

I took a good look at the map that is shown further up, the original map, Source and it seems that it says 1500, and not 500. But my guess is as good as anyone else's unless the parchment is analyzed in depth (ink samples, etc.). It also seems to say ixola otinticha, which differs from what the expert told Ferrar (Ixola A(n)tarticha).

Saint Brendan and Sancho Brandão

An article published in 1927 (Did St. Brendan Discover Brazil? by Honor Walsh, Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Dec., 1927), pp. 377-384. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44208689.pdf) mentions, that "Brazil has two names; one, "Ilha de Brasil" (Isle of Brasil), the other, "Ilha de Brandao" (Isle of Brendan?) . Both of these names appear in a letter written under date of February 12, 1343, by King Alfonso IV of Portugal, addressed to the Sovereign Pontiff, although Brazil is supposed to have been terra incognita until its "accidental discovery " by Pedro Alvarez Cabral in the year 1500.". It cites its source as a Brazilian journal, Jorno de Brasil, of Rio de Janeiro, authored by Assis Cintra, who places this letter from the king to the Pope in the be in the secret archives of the Vatican, Book 138, folios 148 and 149.

The discoverer according to Cintra was a man called Sancho Brandaõ, which is very similar to the same-sounding San Brandaõ (St. Brendan)! who was "driven westward by a storm until he reached the shore of a magnificent land, rich in timber yielding a red ink or coloring" (now known as Brazil wood).

The text adds that "Annexed to the letter is a map of the land discovered, with the alternative titles, 'Insula de Brasil' and 'Insula de Brandao'. According to the same Brazilian historian, "In 1375, Charles V, King of France, sent to the Vatican a cartographer from Majorca to copy the Portugese map, with orders to correct and amplify the original in accordance with the explorations carried out from 1343 to 1375. This map is in the Iconographical Section of the National Library in Paris (III, 132, s. XVI) and Brasil Island is shown thereon with more or less the same conformation and position as South America." This is the same information provided by Max Fleiuss.

Walsh then explains that Cabral, after discovering what we now call Brazil, named it "Terra da Santa Cruz" (Holy Cross Land). The name then changed to Brazil due to the red-dye wood of that name. However Walsh repeats a theory put forward by Richard Gumfoleton Daunt, that says that the Portuguese believed they had found the country of Ui Breasail, of the Irish legend, discovered by St. Brendan, so "they were not changing the name from Terra da Santa Cruz to that of a kind of wood, but were reverting to the old name. In this way the Brasil wood would get its name from the country, and not the reverse, as is generally believed." The text adds that Ui Brasil or Ui Breasil, is sometimes written as Hy Brasil. In the Irish Celtic mythology it was an island that could be seen in the western ocean for one day every seven years. It was the Island of the Blessed, also known as the Enchanged Island. (Source)

Regarding the red-dye, known as Brazil, I have mentioned it in a post back in 2011 (Phoenicians, red dye, Ophir, the origin of the name Brazil, etc.)

Assis Cintra

The person mentioned by Walsh, Cintra, existed, and he did write about an early discovery of Brazil. He was Francisco Assis Cintra (1887-1937) was a Brazilian historian, journalist, essayist, and I did find the reference to the letter sent by King Alphonso IV to the Pope Clement VI in 1343 in his book Na Margem da Historia (p.123) —On the Margins of History published in 1930, and in his book O Nome Brasil (com “s” ou com “z”) —The name Brazil (with an “s” or a “z”) (p. 184), published in 1920. They are the source of the text that Walsh and Fleiuss mentioned in their works.

There is another source that mentions correspondence between Alfonso IV and the Pope (who at that time lived in Avignon, France, not in Rome), in this book, published in 1872, but it mentions it in the context of the Fortunate Islands (Canary Islands) and not Brazil, however (see p. xiii) it mentions that this expedition whose pilot was a Genoese, Nicoloso de Recco, brought back " red wood which dyed almost as well as the verzino (Brazil wood) although connoisseurs pronounced it not to be the same; the barks of trees to stain with a red colour...

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

Did the Phoenicians Discover America?

This post won't go into this complex matter, I just want to share an online book, published in 1913, written by Thomas Crawford Johnston, and titled "Did the Phoenicians Discover America?"

>>This is the link to the book

In the past (2011) I posted extensively on the Phoenicians - America subject (this is an index to all the posts).

Personally, I don't object to the idea of Phoenicians reaching America. Wind or sea currents could have dragged their ships across the Atlantic towards Brazil from the Canary Islands (like it did with the Portuguese ships sailing to India). Interestingly, Johnston has them reach America from Asia, by crossing the Pacific!.

They could have discovered the dye of Brazil wood and used it as a source for their dye trade. But their impact on the Amerindians if any, was small. No tools, artifacts, or buildings have been found. They did not mention America in any texts. No DNA has been found in any ancient remains or in extant natives.

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

Toca do Serrote das Moendas - Brazil. A site that is over 21 Ky old.

This brief post will mention a paper written in 2014, that mentions a site in Brazil which was occupied by humans more than 21 +/-3 Kya.

AngelaKinoshita et al., (2014), Dating human occupation at Toca do Serrote das Moendas, São Raimundo Nonato, Piauí-Brasil by electron spin resonance and optically stimulated luminescence, Journal of Human Evolution Volume 77, December 2014, Pages 187-195, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.09.006, reports the following:

"Abstract
Excavation of Toca do Serrote das Moendas, in Piauí state, Brazil revealed a great quantity of fossil wild fauna associated with human remains. In particular, fossils of a cervid (Blastocerus dichotomus) were found, an animal frequently pictured in ancient rock wall paintings. In a well-defined stratum, two loose teeth of this species were found in close proximity to human bones. The teeth were independently dated by electron spin resonance (ESR) in two laboratories. The ages obtained for the teeth were 29 ± 3 ka (thousands of years) and 24 ± 1 ka. The concretion layer capping this stratum was dated by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) of the quartz grains to 21 ± 3 ka. As these values were derived independently in three different laboratories, using different methods and equipment, these results are compelling evidence of early habitation in this area."

The authors argue that the deer remains and the human remains are the same age, which is the weak point in their case. Sedimentation could have altered the laying down of the fossils, and younger human bones could have ended up next to ancient deer teeth. Yet there is the chance that they were coeval events.

This is the location of the site:

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

Santa Elina: humans in Brazil 23,000 years ago

I cama across a paper Peopling South America's centre: the late Pleistocene site of Santa Elina, by Denis Vialou, Mohammed Benabdelhadi, James Feathers, Michel Fontugne and Agueda Vilhena Vialou (Antiquity, Volume 91, Issue 358, August 2017 , pp. 865-884) which reports about a site called Santa Elina in western Brazil which has evidence of human occupation some 23,000 years ago.

The paper states that "The crucial significance of Santa Elina for understanding the earliest period of known prehistoric settlement in South America lies in the close articulation of archaeological, palaeontological, sedimentological and chronological datasets from the site. Human presence is attested by: a) lithic materials manufactured on site with evidence of debitage and retouch; b) the bones of extinct megafauna (Glossotherium), partly brought into the shelter, and clearly associated with the lithics; and c) by hearth deposits identified throughout the sequence. The results from three complementary dating methods—14C, OSL (sediments) and U/Th (Glossotherium bones)—are in relative agreement with one another, and confirm the stratigraphic integrity of the depositional history at Santa Elina. The dates indicate two periods of human occupation, with a date of 23120±260 BP for the first, and a date of 10120±60 BP for the beginning of the second (Table 1). These dates confirm the association between archaeological artefacts and Glossotherium bones. Subsequent occupations terminated around 2000 BP."

This site is located roughly 50 miles (80 km) from the city of Cuaibá in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, close to South America's geographic center, and 1,000 miles from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Far from Beringia, and far older than any other site.

Ornaments with holes on the ends, made from extinct sloth osteoderms. from Santa Elina site

How did humans reach central Brazil 23,000 years ago? Perhaps they arrived even earlier. They resettled the cave a second time some 10,000 years ago. Two separate events. Archeologists Agueda Vilhena Vialou and her husband Denis Vialou don't make any conjectures, they just state teir findings and facts. It is a pity that no human bones have been found at the site, to allow us to investigate the matter further.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

Lagoa Santa sites and remains: old and odd

As promised, this post will look into the Lagoa Santa remains from Brazil, which are very old and have some enigmatic traits.

Lagoa Santa in Brazil is a region covering over 100 km² in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais (see map further down), it comprises several sites such as Lapa da Amoreira, Lapa de Carrancas, Lapa Mortuária: Rockshelter and Cave, ("lapa" in Portuguese means "cave") Santana do Riacho, Cerca Grande 6, Cerca Grande 7, Escrivania 3, Sumidouro, Cerca Grande 2, Cerca Grande 5, Lapa do Caetano, Lapa D'Agua and the cave where "Luzia" was found: Lapa Vermelha IV.

The first excavations here were done by Peter Lund at Sumidouro Cave (1842). Over the years amateur archaeologists dug the caves searching for bones, and their antiquity was clear because they were found close to megafauna bones in the same sedimentary deposits. [2]

In 1956 W. Hurt and O. Blasi conducted the first professional digs in the area. They managed to date some of their excavations to some 9,720 and 9,028 years before present (BP) at Rock Shelter 6. This was very important as it gave them a Late Pleistocene - Early Holocene age.

Over 250 skeletons have been unearthed in Lagoa Santa since Lunds days.

A breakthrough was the escavation at Lapa Vermelha IV cave in 1975, by Annette Laming-Emperaire who discovered the remains of a female who was named "Luzia" (the name is a homage to Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis found in Africa in 1974, 3.2 million-years-old).

Luzia, buried under 12 meters of sediments inside the rock shelter was dated [1] using charcoal samples found near her skull. They gave an age of 11,243–11,710 cal BP.

This makes Luzia one of the oldest Paleoindian skeletons found to date in the American continent.

Lagoa Santa Skulls have Australo-Melanesian features

Walter Neves (1999) [3] studied the "Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1", or "Luzia" and found that she "exhibited an undisputed morphological affinity firstly with Africans and secondly with South Pacific populations. In the second comparison, the earliest known American skeleton had its closest similarities with early Australians, Zhoukoudian Upper Cave 103, and Taforalt 18. The results obtained clearly confirm the idea that the Americas were first colonized by a generalized Homo sapiens population which inhabited East Asia in the Late Pleistocene, before the definition of the classic Mongoloid morphology."

So her first similarity is with Africans followed by South Pacific people. This is relevant as we will see later.

Six years later he and Hubbe (2005) [2] expanded their sample side and studied 81 skulls recovered from Lagoa Santa and compared them with those of other extant groups using multivariate analysis. They found that: (bold font is mine)

"The results obtained from all multivariate analyses confirm a close morphological affinity between SouthAmerican Paleoindians and extant Australo-Melanesians groups, supporting the hypothesis that two distinct biological populations could have colonized the New World in the Pleistocene/Holocene transition.
...
The three different quantitative analyses undertaken in this study demonstrate that the first South Americans exhibit a cranial morphology that is very different from late and modern Northeastern Asians and Amerindians (short and wide neurocrania; high, orthognatic faces; and relatively high and narrow orbits and noses) but very similar to present Australians/Melanesians and Africans, especially with the former (narrow and long neurocrania; prognatic, low faces; and relatively low and broad orbits and noses). Taking into account the large number of early specimens used in this study, this trend is unlikely to be a result of sample bias. The phenomenon cannot, as well, be said to represent the result of microevolutionary processes restricted to Lagoa Santa because the same cranial pattern has already been described in places as distant and as ecologically different as Southern Chile [Magellan's Strait], Colombia [Sabana de Bogotá], Mexico [Mexico Basin and Baja California], United States [Florida], and elsewhere in Brazil [Bahia and São Paulo]"

So this seems to confirm his initial finding, an Australian / Melanesian - African affinity and this led to the now controversial craniofacial reconstruction of Luzia:

Luzia's skull and face reconstruction

We will cite Neto, Valle and Santos (2010) [4] whose paper "The colour of the bones: scientific narratives and cultural appropriations of 'Luzia', a prehistoric skull from Brazil", looked into the impact of the subjective bias that scientists invariably have:

"the BBC in London, looking to make a documentary on the prehistoric occupation of the Americas, funded a craniofacial reconstruction of the specimen in 1998, undertaken by Richard Neave of the University of Manchester in England. Luzia's skull was mapped using computerized tomography in Brazil and the images sent to Manchester. There a replica of the skull was produced in resin over which the face was reconstructed using red-brown modelling clay. This reconstruction generated a face suggesting a visual similarity between Luzia and the appearance of populations of African origin."

You can judge this reconstruction by yourself, please take a good look at the image below:

Luzia's craniofacial reconstruction by R. Neave. BBC

Quite controversial indeed, Luzia as depicted in that reconstruction looks like an African or even an Australian Aboriginal or a Melanesian person.

But there were more skulls at Lagoa Santa, and one team led by A. Strauss (2015), [5] studied one belonged to a person who had been decapitated. Yes, this man was is the oldest decapitation known in the New World.

Another Lagoa Santa facial reconstruction

A. Strauss and his team studied the man of Lapa do Santo, Burial 26, whose head had been chopped off 8540+/-50 14C BP. (There are plenty of photos of the site and the skull in the paper [5]).

They too compared it to other human groups and found that (bold is mine):

"The DFA also show similar results for both size and shape, and size corrected analyses (S4 Table). When either posterior probabilities or typicalities are taken into account, Burial 26 classifies clearly with Australia, which has been shown in the past to share high morphological affinities with Early South Americans. Yet, interestingly, in none of the analyses Burial 26 appear close to the other Lagoa Santa remains. When typicalities are taken into account, in both analyses, Burial 26 is statistically different (p<0.05) from Lagoa Santa’s centroid. However, these results may be influenced in this case by the reduced number of individuals in the Lagoa Santa sample, which is probably biasing the population estimates in these analyses.
The results do not indicate Burial 26 from Lapa do Santo presents a distinct morphology compared to other specimens from the Lagoa Santa region, thus supporting the notion he was a local individual and not an outsider."

Again we come across a similarity with Australians, and some remarks that it is "not close to" other Lagoa Santa skulls but isn't exactly different either (they looked into this to discard the possibility of the Lagoa Santa people beheading a prisoner from some other tribe or group).

One of the team's members, Caroline Wilkinson, a specialist in forensic reconstruction, at the John Moores University in Liverpool, England, and a "disciple of Neave" conducted a facial reconstruction of this skull [6].

She worked on a digital model fo the skull, and the outcome is quite different from Luzia.

Strauss explains: "Even though we are used to the traditional facial reconstruction of Luzia, with strong African features, this new image reflects in a more precise manner, the appearance of the first inhabitants of Brazil, displaying generalized and undifferentiated features, from which, over thousands of years, the great Amerindian diversity was established." [6]

What Strauss is saying is that the Lagoa Santa people left Asia before those that stayed behind acquired their current "Asian" features, and once in America evolved into the current Amerindian features.

Below is this new facial reconstruction, which could be that of a modern European, Indian or Middle Eastern person. Eurasian features. The flat nose and the African features are absent.

Lagoa Santa, Lapa do Santo, Burial 26 man, facial reconstruction. C. Wilkinson.

Genetics of the Lagoa Santa people

Bones are interesting, but DNA comparisons are also revealing. A study on Central and Southern American populations (C. Posth. et al., 2018) [7] compared ancient remains in Asia and the Americas, North and South. Posth's paper mentions two rare genetic variants in the Lagoa Santa genome:

1. Y chromosome haplogroup: "our observation of the currently extremely rare C2b haplogroup at Lapa do Santo disproves the suggestion that it was introduced after 6,000 BP".

C2B is extremely rare in modern and recent Amerindians. In fact, it is so rare that a late arrival to America (after all the other groups had settled the continent) had been suggested to explain this odd situation.

But the Lapa do Santo individual carried this haplogroup, and he died more than 6,000 years ago.

2. EDAR gene Variant.: "Our data show that a variant in EDAR that affects tooth shape, hair follicles and thickness, sweat, and mammary gland ductal branching and that occurs at nearly 100% frequency in present day Native Americans and East Asians was not fixed in USR1, Anzick-1, a Brazil LapaDoSanto 9600 BP individual and a Brazil Laranjal 6700 BP individual, all of whom carry the ancestral allele. Thus, the derived allele rose in frequency in parallel in both East Asians and in Native Americans."

This is interesting, the Lapa do Santo individual carried the ancestral allele for the EDAR gene, so he reached America before the mutated form (the "derived" alelle EDAR V370A) evolved.

The derived EDAR is found in 100% of contemporary Native Americans and East Asians but was not present in Lagoa Santa, Anzick Montana (12,000 years ago) or in USR1 (Upward Sun River, Alaska) 11,500 BP.

Posth concludes that the derived EDAR was not yet fixed at that time and that it evolved later, in some kind of convergent evolution on both sides of the Pacific.

Then we have the issue of the "Polynesian mtDNA" among the Botocudo people in Brazil, considered the descendants of the Lagoa Santa Paleoindians:

Botocudos with Polynesian mtDNA

Goncalves, et al., (2013) [8] studied the cranial masures of different groups of extant and past American Natives. They concluded that "the Botocudo Indians presented sufficient similarities with the Lagoa Santa Paleoamericans to be considered candidates to be their possible descendants".

There is nothing odd in this finding, the probem is that when they analyzed the mtDNA of Botocudo skulls they found that they had a haplogroup that is found on the other side of the world!:

"[they had a ] sequence as belonging to haplogroup B4a1a1a (32–34). This haplogroup is found at high frequency in Polynesia, Micronesia, parts of Near Oceania, and Easter Island".

How could these genes find their way into Brazil? Goncalves' team put forward three explanations: (1) Slave trade from Africa brought Madagascar / Polynesian / Melanesian people into Brazil. (2) Slave trade from Polynesia (enslaved Polynesians) into South America -such as what happened to the Easter Island people, forcibly taken to South America and (3) the Botocudo got the genes from their Lagoa Santa ancestors who supposedly carried this haplogroup (no papers have reported it though).

We will look into their comments on the third explanation:

"[This] scenario, prehistoric, is related to the possibility of genetic continuity between the Paleoamericans from Lagoa Santa and Botocudo Indians, which indeed originally had motivated this study. It is conceivable that the Lagoa Santa Paleoamericans carried ancient mtDNA sequences related to those of modern Polynesians, possibly because of a contact with their ancestors, and passed them on to early Amerindians, along with genes associated with Paleoamerican skull morphology.
...
However, for this scenario to be acceptable it has to be chronologically compatible with what is known about the evolutionary history of the mtDNA "Polynesian motif" (14022G, 16217C, 16247G, 16261T), which has been associated with the Austronesian expansion and settlement of Polynesia and Micronesia at a time scale more recent than peopling of the Americas. Notably, the Polynesian motif has additionally been found in Indonesian populations at low frequencies and also in Madagascar.
Polynesian islands were apparently populated around 3,000 y ago. Nevertheless, the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) for the Polynesian motif in Papuans and Polynesians was calculated as 9,300 +/- 2,000 y before present... These TMRCA dates for the Polynesian motif appear too recent for having been introduced into the Americas by the Paleoamerindian migration. Still, we cannot rule out this possibility—however improbable—because, as pointed out by Friedlander et al., the variances of these coalescence estimates may be greater than generally acknowledged."

In my opinion, the link across the Pacific via Lagoa Santa people seems to weak. The likely explanation lies with hypothesis (1) or (2): slave trade.

Nevertheless, Strauss, Neves et al. (2015) [9] reached the same conclusion: Botocudos descend from Lagoa Santa people. But they couldn't explain the Polynesian DNA found in the former:

"In conclusion, our analyses of the morphological affinities of the Botocudo Indians within a worldwide context support the hypothesis proposed by Lacerda and Peixoto (1876) that these groups from East-Central Brazil retained the same morphological pattern from the early inhabitants from Lagoa Santa
....
From a morphological point of view, our results fit better a scenario where the Botocudo are biological descendants from early Paleoamerican groups (e.g., Lagoa Santa), who share they last common ancestor with Polynesian groups probably in Southeast Asia, before the morphological differentiation that resulted in the present-day morphological pattern seen in Asia and most of the Americas occurred.
However, this scenario fails to shed light on the origin of the Polynesian DNA lineages found in the two Botocudo specimens collected from Rio Doce."

Last but not least, is the skull with prominent brow ridges unearthed by Walters in 1958 at Lagoa Santa, reported by Owen B. Beattie and Alan L. Bryan in 1984 [10] (they were trying to recover them, assuming that they had been sold to some private collector).

I had written about this skull in my post Diprothomo and Lagoa Santa - Homo erectus?, back in 2011, because those heavy supraorbital ridges looked very primitive to me:

Image : Skullcap from Lagoa Santa. Beattie and Bryan (1984) [10]

Harold Victor Walter published his findings in a book "Arqueologia Da Regiao de Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais. Indios Pre-colombianos Dos Abrigos-rochedos. (Archaeology of the Lagoa Santa Region.)" in Portuguese and English in 1958. Did he mention this skull?

Summary

And that is all for now. Lagoa Santa sites are very interesting because they have produced hundreds of skeletal remains of Paleo Indians older than 6,000 years BP. Some have very rare genetic haplogroups. They seem to be linked to an early East Asian - Australian - Melanesian people which lived before the typical East Asian and Amerindian features evolved.

Their purported descendants, the Botocudo people of Brazil carry genetic markers found in Polynesia (an area peopled long after America), so this raises interesting questions too.

Last but not least, the emblematic skull of Luzia, depicted with African features in a facial reconstruction is quite different from the reconstruction of another Lagoa Santa skull, which has a more neutral Eurasian appearance.

Sources

[1] Michel Fontugne, (2013), New Radiocarbon Ages of Luzia Woman, Lapa Vermelha IV Site, Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Volume 55, Issue 3 (Proceedings of the 21st International Radiocarbon Conference (Part 2 of 2)) 2013 , pp. 1187-1190. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033822200048098P
[2] Neves WA, Hubbe M. Cranial morphology of early Americans from Lagoa Santa, Brazil: implications for the settlement of the New World. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005;102(51):18309–18314. doi:10.1073/pnas.0507185102
[3] Neves, WA. et al. Lapa vermelha IV Hominid 1: morphological affinities of the earliest known American. Genet. Mol. Biol. [online]. 1999, vol.22, n.4 pp.461-469. Available from: . ISSN 1415-4757. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S1415-47571999000400001.
[4] Gaspar Neto, Verlan Valle and Santos, Ricardo Ventura. The colour of the bones: scientific narratives and cultural appropriations of 'Luzia', a prehistoric skull from Brazil. Mana [online]. 2010, vol.5Selected edition [cited 2019-09-04], pp. 0-0 . Available from: . ISSN 0104-9313.
[5] Strauss A, Oliveira RE, Bernardo DV, Salazar-García DC, Talamo S, Jaouen K, et al. (2015) The Oldest Case of Decapitation in the New World (Lapa do Santo, East-Central Brazil), PLoS ONE 10(9): e0137456. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137456
[6] DNA de fósseis do Brasil desafia teorias de 'descoberta' da América, Evanildo da Silveira De São Paulo para a BBC News Brasil 8 novembro 2018
[7] C. Posth et al., Reconstructing the Deep Population History of Central and South America. Cell 10.1016/j.cell.2018.10.027 (2018)
[8] Goncalves VF, Stenderup J, Rodrigues-Carvalho C, et al. Identification of Polynesian mtDNA haplogroups in remains of Botocudo Amerindians from Brazil, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013;110(16):6465–6469. doi:10.1073/pnas.1217905110
[9] Strauss A, Hubbe M, Neves WA, Bernardo DV, and Atuí JV. 2015. The cranial morphology of the Botocudo Indians, Brazil, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 157:202–216.
[10] Beattie O.B., Bryan A.L., (1984). A Fossilized calotte with Prominent Browridges from Lagoa Santa, Brazil. Current Anthropology, vol. 25, no. 3:345-346

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

On Y chromosome Hg. C in South America

Hello again. I have taken a short break and vacations (winter here in Argentina, but vacations were needed!), and are back online posting again.

One year ago I wrote about Y chromosome's haplogroup C, one of the oldest ones, found in S.E. Asia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, East Asia and only very rarely among Native Americans (Y chromosome haplogroup C Part 1 - C hg. in America - seeking a link with Homo erectus). I revisited the subject again this week and was interestingly surprised to find two new developments:

New Paper on the Ecuadorian natives

A paper titled "Insights into the origin of rare haplogroup C3* Y chromosomes in South America from high-density autosomal SNP genotyping", by Massimo Mezzavilla, Maria Geppert, Chris Tyler-Smith, Lutz Roewer, Yali Xue (DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fsigen.2014.11.005) looks into different explanations for the unusual prevalence of hg C3* among two groups of Ecuadorian natives and concludes that:

"Our simulations revealed good power to detect recent admixture, and that ≥5% admixture 6 Kya ago could be detected. However, in the experimental data we saw no evidence of gene flow from Japan to Ecuador. In summary, we can exclude recent migration and probably admixture 6 Kya as the source of the C3* Y chromosomes in Ecuador, and thus suggest that they represent a rare founding lineage lost by drift elsewhere."

Which is in line with my conjectures put forth in my post one year ago: "It seems to me that there are several different haplotypes hidden in the C3* paragroup that have yet to be identified, but the Americans, but, it clearly indicates no relationship between Japanese or Koreans and the Amerindians...
It is extremely likely that the current patchy distribution and the extremely low frequences of C3* paragroup in South America reflects the remains of a once widespread lineage later overlaid by more recent migrants from Asia and which was seriously reduced due to the bottleneck provoked by the Conquest of America that began in the Sixteenth Century.".

Which is interesting as it indicates that a very "old" Y chromosome haplogroup is present in America. But wait, there is some more evidence:

The Botocudos of Brazil

A recent article at DNAeXplained, "Botocudo Ancient Remains from Brazil" tells about the odd discovery that took place in 2013 that detected a Polynesian mtDNA among some Botocudo skulls that were analyzed. It also adds some new information gleaned from a paper that was recently published. The skulls' Y chromosome was sequenced and it indicated that "...their Y haplogroups are C-P3092 and C-Z31878, both equivalent to C-B477 which identifies former haplogroup C1b2.". Note that the paper does not mention Y-chromosomes. The above is a conclusion of someone who checked the paper... so you can take that with a pinch of salt until ratified by some other source.

So, rhey are citing a paper which I read and checked, but found no reference to the Y-chromosome. (see it here). It does say that these individuals nuclear DNA as well as their mtDNA Bot15 and Bot17 are strongly Polynesian and lack any kind of Amerindian, African or European admixture. They then conjecture about possible origin for these odd individuals (slave trade of Polynesians via Peru, Madagascar slave trade to Brazil, Spanish or Portuguese ships bringing Polynesians to Brazil and a Trans-Pacific contact (strange as the genes appeared on the Atlantic coast of Brazil...). They are stumped and conclude: "Whether brought by Europeans or the result of the Polynesian expansion, the fact remains that some Brazilian Botocudos carried distinctive Polynesian genetic signatures. We hope that further sampling will provide a more definitive answer to this intriguing finding."

These Native Americans were considered backwards and primitive (see my post on them and the theory that they represented an authoctonous American "race"), below is an image of a Botocudo (and he looks anything but backwards or primitive...).

Their name came from the Portuguese word "botoque" (wooden disk) that they used as a personal decoration in earlobes and lower lip.

An article written in 2005 by Reinaldo Jose Lopes (read it here in Portuguese) stated that (my translation): "according to investigators of the University of Sao Paulo, everything indicates that the most typical representatives of the race of the first Americans were those known as Botocudos...". Lopes then explains that the cranial measurements of the Botocudos are closer to those of Paleo Indians and Africans or Melanesians

This was written in the context of the discovery of "Luzia" a woman's skull in the state of Minas Gerais, at Lagoa Santa (by the way, the Botocudos identified as Polynesians by their DNA were also from Minas Gerais). Luzia was dated at 11,500 years old. Below is a reconstruction of her face. Very African or Australian Aboriginal...

Closing Comments

So here we have some interesting facts: some Botocudos of Brazil have a very rare Y-chromosome haplogroup (C) in America, found among a group of Native Americans deemed as the closest to Paleo Indians and to very old remains that actually look Melanesian... The mtDNA and nuclear DNA of these Botocudos are almost pure Polynesian. And also some Ecuadorian natives also have Y Chromosome C Hg., which may belong to a now extremely rare "founding group".

Put together we could conjecture that the old human lineage that peopled Asia reached the New World long before later East Asian or Siberian waves got there. That they are found in some secluded parts of America. They are old, and linked to Melanesia, Australia (whose inhabitants recently moved across the Pacific peopling Polynesia).

In previous posts I have hinted that C hg may actually have a Homo erectus origin (you can read about this it here go down to "Some crazy ideas"), and these recent papers may indirectly support that notion.

Having said this, I also want to give another more critical point of view, a big "BUT..."

I have a suggestion for this oddity, based on the "dog principle": if it has a tail, wags it and barks, its a dog.

So if these skulls have Polynesian mtDNA, Y chromosome unique to Polynesia, nuclear DNA that is 100% Polynesian -and this is the real key- so they did not admix with the Native Americans or Europeans or Africans. These guys were Polynesians. Not American Natives with Polynesian ancestors. No. Pure Polynesians.

Since the papers above clearly indicate that the only possible routes used by these people to get to Brazil are highly improbable, there is only one possible explanation: The skulls belong to Polynesian individuals, picked by some scientific expedition to Polynesia, taken back to Rio de Janeiro, deposited there and incorrectly labeled as Botocudos.

I am going to wait for a formal paper assigning them to Y-chromosome's haplogroup C before considering them seriously.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2015 by Austin Whittall © 

More on the Caaiguá wild men

My recent post on the Caaiguá people, wild men, left me a bit intrigued, so I did some more research and came across the original texts written by contemporary witnesses: Jesuit priests from the Missions in the jungles close to where these people lived.

The Jesuits's written accounts show that these people were quite singular:

• They spoke a language that was quite different from the Guaraní language spoken by the surrounding tribes.
• It had a "whistling" like sound
• The Caaiguá lived in caves and were stone-age hunter gatherers
• They were described as similar to both apes and men and with limited intellectual capabilities
• They were also very belicose and violent

I am inclined to believe that they were indeed a relict Neanderthal group, human yet not human enough, feature that led both natives and missionaries to consider them authentic wild men.

Wild Men in detail

Father Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, wrote several learned books on the native languages of North and South America, and, as could be expected, mentioned the language spoken by the Caaiguas. I quote him below (the bold font is mine):

"The Caaiguá Language.
The Caaiguá language is spoken by the nation of the same name that has settled to the east of the Uruguay River to the north, near its sources [Shaded in red in map below] it is a peculiar language of rough and difficult pronounciation as Techo correctly notes, and speaks about the Caaiguá tongue as follows: 'The Caaiguás use their own language which is hard to understand because when they pronounce the words they do not seem to speak but instead whistle or form unintelligible tones in their throats'.
The name Caaiguás is Guaraní and means wild and because the converted and civilized Guaraní usually give the name of caaiguá to some Guaraní tribes that wander about in the jungle, some authors have believed that the Caaiguá is a Guaraní dialect and have mistaken the true Caaiguás for the nomad Guaraní tribes..." [1]

This is very interesting, it clearly points out that these people are not Guaraní. That the also name applies to ethnic Guaraní people who live under their pre-hispanic conditions, in the jungle. But that the real Caaiguá people are a distinct group with their own peculiar language.

And a very strange language indeed, with whistling sounds!. I looked up the text written by father Techo, which Hervás y Panduro quoted, and it proved to be very interesting too:

Nicolás del Techo's text

He was born in Lille in 1611 as "du Toict" (which he modified to a Spanish version: "del Techo"), and died at the Mission in Apóstoles in 1687. He became a Jesuit in 1619 and came to America in 1640 working as a missionary, and historian in South America.

This text was published in Antwerp in 1654 as the "Relatio triplex de rebus indicis". It was a letter that he wrote in 1651 at the Mission of Santa María La Mayor, on the Uruguay River in the Missions of Paraguay.

Map showing the probable territory of the Caaiguás and the Jesuit Missions
Copyright © 2014 by Austin Whittall

The mission is located in Argentina, in the province of Misiones, Santa María municipality. It was founded in 1626 and abandoned in 1767. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has been restored.

Below I quote the intersting parts of the text (bold font is mine):

"We are taking care of here, the two of us, of two thousand six hundred indians [...] To this task we add another, not less difficult: the taming of the most ferocious Caaiguá people. [...]
The Caaiguá people are not very numerous and are the less apt for work among all the indians. They live in the jungles between the Paraná and Iguazú rivers [Shaded in Yellow in the map below] , and for this reason the surrounding tribes call them jungle inhabitants (which is the meaning of the name Caaiguá). They speak their own language, not very easy to learn, because, they when they issue their sounds, it seems that, instead of speaking, they whistled, producing a whirlwind of inaticulate explosions in their throats.
They have very few huts and these are very far apart. Most of these indians are happy living in hovels, like animals, and do not procure their food any better than them, so they do not practice agriculture or have any farming activities. The fish and hunt with bow and arrow. Nevertheless, most of the year they eat raw worms, mice, ants and other small creaturs that they can catch easily. The fight with tapirs [...] they kil them and eat them; climbing up trees they catch monkeys with such dextrity, as if they themselves were apes. They like monkey meat a lot and eat jaguar meat without flinching [...] They are physically deformed and are monstrous, similar to both monkeys and men, especially if you look at their noses, which allows you to fairly call them stub-nosed. As they live in the jungles most of them have their backs bent and hunched, making their gaze remain fixed towards the ground. They walk in a bent over manner. However many of them have a nicer appearance, especially the women, who born and bred in the shade keep the color of their body quite similar to that of Europeans." [2]

He also mentions that they were wild and fierce, muderding anyone who dared to go into their territory, that the Guaraní killed them whenever they could. And that when captured they were "difficult to tame [...] refused food and died in a few days". A missionary, Father Claudio brought up a Caaiguá boy and taught him the Guaraní language so that he could be an interpreter for him (a clear indication that Guaraní and Caaiguá spoke distinct languages) and went to their territory to convert them, enticing some to come down to the mission:

"So some of them came out of their caves and [...] canme to the town of Santa María La Mayor.[2]

They did this again and: "After a journey of nine days this illustious hunter of souls went into the caves of the wild men and through his interpreter managed to get eighteen of them to agree to be converted and follow him [...] he found the inept to retain and obtuse to undestand clearly." [2]

The Jesuits fought against a slaver raid by the Brazilian Mamelucos and freed several Caaiguá natives, earning their gratitude.

The Brazilians hunted natives to capture them and sell them as slaves. This decimated the native tribes of what is now Southern Brazil, Paraguay and the Argentine provinces of Misiones and Corrientes. The Jesuits organized armies to fight them off, but when the Spanish cronw expelled the Jesuit Order from America, their missions quickly dissolved and became ghost-towns, swallowed up by the jungle. The natives disbanded and returned to their old customs.

The region remained forgotten during the independence and civil wars of the early XIX century. It returned to the limelight during the war between Paraguay and Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina in the 1860s and its borders were drawn up during the late 1800s. At that time Argentine explorers such as Ambrosetti and Lista visited the region (which was part of a border dispute between Brazil and Argentina). Both of them mistook the ethnic "wild" Guaraní people for the original Caaiguá people.

Juan Ambrosetti (1886) called them Kaingangues, Caigua, Caingua and Ramón Lista (1883) Caayguás, but these were not the real Caaiguá mentioned by del Techo, who had probably already become extinct due to the slaving raids of the late 1700s.

Sources

[1] Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, (1800). Catálogo De Las Lenguas De Las Naciones Conocidas, Y Numeracion, Division, Y Clases De Estas Segun La Diversidad De Sus Idiomas Y Dialectos: Lenguas Y Naciones Americanas. Rank, Vol 1. pp 296.
[2] Nicolás del Techo, (1654) Relación Sobre la Gente Caaigua que se empezó a convertir. Republished by Arturo Nagy & Francisco Pérez Maricevich, (1967), Tres Encuentros Con América. Ed. del Centenario, Asunción.

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