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 © 

The "Carthaginian" inscriptions of Bromptonville, Canada

There is an equivalent to the Brazilian Paraiba Phoenician inscription in Canada, the Bromptonville-Sherbrooke Libyan inscriptions, pictured below.

The image (Source) shows what are supposed to be Libyan (i.e. Carthaginian) inscriptions, and was published in the Canadian media in the mid 1970s.

The story began in 1904 when two inscribed stones were found "on the construction site of the Bromptonville church. They were handed over to the Séminaire Saint-Charles-Borromée. In 1966, specialists were unable to decipher them." (Source).

But then, in the mid 1970s, professor Thomas Lee of Laval University, announced that a professor Howard Fell of the comparative zoology department of Harvard University (odd, connection! zoology and ancient scripts! However, the he was a member of the Epigraphic Society) had deciphered a script incised in three sandstone rocks found in Bromptonville, and Sherbrooke, Canada (see spot in Google Maps). The script was an ancient Libyan one, called Boustrophedon.

Lee believed that those who engraved the rock, had sailed up the St. Lawrence and St. Francis rivers and left these texts to mark the end of their long voyage.

One of the stones found on a cliff overlooking Sherbrooke says, "Hanno, son of Tamu, reached this mountain landmark." The other two rocks, found side by side in a field close to Bromptonville said "record by Hatta, who attained this limit on the river, moored his ship and engraved this rock" and "expedition that crossed in the service of Lord Hiram to conquer territory."

Fell found the inscriptions similar to others he had deciphered in Yucatan, Mexico (source) that read: "... of Hanno, a Phoenician re-provisioning at this landfall, for the favour of Hercules that our hardships may be mitigated. He ordered this stone to be cut. Do not overturn or deface and do not destroy it, lest the lord Baal cast you down and forsake you."

The Stones: Fake or Genuine?

Intriguing story, and most probably false evidence and wishful thinking, so I decided to see what more I could find about these Carthaginian stones.

An interesting article published back in 1985 looked into the above mentioned newspaper article. It says that Ignace J. Gelb, an authority in ancient languages, of Chicago's Oriental University, reported in 1976 that the script wasn't ancient Libyan. Further rsearch by James P. Whittall II (yes, this person and I, have the same surname), Director of The Archaeological Department of The New England Antiquities Research Association, wrote, also in 1976, that the marks in the stones were provoked by natural erosion. The 1985 included similar rocks like the one shown below, the Petit Mitis rock with natural engravings mistaken for "inscriptions".

It also added the "text" from the Sherbrooke rock as a comparison:

These stones, and other similar ones found in the region were not engraved by Carthaginian scribes using Libyan characters. The article says that "There is no doubt of the natural origin of the "petroglyphs", and chemical weathering agents have made good use of the natural predisposition of the structure of this rock." However is continues with a hopeful note for those who believe in such voyagers having reached America: " The fact that the markings are "ludi naturae" does not disprove the presence of the Phoenicians in North America, it simply indicates that these stones are not proof such a visit. However, it is now possible to cast doubt on certain "proof" based on the translation of "petroglyphs" that this continent was visited by the Egyptians, Celts, Iberians, Libyans, ..."

The stones were said to have been added to the collection of the seminary museum, the Musée du Séminaire de Sherbrooke, which is now the Sherbrooke Museum of Nature and Science , but I have not been able to locate them in their website.

However, I did find a paper about some petroglyphs discoverd by amateur archaeologists in 1963, in Estrie, Quebec. But they aren't the Carthaginian stones. These are real, they have drawings of animals and people and were carved by natives and Europeans between the mid 1700s and 1815. Below is a view of some of the inscriptions.

Closing comments

I believe they are stones that were naturally weathered and eroded, and that human beings try to make out patterns and shapes (even in clouds). These are not Carthaginian, Phoenician or Libyan inscriptions.

Further Reading

Norman Totten. 1981, The inscribed Sherbrooke boulder, The Epigraphic Society Vol. 9 no 215 June 1981. Occasional Publications

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

Scylax, Cerne Island and the Sargasso Sea

Ancient Navigators Series

Scylax of Caryanda, was born in Anatolia, in the region of Caria around the end of th 6th century BC. He was Greek, and served Darius, King of Persia. He explored the eastern regions of that realm, reaching India. He wrote books on geography and fragments of his work have survived.

In his Pseudo-Skylax's Periplous: The Circumnavigation of the Inhabited World (see pt. 112 Online) he mentions the Atlantic beyond the Island of Cerne: "Beyond Kerne it is no longer navigable because of shallow seas and clay and seaweed. The seaweed is a hand's width and sharp above, so it pricks."

These weeds are surely the Sargasso weeds, and the shallow seas, the Sargasso Sea mentioned in a previous post.

We don't know where Cerne is located. Hannon mentioned it in his navigation (fifth century BC) along the coast of Africa, it was south of the Lixus River (Morocco), most scholars place it on the coast of Western Sahara somewhere between Nouadhibou and El Mamghar. For the original text see p. 27 in his Periplus, transcribed below:

"Taking interpreters from among them, we sailed along the desert, towards the south, for two days, and thence again to the east a day’s course. There we found, in the recess of a gulf, a small island, having a circumference of five stadia, which we colonised, and named Kerné, from my daughter Kerné, who was the first to land from the fifty-oared galley. And we calculated from the voyage that the island lay in a straight line with Karchédon, for the distance from Karchédon to the Pillars, and thence to Kerné, seemed the same."

He reckoned that the distance between Carthage (Karcheédon) and Gibraltar (The Pillars) was the same as the distance from Kern&ecute; to Gibraltar. This coast along the western Sahara desert is a dry, barren, with no trees, plants or rivers. Why would they set up a base there? The size of the island is also given: five stadia is roughly 800 m, or half a mile. The island was small. In my opinion Hanno probably reached Dakar in Senegal and landed on Goree Island (see map), the right size, the right location, with resources, a secluded port, water, trees.

Phoenician ship. Source

If Cerne was Goree, then these ancient navigators could have been swept along the route taken by Cabral and his fleet in 1500 which would convey their ships to Brazil.

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

Punic genes in America?

If Phoenician mariners reached America, they should have left an imprint in the gene pool of the Amerindians. The same can be said about the Carthagininans, who took over after the original Phoenician towns fell and declined after the Babylonians and Persians gained power in the region.

According to a paper published in Nature in April 2025, the Phoenicians spread across the Mediterranean, but left little genetic imprint in their colonies. Their culture, language, alphabet, religion and trade were the tools that created the Punic society and civilization. However, their genetic imprint was small. The study looked into the genetic makeup of Punic people across the Mediterranean and its main conclusion is summarized in its title: "Punic people were genetically diverse with almost no Levantine ancestors." Since their homeland was in what is now Lebanon, no Levantine ancestry means that their genes got diluted as they sailed west colonizing the Mediterranean.

In this paper, the authors analyzed the remains of Punic people in Sicily, North Africa (including Carthage), Spain, Sardinia, and the Phoenician homeland in the Middle East, and found that:

"Levantine Phoenicians made little genetic contribution to Punic settlements in the central and western Mediterranean between the sixth and second centuries bce, despite abundant archaeological evidence of cultural, historical, linguistic and religious links. Instead, these inheritors of Levantine Phoenician culture derived most of their ancestry from a genetic profile similar to that of Sicily and the Aegean. Much of the remaining ancestry originated from North Africa, reflecting the growing influence of Carthage. However, this was a minority contributor of ancestry in all of the sampled sites, including in Carthage itself. Different Punic sites across the central and western Mediterranean show similar patterns of high genetic diversity. We also detect genetic relationships across the Mediterranean, reflecting shared demographic processes that shaped the Punic world"

The paper found that the dominant Y haplogroup in the Levant Bronze and Iron Age cluster is not J2 but J1a, found in half the samples in the Levant, but only present in 8.4% of the Punic men, the authors conclude that "This signal of substantially different Y haplogroup patterns is consistent with the autosomal signal of little genetic ancestry in Punic individuals deriving from the Levant." (Suppl. Information Sect. 4

The image below (source) shows the J1 haplo in Europe.

If the same situation happened in America, following a Punic colonization, the genetic impact of Carthaginians and Phoenicians would have also been very small.

When looking at the global prevalence of J1a haplogroup we see very few in the Americas (source), mostly in Colombia, Peru, and then a few in US, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Of course, the expansion of Islam into Spain and Portugal starting in 711 AD would have provided additional J1a material into Iberia, and this would have also ended up in the Hispanic colonies in America. The migration of people into America following its discovery in 1492 AD would have also introduced the J1a halpogroup.

For instance, a paper about the diverse Y-chromosome haplogroups found in Bolivia, a country with a very high Native American ancestry, shows that J1 and J2 haplogroups have a share between 1% and 7% of the total. This is not Phoenician, but haplogroups introduced by migrants over the past 500 years.

Trying to find evidence of Punic presence in Prehispanic America through Y-chromosome haplogroups will not be easy as it would imply sifting through later layers of the same haplogroups.

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

Aristotle, Carthaginians and America

Ancient Navigators Series

This post is part of a series on the Ancient Roman and Greek historians and geographers knowledge about America.

In Aristotle's de Mirabilibus Auscultationibus (Latin for: "of marvelous things heard") reported an incredible story:

"84. In the sea outside the Pillars of Heracles they say that a desert island was found by the Carthaginians, having woods of all kinds and navigable rivers, remarkable for all other kinds of fruits, and a few days' voyage away; as the Carthaginians frequented it often owing to its prosperity, and some even lived there,the chief of the Carthaginians announced that they would punish with death any who proposed to sail there, and that they massacred all the inhabitants, that they might not tell the story, and that a crowd might not resort to the island, and get possession of it, and take away the prosperity of the Carthaginians."

(Source)

There is no island beyond Gibraltar (Pillars of Heracles) with "navigable rivers", you would have to cross the Atlantic and reach America to find a river. Not in the Canaries, or Azores, or Madeira, neither in Cabo Verde Islands. Only in America.

For the record, Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath, his knowledge spanned many sciences and subjects from history to geography, economics to arts. His works are mostly lost, and have survived as quotes in surviving (yet later) texts. He was a disciple of Plato (the guy who invented or described Atlantis).

The text also mentions another strange land in the Atlantic:

"36 They say that Phoenicians who live in what is called Gades (Cadiz, Spain) , on sailing outside the Pillars of Heracles with an east wind for four days, came at once some desert lands, full of rushes and seaweed, which were not submerged when the tide ebbed, but were covered when the tide was full, upon which were found a quantity of tunny-fish, of incredible size and weight when brought to shore; pickling these and putting them into jars they brought them to Carthage. These alone the Carthaginians do not export, but owing to their value as food they consume them themselves."

Was this spot they reached after sailing for four days in America or along the coast of Africa?

The map above (source) shows the two distinct populations of bluefin tuna in the Atlantic, they breed separately, but feed together, they migrate from their spawning grounds in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean, and span the north-central Atlantic. It is possible that fishermen taken by sea currents could have discovered Cabral's "Volta do Mar" route to America.

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

Carthaginians and the Sargasso Sea

Ancient Navigators Series

Rufus Festus Avienus, was an official in the Roman Empire during the fourth century AD. Not much is known about him, except for some surviving manuscripts in which he commented and reproduced, in verse, geographic accounts of older authors. His rhymes were popular at the time, and fortunately provide a glimpse into ancient historic voyages.

His Ora Marítima has survived, though incomplete, but the 713 verses provide some interesting information on Punic navigators into the Atlantic.

You can find two English language translations online: here and here, and also a Latin version

Avienus' description of the expedition of Carthagininan Himilco is interesting. Himilco set sail around 450 BC from Carthage, and was the first to explore the coast of northeastern Europe. Pliny the Elder also mentions him (see Book 2, 169).

"110 It was the habit of the Tartessians
To do business among the furthest parts of the Oestrymnides.
The colonists from Carthage and the ordinary people, bearing on through
The pillars of Hercules, used to come down to these seas,
Which Himilco of Carthage declared –
As he reports he himself proved by sailing all the way –
Could scarcely be crossed in four months.
This is so because no breezes drive the ship,
120 And the sluggish water of the inert sea stands still.
He adds this comment too: among the currents,
There is a lot of seaweed, and often, in the manner of a bush,
It checks a ship. He says that nonetheless here
The surface of the sea does not extend to a great depth,
And the seabed is scarcely covered with a little water.
Here and there sea creatures meet, and sea monsters
Swim amid the slow ships sluggishly crawling along.
If anyone were to dare to launch a cutter into the waves"

This is the navigation from Tartessus north, towards Great Britain, and probably Scandinavia. Tartessus is a city whose exact location remains unknown, but probably stood close to the mouth of the Guadalquivir River in Spain, near modern Cadiz.

The thick seaweed, sluggish water, lack of wind seems to depict the Sargasso Sea, that lies west of the Azores Islands, in the Mid Atlantic. Which is surprising, as Carthaginians were not known for sailing into the deep Ocean.

The poem continues:

"380 Beyond, towards the area to the west,
Himilco relates that from the Pillars there is a sea without end:
The ocean lies open across a wide area, and the sea stretches out.
No man has entered upon these seas; no man has ever set ships on that ocean,
Because the sea lacks winds that would drive the ship along,
And no breeze from the sky favours a ship.
Then, because a mist clothes the air with a kind of cloak, fog always conceals the sea
And lasts through the day, which is rather thick with clouds.
That is the Ocean, which roars far off around the vast earth.
That is the great sea. This sea encircles the shores.
This is the source of the water of the inner sea; this is the parent of our sea."

An intimidating view of the Atlantic as endless, mist-shrouded and lacking winds to move the ships. This Ocean was the source and parent of their "inner sea", the Mediterranean.

Perhaps the dim view they provided of the Atlantic was planned to dissuade competitors from venturing into the ocean. They probably had a base in the Azores Islands and navigated the Atlantic, and wanted to keep it for themselves.

Sargasso Sea

There is a region of the north Atlantic Ocean known as the Sargasso Sea because of the large amount of a floating seaweed that lives there, the sargassum (Sargassum natans and Sargassum fluitans).

Sargasso Sea Map, 1891. Source

These algae grow in mats that float on the surface thanks to tiny air bladders that provide buoyancy. They thrive in the sunny temperate regions of the Ocean and drift, pushed by the wind and ocean currents which concentrate them in this region.

They form a special habitat which provides food and shelter for fish, the European and American eels, and sea turtles.

As you can see in the map above (which depicts the probability of encountering sargasso during a transatlantic voyage, it covers a large area, up to 5.2 million km² (2 million sq. mi.)

Global warming and large quantities of of nutrients from fertilizers, agricultural runoff, washed into the ocean has caused explosive algal blooms of sargasso in the Atlantic Ocean between South America and Guinea. These are then taken by oceanic currents into the Caribbean and Florida, where they wash up onto the beaches and rot there, on the sand. This is a headache for resorts in the region (below is a view of a beach in Florida, US).

Columbus reported it, and he was familiar with the seaweed as he had heard about it from the Portuguese who voyaged along the Atlantic coast of Africa. It was depicted in the past as a dangerous region, where ships were entangled in the floating mats of seaweed, with no wind to set them free. Of course, this is not true.

Trapped in the sargasso (1871)

With a nostalgic and anecdotical tone, I remember the first episode of a mid-1960s cartoon, Johnny Quest, "The mystery of the lizard men" where the boy, his brother Hadji, his scientist dad and Race Bannon, their bodyguard (plus their dog, Bandit) y visited the Sargasso sea. It was portrayed as a ship graveyard, with ancient rotting ships covered with decaying greenish-yellow seaweed, the sea carpeted with floating algae. Scary! Below are two stills from that episode.

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

The statue in Corvo Island, Azores

Ancient Navigators Series

Today's post is not related to Patagonia, its creatures or the ancient peopling of America. It is about some strange discoveries that took place in the archipelago of Azores in the Mid Atlantic between 1520 and 1749. They are unusual because we have some tangible evidence and reports from different contemporary sources about a possible Punic or Phoenician presence in those islands.

Corvo Island

The island of Corvo is located in the Azores, 1.870 km (1160 mi) west of Portugal, and 3.230 km (2006 mi) east of Cape Cod, MassachuseTts, USA at 39°41'N 31°06'W. It has an area of only 17 km² (6.6 sq mi.) and is the nortwesternmost island of the archipelago. See it in this Google map.

Its name (Corvo) is Portuguese for crow. They named it Sea Crow Island, after the cormorants that lived there. It was officially discovered by Diogo de Teive in 1452, but it had been known since the 14th century, it wasn't settled until 1580.

Like all the Azores islands, it is volcanic, an extinct volcano that rose from the depth of the Atlantic Ocean. Now its highest point is only 720 m above sea level (2,360 ft.).

It adopted different names over the years, originally it was known as Flores (flowers). In a Venetian map from the late 1300s it appers as "de Corvi Marini", in Ortelius' map (1608) is is the insula del Cueruo; the mariners called it ilha do marco (Island of the Mark, as a navigation mark or reference).

The Equestrian Statue

Damião de Góis (1502-1574), a Portuguese historian, diplomat, and humanist wrote a history about the Prince Dom Joam which was published in 1567. The book, in its Chapter IX, fol. 9 (read it online) mentions an equestrian statue that was discovered in Corvo Island when the Portuguese arrived there:

"At the top of this mountain, from the north-east, a large statue was found standing on a slab, representing a man on top of a bone(*) horse, and the man dressed in a rain cape, without hat, with one hand on the horse's mane, and the right arm stretched out, with all the fingers clutched except the second finger, known in Latin as the index, pointed towards the west. This image, made of one single piece of stone, was then sketched on the orders of King Manuel by his servant and draughtsman Duarte d'Armas. After seeing the drawing, the King sent a skilful man, born in the city of Oporto and well travelled in France and Italy, to the Island, equipped with tools to remove the antiquity. When he returned with it, the man told the King he had found the statue destroyed by a tempest that had occurred during winter. But the truth is that it was broken due to poor workmanship; and they brought pieces of it, namely: the head of a man and his right arm with the hand, and a leg, and the horses' head, a folded and raised foot, and part of a leg; everything remained a few days in the king's wardrobe, but what was done of these things, or where they ended up, I could not discover."

Below is an image of the text, note (*) it says "osso" which is bone, not stone (why?)

First reference to Corvo's statue. Source

Duarte d'Armas was a draughtman and drew the plans of Castilian fortifications for King Manuel I, and lived between 1465 and the early 1500s, his master, the king lived between 1469 and 1521. This means that the statue was discovered sometime between 1480 and 1520.

The text continues as follows:

"Pero da Fonseca in the year of 1529 went to see it, and heard from the locals that in the rock, below where the statue used to be, were engraved some letters in the same stone of the rock; and because the place where this inscription was, was dangerous to reach, some men were sent down, well tied up with ropes, and imprinted the letters that were not yet erased by time in some wax that was taken for that effect; however, the letters moulded in the wax were already worn out, nearly shapeless, and for that reason, or maybe because the assistance only had knowledge of Latin letters, and even this one imperfectly, no one present at the scene managed to make sense of what the letters meant, nor what letters they were."

A second reference to the statue was written by Gaspar Frutuoso, a Portuguese priest, who was born in the Azores, in the Island of Saint Michael in 1522, and died in 1591. His manuscript dating from the late 1500s, can be read online here (Saudades da Terra, Vol. VI, Chap. 48, p. 154), which I quote below:

"Opposite these lowlands (as the locals say), on top, in the middle of this rock, was a point with a stone figure pointing northwest, where some say that from there appears the island they call Garça, directly to this wind, which can also be seen in the summer from Terceira Island, to its northern side, sometimes in the same northwest direction. And about this figure the locals say other things, many without foundation, as I have said at the beginning, but the most certain is, as I have already said, what the learned and curious chronicler Damião de Goes says about this islet, which sailors call Marco Island, because it (due to its high mountain range) is where they demarcate their destination when they come to seek any of the others, and that on the summit of this mountain, in the northwest, or at the base of this rock (as locals say), a stone statue was found, placed on a pillar, which was a man on top of a bone horse, dressed in a bed, without a cap, with one hand on the horse's leg and his right arm extended, and the fingers of his hand curled, except for the index finger, with which he pointed toward the opposite direction; and, because I have already mentioned the different opinions that existed about this image and what could be pointed out with what was made of it (sic), I will not say more at present, except that it is a very notable antiquity."

The interesting part of Frutuoso's text is the unknown island of Garça, perhaps Bermuda? The rest of the text quotes Damião de Góis' text.

André Thevet, André Thevet (1502?-1590), a French Franciscan priest and cosmographer to several French kings also had something to say about the Azores. He traveled widely and visited South America in 1555. Upon his return to France, he published his experiences in Les singularitez de la France Antarctique (1557), followed by his Cosmographie Universelle (1575). He was fond of telling tall stories and exaggerating events. It was he who reported the Succarath, a Patagonian monster, the tapir and the horned guanaco or pyrassouppi.

In his Cosmographie (Book XXIII, p 1022), in 1575 he wrote about finding Hebrew characters within a cave inscribed on two monuments in the main island of the Azores, São Miguel (Saint Michael). Below is the relevant text:

"Towards the northern part, on the shore of the sea, the first to discover it, digging against a rock, noticed a hole, ten feet high, and as much in width. After having made an opening, some people with torches ventured to enter inside, forty feet and six feet, without finding some large stones there: but no one found there, except two stone monuments, each of which was no less than twelve and a half feet long, and four and a half or so wide. Those who have seen the said monuments, built quite exquisitely, have told me that there is no appearance of writing or other mark of antiquity, except for the outline of two lines of color, which were around the said monuments, together with some Hebrew letters four fingers long, so ancient that with great difficulty one could read them: however, a Maranne, a native of Spain, son of Julius, a man versed in languages, painted them as I represent them to you: מחטסאל and were these letters at the top of said monuments and at the bottom these two other words מתרעאל   טעלבין and the interpretation of which I furnish, giving pleasure to those who make profession of this language. And by this everyone can judge, that this Hebrew people lived not only in the land of Judah, but everywhere this great world. At the same time one day, a certain doctor wishing to philosophize, and to live the rarest things of Judah, accompanied by three of his learned men, entered this large cave, from which all four never left, and you cannot yet know with what kind of death they ended their days in this place."

These accounts were all written during the 1500s, and seem to suggest that sailors from the Middle East reached the Azores Islands. The equestrian statue with unknown symbols, and this cave with Hebrew letters is proof. Though lost.

Regarding the letters, they seem clearly Hebrew, as used nowadays. They are not Phoenician characters. The alphabet developed in Phoenicia spread rapidly among the neighboring Canaanite groups, including the Hebrews, who adopted them, but modified them too. The punic letters used by the Carthaginians were identical to the Phoenician ones, and different from the Hebrew.

The Hoard of Coins

The final piece of evidence came in 1778, when a Swedish coin collector and expert (a numismatist) named Johann Franz Podolyn (1739 - 1784) published an article in a scholarly periodical telling about a stash of coins he discovered in 1749, in the Azores. (Podolyn, J. (1778). Some Notes on the Voyages of the Ancients, Based on Several Carthaginian and Cyrenaican Coins Found in 1749 on One of the Azores Islands (link to Swedish text). The Goteborgske Wetenskap og Witterhets Samlingar, 1, 106.)

Podolyn tells us that in 1749, a westerly storm exposed the foundations of the ruins of a stone building on a beach on Corvo Island. A black earthenware vase, cracked, was found there. It contained many unknown coins that were taken to the local convent, probably the Franciscan St. Boaventura church in Santa Cruz das Flores.

Some of these coins found their way to Lisbon, and from there to Madrid, in Spain. Father Enrique Florez de Setién y Huidobro, a numismatist and historian of the Order of St. Augustin was the leading coin expert in the country. He received nine coins and described them: two Carthaginian gold coins, five Carthaginian copper coins, and two Cyrenaic copper coins. Father Florez handed them over to Podolyn, who visited Madrid in 1761. They were regular coins, and the only unusual thing about them was where they had been found.

The Corvo coin hoard. Source

Below is the full text of this article (my apologies for the crude translation from Swedish to English)

"Some Remarks on the Seafaring of the Ancients on the Occasion of Some Carthaginian and Cyrenaic Coins Found in 1749 on One of the Acorian Islands
BY JOHAN PODOLYN
In the month of November 1749, after a few days of a westerly storm which caused the sea to wash away part of the foundations of a ruined stone building standing on the shore at Sen Corvo, a strange black clay pot was discovered in which there was a quantity of coins which, together with the pot, were carried to a monastery from which the coins were divided among the inhabitants of the island. Some of these coins were sent to Lisbon and from there to PADRE FLOREZ in Madrid.
It is not known how many were in the stash or how many were sent to Lisbon, but those that came to Madrid were 9, namely 2 Carthaginians of Gold No. 1 and 2 Tab VI 5 ditto of Copper No. 3 4 5 6 and 7 2 Cyrenaics of the same metal No. 8 and 9.
PADRE FLOREZ gave me these coins during my stay in Madrid in 1761 and advised that the entire find did not consist of more varieties than these 9 and that these were selected as the best conferred. That the coins are partly Carthaginian and partly Cyrenaic, they are not particularly rare if I exclude the 2 in gold but the peculiarity is the place where they were found.
It is known that the Portuguese first discovered the Acorian Islands in the time of Alphonsus V, and there is no reason to believe that any of the people there would have buried these coins, since they must have come there with some Punic ship, but I therefore dare to say that this ship had been there. It could also have been driven there by the storm. Carthage and several cities in Mauritania, so many ships went beyond Gibraltar. Hanno's expedition to the western coast of Africa is known and some of these many ships must have been driven on Corvo by the constant frequent wind. FARIA in fine Portuguese history says that when the Portuguese first came there on land there was a statue of a horse with a rider pointing to the West with his right hand. This statue stood on a pedestal of stone, which was carved all over with unknown letters. This monument was destroyed, which was a great loss. A blind man was there because they thought it was a pagan idol. This statue strengthens my belief that these islands,were not only visited randomly and storm-driven by either Phoenicians or Carthaginians but also that they had some firm footing there, for it cannot be assumed that a ship, either for trade or expeditions, has such a monument on board, but rather it can be concluded that if one or more ships have arrived on one or more occasions, the people have found the land good and have built a community there and then continued communication with the Fatherland and have come to such a state that the aforementioned monument could be erected. It may also happen that the Carthaginians, whose diligence in trade and navigation is known from this island, made an expedition westward and that the statue's pointing westward had this expedition to the subject of storms, earthquakes and volcanoes that caused great damage on this island and could have also caused the exodus of the people, who in return for which they had taken the wave erected the statue. pointing to the West where they might have known of some other land. Several guesses and inferences can be made both with and without, but that these islands were visited by the ancients seems to be quite unlikely, but whether a fluke or deliberate intention was the cause is left unsaid."

Corvo is a small island, with sheer cliffs eroded from the ancient volcanic cone, they rise hundreds of meters above the ocean. The only accessible spot is on the southern tip of the island, where the only settlement and port of the island is located. Below are two views of the island, with the freshwater lake in the extinct volcano's crater.

Corvo Island seen from the north (top) and south (bottom).

I can understand a small naval base here despite the island's lack of natural harbors, it does have freshwater, a stash of coins is also possible, but I can't figure out why would they bring a valuable and heavy equestrian statue and place it somewhere on the summit of the extinct volcano. In fact, I haven't been able to find any images of a Carthaginian or Phoenician equestrian statue. Surely they made them, but they must have been scarce as none seem to have made it to our time.

Anyway, I thought the story was interesting, and may provide some evidence on the navigation skills of the ancient Phoenicians and Carthagininans, who went beyond Gibraltar into the Ocean. Perhaps they made it across, to America, but there is no proof of this.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by 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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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Ancient steel sword in Patagonia...

Ned Chace was an American sailor who disembaked in Patagonia and there between 1898 and 1929, working on the sheep ranches (Estancias) in Santa Cruz province, Argentina.

His adventures were recorded in a book, which was published in 1931, based on lengthy interviews with him, by the authors of the book, after his return to the U.S.

Below I transcribe one of his amusing tales (which is very likely true):

"He [Chace] found a big encampment site where the trail passed [lake] San Martin between Kachaik and Frank's [...] different from any modern Tehuelche encampment. It was fifty yards from water. He never found a modern toldo more than a few feet from water, even when the ground near it was wet. 'This had been an Indian campamento that had been there for years, I should say, and it had been a big one. Here in the center it'd all been covered about three feet deep with the loose sand and grass, and when the sheep come they cropped the grass, and the wind come and blew away the sand, leavin' a place where there'd been fires, for where the ground had been burned it was red, and there'd been stones in the fire heatin'. And off a ways, two or three hundred yards, you'd find where different Indians had had their tents around, and right in the center they evidently had that place where they'd all come to eat, settin' in a big circle. They had a fire in the middle, and then all these ostrich and guanaco bones where they broke 'em to dig the marrow out right there and threw 'em behind 'em. Them bones was old, old, old. I suppose they was preserved in the sand. And then you'd find arrow-heads, broken ones, it bein' I suppose where they took a broken one off to put on a new one. It was a great big circle, seventy-five foot across. [22.4 m]
Well, just off from this, there was a skeleton, right alongside a little fire where he'd died or been killed. The skeleton of a Christian with the legbones of a man that must have been about five foot six and of a very slender build, but he had an enormous forehead on him and a proper well-formed under jaw and a narrow face. And beside him there was a thin piece of steel about eighteen inches long, that looked like it might have been part of a rapier. That man'd never been buried. He was either killed by the Indians and left alongside where his tent had been, or he was killed in the tent and they took him outside. His bones was lyin' out just on a level with the fire, and they was Christian bones too you could tell they was different from Indian.'
He found a number of small encampment sites but never another big one." [1]

The map below shows the general area where Chace found this ancient native camp. The red arrows show the hill of Kachaik and Santiago (James) Frank's ranch, "La Federica", the area shaded in green along the shores of Lake San Martín marks the likely location of the native camp. In red, the "Antiguo Valle" and "Médano Norte" sites.

Lake San Martín

First of all, let's get our bearings:

San Martín (named O'Higgins in Chile - both countries have this odd custom of giving different names to the lakes they share ) is a very large lake, shared by both countries: it has a surface area of 1,013 km² (426 sq.mi.) of which 554 km² are Chilean, and 459 km², Argentine.

It is a low lying lake, barely 253 m above sea level (829 ft.), nestled among the high Andean peaks (+2,000 m - 6,550 ft.).

it is very deep: one of its arms, fjord-like O'Higgins arm is 836 m deep (2,741 ft.), making it the fifth deepest lake in the world. The others deeper lakes are: Lakes Baikal (1,741 m), Tanganika (1,471 m), Vostok (1,200 m) and the Caspian Sea (1,025 m).

The native Aonikenk Tehuleches called it Charre, which ment "Full". It was "discovered" by the Western world in 1877 by Argentine explorer Francisco "Perito" Moreno, who named it after Argentina's national hero General José de San Martín, whose armies marched from the Pampas, across the Andes into Chile, Peru and Bolivia during the independence wars against Spain (1812 - 1824). By the way, O'Higgins was his ally and colleague in arms in Chile.

It is a very irregular lake, with many long and narrow fjords, with steep sloped mountains towering over them; islands and Peninsulas mark its shores.

It receives the Mayer River on its northern arm and flows out, into the Pacific Ocean through the Pascua River. On the Chilean side of the border, the "Southern Ice Field" defines its southern coast, with great glaciers such as the O'Higgins Glacier which calve icebergs into it.

The southeastern coast, in Argentina, is barren, lacking trees. A muddy stream from Lake Tar flows into the lake's Chacabuco Arm.

It can be reached from Argentina's National Highway No. 40 from the village of Tres Lagos by Provincial Highway No. 31, a gravel surfaced road-track.

Kach Aike

Chace mentions "Kachaik": it is a very conspicuous hill, on the right hand side of Highway 31, which juts out several hundred meters above the surrounding flat steppe.

It towers 1,008 m high (3,304 ft.), and is the remains of an ancient volcano: it was formed when the soft rock of the volcano's conical slopes was eroded, leaving the tough basaltic rock that had solidified inside its chimney. The natives called the place:"Kach" = "ember" and "Aike" = "place".

The image below shows Kach Aike seen from the East, with the flat steppe and the lake behind it (the area where Chace found the native camp).

The "Ancient" natives

In Chace's story there are some interesting clues:

• The camp was buried by 3 ft. (1 m) of sand, which he said was due to recent sheep activity after the arrival of settlers (late 1800s) which destroyed the grass and allowed the Patagonian winds to remove the loose sand under it, thus revealing the site.
• "old, old, old" guanaco and ostrich bones.
• Arrow-heads strewn over a circle 75 ft. diameter
• It was a big and permanent camp quite far from the water 50 m (compared to contemporary Indian camps, which were very close to the water)
• A slender built skeleton with a thin piece of steel 18 in long (45.7 cm), probably part of a rapier. Bones which were "different from Indian ... Christian bones"

People have inhabited this area since 11,100 BP right after the glaciers retreated. This was followed by a period during which it was uninhabited (7,600 - 5,600 BP). About 6,000 y BP the forest began at Chacabuco Peninsula, and the southeastern part of the lake was a grassland; then between 5,000 and 4,000 BP the area had more bushes and less grass. From about 4,000 and 3,000 BP a wetter period began, which lasted until about 100 years ago. During this period a grassy steppe covered the area [2]. This was the grass cropped by the sheep.

Some archaeological studies have been done in that area [2]: One spanned the flatland next to Katch Aike, a plain formed by the glaciers, between Highway 31 and the lake, at the Médano Margen norte (Northern Coast Dune) site. There they found lithic remains and guanaco bones in "four deflationary hollows" [deflation: where sand has been removed by the wind] "that covered an area of 345 m²" [quite in agreement with Chace's definition of a "cleared area" where the sand had been removed, and also its surface area: a circle with a diameter of 75 ft. covers 410 m²].

Another site was found at "antiguo Valle" (Old Valley), to the nortwest, where the remains covered a surface of 600 m².

In the map above I have shaded in green, the area where this campsite may have been located. It was 50 yards from the lake, Chace makes a point in saying that contemporary Indians never camped so far from water. The greater distance may either indicate that the natives were not of the same group as the then extant Tehuelche natives or, that the lake level dropped moving the shore further away from the site during the period of time that has elapsed since the natives camped there. I have not found any evidence that the lake's water level has dropped, but I will keep on looking for it.

The datings of occupations at some caves close by date back to 4,760 BP, and at Lake San Martin (Kach Aike) and Lake Tar, there are late Holocene dates (2,500 BP).

Interestingly, "protected places like the dunes, had been occupied all year round... added to this is that access to lithic raw materials would have been relatively easy..." [2]. Which agrees with Chace's comment of a large encampment that had been there for years (it was in fact a year round camp and would be large and have plenty of tents) and the manufacture of arrow heads.

The date 2,500 BP for the site makes it unlikely that the remains described by Chace be those of a "Christian". So, to whom did they belong?

Ancient Mariners...

Since Native Americans did not know how to produce steel or iron tools, the owner of the 18 inch rapier 500 years BC, must have come from some steel making culture from Europe or Asia.

I am reluctant to pronunce myself in favor of a Phoenician, Greek or Carthaginian because I am not sure if they made steel swords (they made them of iron). Of course, Chace may have mistaken iron for steel, in which case the owner could have belonged to any of those cultures.

Steel, is iron with a certain -very low- content of carbon. The resulting alloy is more flexible than iron and does not shatter upon impact. It was not easy to make, and very valuable.

How did this person get there?

Lake San Martín is quite inaccesible from the West: a shipwrecked sailor on the South Pacific coast of Chile would have to walk along the northern edge of the Sothern Ice Field, up the dense forests of the Pascua River and then after reaching the lake, sail its choppy waters to its Eastern coast (or walk through a terribly dense forest with sheer sloped mountains). The terrain is so bad that even today there is no road linking the Chilean town of Villa O'Higgins on the north tip of the lake with the Argentine side of the border.

From the Atlantic, the lake can be reached either from the mouth of the Santa Cruz River or from San Julián inlet by following the Chico or Sheuen River to its sources and then, across the divide to lake Tar and along Tar river till reaching Lake San Martín.

The fact that it is a rapier (thin and narrow sword) and made of steel may even make it possible that its owner was a Spaniard, from the XVIth century. In which case the date is wrong, instead of 2,500 BP, it should read 500 BP.

This was an area beyond civilization, Spain never colonized or conquered Patagonia, so the Spaniard may have been a survivor of one of the many shipwrecks along the Strait of Magellan or even from the ill-fated towns founded on the Strait by Sarmiento de Gamboa in the late 1570s.

Maybe the unfortunate man walked north, seeking the Spanish settlement on Chiloé Island, marching close to what is now the border between Chile and Argentina, on the edge of the forests, going around Lakes Argentino and Viedma, and then following the native path towards Lake San Martín, where exposure, hunger, illness or maybe a band of natives, ended his pain.

This last theory (the "trekking Spaniards") is not as crazy as it seems: in 1563 two Spaniards (Pedro de Obiedo and Antonio de Cobos) arrived at Concepción, Chile in northern Patagonia. They swore that they were sailors of a ship that sunk in the Strait of Magellan in 1540, part of the Bishop of Placencia's fleet [3]. They reported that the stranded crew had marched north, confronted the Indians that attacked them, found a secluded spot and set up a fort. They later lived in peace with the Natives. This was the mythical Lost "City of Ceasars". However Obiedo and Cobos committed a crime and fled north to escape punishment, walking all the way to the Spanish town of Concepción.

There are other instances of shipwrecked sailors: Juan Ladrillero's expedition (1558) capsized in the Strait of Magellan and all were lost except for Lardrillero and a sailor who "with notable courage and perseverance walked along the slopes of the mountain range, beating infinite difficulties and continuous risks to their lives, reaching Valdivia [in Northern Patagonia] after one year and four months" [6]. (Quite a long walk indeed!).

Sailors from English, Dutch and even American ships (after 1776) ships were also shipwrecked along Patagonian shores: Darwin reported castaways rescued during the voyage of the Beagle, close to Chiloé Island [4], and Wager was stranded on an island for weeks until the natives helped the survivors of his group to reach Chiloe. [5]

Sources

[1] Robert and Katharine Barrett, (1931), A Yankee in Patagonia, Edward Chace Houghton Mifflin Co. 1931. pp. 91-92
[2] Espinosa S, Belardi J, Barrientos G and Carballo Marina F. (2013), Poblamiento e intensidad de uso del espacio en la Cuenca del lago San Martin (Patagonia Argentina): nuevos datos desde la margen norte. Comechingonia vol.17 no.1 Córdoba jun. 2013.
[3] Patricio Estellé and Ricardo Couyoudmdjian, (1968). La Ciudad de los Cesares: Origen y Evolución de una leyenda (1526-1880). Historia, No. 7, Instituto de Historia. Univ. Cat. de Chile. 283-309.
[4] Darwin, C., (1987). The Voyage of the Beagle. Ware: Woodsworth Editions.
[5] Gurney, A., [Ed.], (2004). The Loss of the Wager: The Narratives of John Bulkeley and the Hon. John Byron. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
[6] de Rosales, D., (1666) Historia General del Reyno de Chile Ed. 1877, Imp. El Mercurio., Vol. 1. pp. 84

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