Phoenicians Discovery of America (Book from 1892) and Votan

Thomas Crawford Johnson wrote a short essay titled "Did the Phoenicians Discover America?", published in 1892 by the Geographic Society of California.

This essay is a short read, and suggests among other things, that the Phoenicians knew how to navigate using the magnetic compass (p.14), that their voyages for the Jewish kings took 3 years, and this time would imply that they sailed to America's western coast (p. 22) via Melanesia and Easter Island to Peru, and the coast of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Central America.

One would have expected them to sail across the Atlantic, from Gades (Cadiz) to Mexico, but they didn't they took the longer route, along the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Bengal, skirted Java and Sumatra, sailed between Australia and New Guinea, across Polynesia and the Pacific all the way to Northern Chile.

The image below from Crawford Johnson's work shows the route taken by the Phoenicians:

Route taken by the Phoenicians to America. Source

The book mentions a voyager recorded by the Native Americans called Votan (p.28): ""Votan, it seems, came from a foreign land, and found the whole country, from Darien to California, occupied by a barbarous people. Votan and his followers arrived in large ships, and wore long, flowing garments." According to one document by Ordonez this event is laid a thousand years before Christ. It is desirable to notice that this date corresponds exactly with the dates given in the Bible narrative of the historic voyages of Hiram and Solomon, and the building of the temple, which was about l000 B. C. " This journey to America from their native country was a long and painful one and indicates that seas and lands intervened between them. The tradition reports it to be in the far East, and that the first comers filled seven ships.""

This is a quote of someone named Ordonez (actually Ordoñez). This person was Father Ramon Ordonez de Aguilar, a Catholic priest who served in the Maya region and wrote a book called "Probanza de Votan" (more on him further down).

Crawford's text also suggests that the gold and silver brought to Israel came from Mesoamerica, the only possible source for such wealth. Finally it mentions the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl (p.30) "The native traditions held that Quetzalcoatl traversed the peninsula, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and on reaching the last ocean, sent back his companions to tell the Cholulans that in a future age his brothers, white men and bearded like himself, would land there from the sea, where the sun rises, and come to rule the country." Suggesting that the Phoenicians would return from the East, crossing the Atlantic Ocean,

Votan - the Civilizing Gold

The Probanza de Votan was a native text, surely a codex, written in the native Tseltal language and it was illustrated. The Spanish authorities held it until the 18th Century when it mysteriously got lost. It seems that Votan was the Mayan equivalent of the Aztec Quetzalcoatl. He founded Palenque, navigated in a boat with his family during the Universal Flood, brought his people to settle Yucatan among the natives. There was even a day in the Maya calendar named after him.

There have been wild conjectures about Votan being Woden (similar sounding names) or Odin of the Scandinavians (see p. 81 in Historia Antigua de la Conquista de Mexico by Manuel Orozco y Berra, 1880) or even Buddha! (see chapter V in the same book).

A serious, scholarly paper on the subject was published in 2009 by a Historian, Díaz Perera, Miguel Angel (Tras las huellas de Palenque: las primeras exploraciones. LiminaR, 7(1), 104-134. http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1665-80272009000100007&lng=es&tlng=es). He mentions the Probanza de Votan text and that Ordoñez had written about "A white, bearded Christian priest named Votán, who arrived by sea and founded Nachán (Palenque) after having traveled through Spain, Rome and Jerusalem." In his paper, Diaz Perera mentions research by Frederic Waldeck, published in 1832 after he visited Palenque and interviewed the natives there:

"The traditions that have been communicated to me by the misanthrope of the ruins seem worth recording [...] The true name of the ruins of Palenque is Natchan, and not Otitoiun, which is a foreign word in the Chol language, and which would be more accurately described as Mayan, a language derived from it. Around ten centuries before the birth of Christ, three white, bearded individuals came from the place where the sun rises: the first, the sage Ymas; the second, Ik; and the third, Vot&aacut;en, the one who attained all the renown that tradition bestowed upon him. Although corn is indigenous, it was not as prevalent in the landscape as it was in his time, and it was Votán who brought them this marvel; he united it with civilization and the arts. The time of his death is a problem; tradition, if it is accurate, says he died violently, and nine kings succeeded him, each to reign for half a century, according to the custom he himself had prescribed. An ambitious one succeeded him, and his name was Chanan (5). Those who came after were Abaghu (6), Bem (7), Hix (8), Tzequin, Chabin, Chinax, Cahagh, and Akbal. It was under this last king that Natchan was destroyed by the nation of Tula, a city that had been founded by Votan and which later became an enemy of Natchan (referring to Tonina). Its ruins are near Ocosingo."

There is however a book by Ordoñz, published online where he mentions the "Probanzas de Votan" and its loss, and also provides more information on Votan on p.14.

I hadn't heard about Votan until now. He seems to be a civilizing demigod similar to Amalivaca, who brought civilization to the Orinoco River natives in Venezuela, Viracocha among the Incas and, of course, Quetzalcoatl.

In my next post I will comment on the details about Votan published by abbot Brasseur de Bourbourg in 1857-59, and some other comments, including von Humboldt on Votan from 1810.

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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 © 

Phoenician or Egyptian glass beads in Patagonia?

Francisco Moreno* wrote back in 1890 about the Phoenicians in Patagonia. (El Museo de la Plata - Rápida ojeada sobre su fundación y desarrollo Rev. Mus. de la Plata. VI, p.50, 1890-91), below is what he said:

"Many have investigated certain colored glass [beads] found in England attributed to the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and then to the Romans, and later to the Venetian manufacturers. They have been found in North America, and the La Plata Museum has some found in our northern provinces and in this one of Buenos Aires; and personally I have gathered them in the ancient burials of Patagonia. Before my trip to Europe, I believed they were Roman brought by some of those who accompanied Pedro de Mendoza [1] and who had taken part in the wars in Italy, but an examination of the Egyptian collections at the Louvre and Lyon Museums proved to me, that they belonged to the eighteenth dynasty. However, lately it has been suggested that they are of Venetian make, imitating the ancient Phoenicians, but the matter has not yet been clarified."

[1]. Pedro de Mendoza (1487-1537) was a Spanish "Adelantado", sent by the king of Spain to establish a town on the River Plate, he founded Buenos Aires in 1536, died shortly after of syphilis, at sea, returning to Spain. He had served as an officer during Emperor Charles V (King Charles I of Spain) during the campaigns in Italy where Charles sought to assert imperial Hapsburg power over the French, and took part in the looting of Rome in 1527. Buenos Aires was abandoned in 1541 when the remaining settlers moved up river to Asuncion, Paraguay, which had friendlier natives and more resources. In 1580, the second generation Creoles returned to the River Plate and refounded Buenos Aires.

The Egyptian glass beads reached Denmark (Source) during the Late Bronze Age (1400-1200 years BCE). The first glass beads date back to the XVIII dynasty around 1550—1290 BCE (Source), they were mostly blue, since that color was popular at that time. They were tinted with cobalt blue. See image below:

Blue Egyptian beads from Denmark. A. Mikkelsen, National Museum of Denmark

The Phoenicians traded with blue glass beads (made with Egyptian cobalt blue) across the Mediterranean region, and beyond.

However, the Patagonian beads could have a later, European origin. A 2017 paper about a burial in Aguada del Barril, Santa Cruz, Argentina, in Patagonia. It was discovered in 2015 (So it isn't any of those mentioned by Moreno). The authors suggest quite logically that the glass and stone beads found there were of Venetian origin anda are proof of trading between European sailors and the Tehuelche natives. The image below, from this paper, shows them (One, "G" is made of sandstone).

Another paper published in 2024 includes a detailed description of the glass beads found at the Chenque 1 site in Sierra Colorada, Santa Cruz. The paper also gives them a European origin. However, it mentions that Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, who visited the Strait of Magellan in 1579, and again in 1584, to settle the area and prevent the English from occupying the Strait, also saw the natives wearing beads: "beads, between green and blue... the strings that the Indians wear on their heads and necks in large skeinsare of the same wool [guanaco wool] and among them they wear strings of long blue beads, turquoise outside and with a black heart...".

Were these native beads? Phoenician? or did the Natives at the Strait get them from other voyagers that visited the region between the early 1500s (Amerigo Vespucci ⁄ Magellan) and Sarmiento in 1579?

Subjecting the glass to X-ray spectroscopy, spectrometry and other laboratory techniques can identify the provenance of its components and the makeup of the glass itself. These experimental methods have been used to identify the source of beads found in Portugal (Source) and in Sub-Saharan Africa (Source). They could clarify the source of the Patagonian beads.

* Francisco Pascasio Moreno (1852-1919). Argentine scientist. He explored Patagonia several times in the 1870s. In 1877, he was named Director of the Buenos Aires Anthropological Museum, which in 1884 became the La Plata Natural History Museum. He is usually referred to as “Perito” Moreno (Perito is Spanish for "specialist”, “expert") for his key role during the border conflict between Argentina and Chile from 1892 to 1902, in which he defused an inevitable war. He donated a vast tract of land that the Argentine government gave him as a reward for his services and formed Argentina’s first National Park in Puerto Blest, on Lake Nahuel Huapi. He served as a member of the Argentine Congress.

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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 © 

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 © 

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 © 

Spindle Whorls from South America with Labyris symbol

In a previous post, I wrote about the Hourglass or Labyris symbol in Patagonia.

Today I found it in book (a controversial book at that) written by Bernardo Graiver [1] about the presence of Jews -from Israel- in South America long before Columbus discovered America in 1492. A special thanks for my wife who found this rare book and gave it to me as a birthday gift!

It displays the image of "Spindle Whorls" (in Spanish: Tortero) decorated with the triangles joined at their apex symbol (hourglass or labyris).

Spindle Whorls with an ancient symbol: the Labyris.

What is a spindle whorl?

A spindle is a long thin wooden stake used to spin fibres (vegetable and wool) into thread, which can be then used for weaving.

A spindle whorl is a disk with a hole in its center, into which the spindle is inserted. It comes in handy as it provides a base for the thread to be spun on the spindle, it also provides a bit of mass to assist the spindle in its high speed rotary motion, ensuring threads of uniform thickness.

The whorl is then removed and the spindle used to wind the thread.

They are made out of metal, stone, ceramic and are "universal", that is, found across the globe. In South America they are mostly made from stone or ceramic. The more uniform the whorl, the finer the fibers it creates.

They were usually decorated with incised images or symboles, such as the ones shown in the image at the top of this page. Fig. 44 and Fig. 45 depict whorls from two sites in Northern Argentina, Manogasta and Beltrán in Santiago del Estero province. They were discovered by the Wagner brothers.

The same images shows (Fig. 44) the Labyris symbol found at different locations (names are on the left: Rash Hamra, Ancient Ethiopian, etc.) and the meaning, a sound, since it is actually a letter is given on the far right: "q, s, z, p... "

The author stats that both Rash Hamra and Iberians assign the figure the same sound: "q".

It is striking to find a similar symbol so far away from its Mediterranean source. It may be just a very common symbol among humans, repeatedly "discovered" over and over again across time and space.

Triangles often represent female genitalia so it may be some symbol of fertility.

But, maybe, just maybe, Graiver could have been right and it may also have been brough to America by Ancient navigators from the Middle East.

Source

[1] Bernardo Graiver, (1980). Historia de la Humanidad en la Argentina Biblica y Biblionica Ed.Albatros Arg.

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

On Amerindian HLA, Phoenicians, Neanderthals and Paracas mummies

Continuing my quest into the possible early peopling of America by Neanderthals, I have come across an interesting paper by James Guthrie (2001) [1] on Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA).

In a previous post, I wrote the following:

Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system
HLA are the loci of genes which encode for major histocompatibility complex (MHC) in humans and as such have an important role in the immune system. Ten Neanderthal HLA class I alleles have been found among humans: A*02, A*26, A*66, B*51:01/08, B*07:02/03/06, C*16:02, C*07:02.
Of these, two are found among Native Americans: The paired alleles A*02 and C*07:02. While their average global frequency is approx. 2% , the highest global frequency occurs among the Yucpa of Venezuela (26.9%), followed by Navajo, US (13.1%) and Lisu, Yunan, China (10.4%).
The high frequency in America and China is consonant with the high proportion of Neanderthal admixture in those regions.

Guthrie's paper deals with Native American HLA and mentions one of those "Neanderthal HLA alleles", the A*02 (bold is mine):

Distributions of these ten HLAs in other parts of the world are not what would be expected from the premise that Americans stem mainly from Northeast Asians. Instead, the basic American populations seem most like those of western Asia and of Southeast Asia, paralleling the findings of Steele and Powell (1992) regarding Paleo-Indian skulls. Their multivariate analysis showed craniofacial features closer to those of southern Asians and Europeans than to those of northern Asians. The only HLA prominent in both America and northern Asia is A*2, which CS call ubiquitous and which is also strong throughout Europe, South China, and Japan... [1]

The A*2 prevalence in Europe and China is evidently due to their closeness to Neanderthals.

The resemblance of Amerindians to Western Asians is also supported by the genome sequenced from a 24 Kya H. sapiens (named MA-1) from Mal’ta in south-central Siberia:

• It suggests that between 14 to 38% of Native American autosomal ancestry originated through a gene flow from this population.
• MA-1 is closer to contemporary Native Americans than to Northeast Asians suggesting that those groups may have originated in secondary wave(s) of immigrants from East Asia [2], or that back-migrations from America dispersed other lineages in Central and Western Eurasia [3].
• Ma-1’s estimated shared drift statistic, (f3), places Amerindians closest to Northern Europeans and Northern - Central and Western Siberians, and furthest apart from Eastern Siberians and Asians. Possibly indicating a common Neanderthal background, which could explain the European signature found in pre-Hispanic Amerindians (i.e. Kennewick man).

The Phoenician connection

Guthrie's paper also deals with other HLAs, with interesting inferences:

The A*32 allele seems to indicate a Mediterranean or specifically Aegean impact in the Caribbean region (including on the Cherokee) as well as on Tupians of the lower Amazon (Oyampí and Parakana). It seems to connect this set and the Central Amerind composite with northern India, Sardinia, the Tuareg of Algeria, and with populations around the Adriatic Sea in Greece, Yugoslavia, and Italy. A*32 is absent from other South American samples except the Mapuche.
A*32 levels in the Mapuche, Oyampí, and the Central Amerind composite samples are among the top nine in the CS tabulation (7-9%), and the Tupian Oyampí near the mouth of the Amazon River have the second highest American frequency. If this is not an artifact of sampling [...]
Both A*32 and A*30 are found at significant levels in Greece, Sardinia, and in the Central Amerind composite. They also appear at anomalously high frequencies in Samoan outliers but are not documented elsewhere in Pacific islands. This may reflect limited exploration of the Pacific by Mediterraneans who otherwise left few traces except (controversial) petroglyphs. [1]

Curiously this may be an indication of Phoenician, Cretan, Mycenean or Carthaginian genes during their sea voyages beyond Gibraltar. (See my many posts on Phoenicians in America).

No Paracas HLA data

Online sources cite Guthrie as having proven that Paracas mummies HLA is European. This is false. Check his only comment on Paracas Mummies below:

European Genes from other Systems
There may be no clear marker for European ancestry among the “classical” genetic variants, although a high frequency of the Rhesus cde (r) allele might qualify. CS [Cavalli-Sforza] also considered immunoglobin f;b, adenylate kinase 1, and ABO type B, when found together, to indicate Caucasoid admixture in eastern North America (p. 337). Occurrences among indigenous Americans of cde or A or B of the ABO system were once attributed to recent admixture and databases were “corrected” accordingly. It is now understood that some of these unexpected alleles arrived in antiquity. Mummies from Paracas, Peru, possessed both A and B antigens (Allison et al. 1976, 1978). [1]

So he does not mention HLAs, only Blood groups and the fact that Paracas Mummies had A and B antigens. Which does not mean that they were Europeans.

Sources

[1] James L. Guthrie, (2001). Human Lymphocyte Antigens: Apparent Afro-Asiatic, Southern Asian, & European HLAs in Indigenous American Populations Pre-Columbiana, Volume 2, Number 2 & 3, December 2000 & June 2001 (online at New England Antiquities Research Association
[2] Raghavan M., Pontus Skoglund P., et al., (2013). Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans. Nature 505, 87–91 (02 Jan 2014) doi:10.1038/nature12736
[3] Dziebel, G., (2013). The Demographic Isolation of Amerindians and Back Migrations to the Old World in the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene: From the History of Ideas to Contemporary Scientific Realities. Paleoamerican Odyssey Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico 17 Oct. 2013

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

More on the Patagonian Labrys, Phoenicians and Cretans

Getting back to my pervious post on the "Chelelon" or "Opposing triangle" shapes found in Patagonian rock art, and a possible link with Mediterranean cultures of ca. 1.500 BC., I have done some additional reading and can shed some light on some of the questions left unanswered in that post:

In the closing comments of that post I hinted "tongue in cheek" that:

"We could argue that the Cretan sailors reached Patagonia and smelted tin or copper and took it back to Crete in ingots shaped as Labyris, and that the Tehuelche natives imitated them and fashioned their own stone axes. Or that they saw the powerful religious connotations of the Cretan Labyris and adopted it as their own. But that is probably unlikely."

But I did not know then that the Cretans actually did smelt ingots that had a very odd shape! (in a Previous post, I mentioned that they came to Patagonia seeking copper) so it may possible that they had some influence on the native Patagonians. But first lets get back to the "labrys shape" and what my research found:

Patagonian tattoos

The Phoenicians according to Lucian of Samosata [1] tattooed themselves, and they represented these tattoos on their statues (such as the colossus at the Phoenician settlement of Amathus in Cyprus, which has “Tattoo marks on its arms” [2]

But what kind of evidence is this anyway, most human groups from different parts of the world tattoo themselves too!

George C. Musters, an English sailor and explorer who rode from Punta Arenas to Carmen de Patagones, with a band of Aonikenk Tehuelche natives in 1869/70, recorded first hand their customs and activities. He wrote about their tattoos too:

"Both men and women tattoo their forearms... the usual designs consist in a series of parallel lines and sometimes a single or double triangle, the upper one leaning on the apex of the lower one"

What Musters is describing is the opposed triangles motive or Chelelon design! [3]

They were done with blue clay or powered charcoal. He added that in the past the designs were more complex and were applied on the body and the face. He let them tattoo him.

What does this "double triangle" mean anyway? Why would they also tattoo themselves with it?

The Key to the Afterlife

Apparently a femenine goddess of the Tehuelches, whose name is written "Seécho, Sésom, was known as the " Old Woman of Heaven", nicknamed Karunon (which means hag).

She "Looks at the arm... she recevies the dead and examines that their wrists bear the Sháin (tattoo) and throws those who dont, into the sea.". The natives really feared her. [4]

This was also recorded by the Italo-Argentine scientist and explorer Clemente Onelli towards the end of the 1890s:

"They all have on their left arm small tattoos that, as an indian friend told me, are some kind of baptism to be able to enter the outwordly lands; the indian who does not have those hieratical signs marked on him is not allowed into heaven and if close to a river, his [body] is thrown into the water" [5]

A similar belief was held by the North American Sioux who believed that a warrior without tattoos would be turned away from the lodges of the afterlife, and wander the earth as a ghost.[7] Could this Trans-American myth have a common origin in the Paleoindians who peopled America ca. 30 kya? Or did they arise as separate myths?.

The Double cups

My previous post also mentioned "double cups" like two cones joined at their vertex with a shallow concave base.

They baffled me so I decided to read some more about the Tehuelche. They did not use glasses or chalice shaped cups, these artifacts serve another purpose:

They were Anvils. Here is the explanation:

Musters mentions that the Tehuelche jewels (except for the beads) "are home made: they make them by hammering coins that they obtain by trading with the colonies" (the Spanish outposts in Southern and Northern Patagonia or the Welsh one at Trelew, Chubut). [3]

Chilean author Mateo Martinic [6] goes into details on their metal working techniques:

"Anvils:, new handicraft activities arose, especially in working pieces of metal (bronze, copper) in which the natives besides using the elements that they acquired by barter (the most usual) they also used combined with tools belonging to their own culture, that is, stone anvils, adapted to making certain semi-spherical shapes... So that in some types of anvils were chipped to create small rounded cavities which were then used to make metal bowls." [6]

So this settles the mystery of the "double cups" they were anvils used by the natives to hammer coins into different jewels. Their concave bases were not designed to hold drinks but to shape the metal.

Oxhide ingots

For those longing for some Cretan or Phoenician link, other than Samosata's reference in the beginning of this post, there is a certain resemblance between the shape of the "Tehuelche axes" an the "oxhide ingots".

Oxhide ingots are metal slabs mostly made from smelting copper (though some are made from tin). They were manufactured and widely distributed during the Mediterranean Late Bronze Age (LBA).

Their shape resembles the hide of an ox, in which the "legs" are a protruding handle at each of the ingot’s four corners. These made it easier to carry the ingots on the backs of pack animals.

They have been found in Turkey, Cryprus, Crete, Sardinia, Sicily, Egypt and Bulgaria. The photo below depicts one:

Oxhide shaped ingot

The British Museum has more information on these ingots, and has a photo captioned "Copper Oxhide ingot from the Foundry Hoard, inscribed with a maker’s mark or Cypro-Minoan sign at one end (around 1200 BC-1050 BC)." So the Minoans made these ingots too.

Sources

[1] The Syrian Goddess De Dea Syria, by Lucian of Samosata by Herbert A. Strong and John Garstang [1913].
[2] Perrot and Chipiez, Phoenicia and its Dependencies, p. 165. Fig. 110
[3] Musters George, At Home with the Patagonians, Ed. Continente, B. Aires. 2007. pp. 158 and 159
[4] Alejandra Siffredi, Hierofanías y concepciones mítico-religiosas de los Tehuelches meridionales, Runa : archivo para las ciencias del hombre, 1969-1970, vol. 12, p. 247-271.
[5] Clemente Onelli, (1904)Trepando los Andes pp. 156.
[6] Mateo Martinic Beros, (1995) Los Aonikenk: Historia y cultura, pp. 99 and 214
[7] Faith Hickman Brynia 101 Questions about Your Skin that Got Under Your Skin ... Until Now pp. 142

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2013 by Austin Whittall ©