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 © 

Some Mormon insights on the peopling of America

I read many articles, papers and books, some of them are rigorous science, others are more informal, like blogs or news sites, and others are clearly religious, like the one I will mention today.

I am an atheist. A former Anglican, I turned agnostic and later became a full atheist, but I understand the deep religious need that human beings have, so, as long as religions don't try to impose their beliefs on me (or impose religion as facts -like creationists are trying to do in the U.S.), each and everyone can believe in whatever makes them feel better. Religon plays an important role in people's lives, it brings calm, peace, and soothes in the face of death and tragic events. I have visited many holy sites of different religions, past, and present, around the globe, from China, Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Rome, Vatican, Western Europe, the Americas, and I have to admit that holy sites have a mystical aura about them. Having said this, It is clear that I don't support Mormon beliefs, but those who follow that faith, try to find scientific backing to prove some of its basic premises. In this context, the book Is Decrypting the Genetic Legacy of America’s Indigenous Populations Key to the Historicity of the Book of Mormon? by Ugo A. Perego and Jayne E. Ekinsipsum puts forward some interesting thoughts and hypothesis that are backed by science and stand outside of the "orthodox" viepoint on Amerindian genetics. Below is a short quote from this work (p. 276 and 278).

What would have happened to their DNA after their arrival? A well considered argument comes from Henry C. Harpending, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah. When asked, “If a group of, say, fifty Phoenicians (men and women) arrived in the Americas some 2,600 years ago and intermarried with indigenous people, and assuming their descendants fared as well as the larger population through the vicissitudes of disease, famine, and war, would you expect to find genetic evidence of their Phoenician ancestors in the current Native American population? In addition, would their descendants be presumed to have an equal or unequal number of Middle Eastern as Native American haplotypes?
Professor Harpending’s reply was, “I doubt that we would pick up [evidence of the Phoenicians] today at all, but it does depend on how they intermixed once they were here. If they intermixed freely and widely, and if there were several millions of people here in the New World, then the only trace would be an occasional strange stray haplotype. Even if we found such a haplotype we would probably assume it was the result of post-Columbian admixture.”⁴⁰
... From a numerical point of view, the arrival of Lehi and his group would be comparable to a drop of ink in a swimming pool. However, in the swimming pool, although nearly impossible to detect, the actual drop of ink is present. The difficulty in recognizing the drop of ink is determined by the availability of instruments sufficiently sensitive to detect its minuscule presence within the much larger body of water. This analogy does not extend perfectly to DNA and inheritance at the population level. Although the group of Old World migrants was small (a drop of ink), the DNA may have survived (or not) to the present time — due to the forces of genetic drift. If it disappeared, it would be as if someone removed the drop of ink from the swimming pool such that it seemed never to have been there in the first place. Of course, this would be heavily dependent on the level of isolation the Book of Mormon party experienced — something not clearly stated in the narrative."
⁴⁰ Signature Books, http://signaturebooks.com/2010/06/dna-and-thebook-of-mormon (accessed 5 January 2013).

So, small parties if they admixed, would be so diluted that nothing would remain to show they arrived. Perego and Ekinsipsum also mention the "Great Dying" and clearly describe how it contributed to wiping out lineages and leaving no trace of them. This is something I have mentioned many times in this blog (see p. 281, quoted below).

"The arrival of Europeans to the Americas in the fifteenth century was orders of magnitude worse than the combined effect of the Black Plague and the Spanish Influenza on Europeans. The consequences of rapidly reduced population and displacement has forever altered the demographic landscape of pre-Columbian America such that scientists from many disciplines are considerably limited in their ability to draw conclusions about the history, including the genetic history, of the New World. To model such an event, suppose that after an epidemic of smallpox, a hypothetical village of a thousand individuals experienced a ninety percent reduction; the one hundred surviving subjects may or may not include at least one representative of all the original group genetic lineages. Although survival of many diseases also involves a genetic component, Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA variance have little known or no influence at all on the immunity of an individual affected by one of the several diseases Europeans brought to the New World.
With selection playing little or no recognizable role on specific ancestral lines, the drastic population reduction in the hypothetical village inevitably would have affected the number of surviving genetic lineages. Of course, the initial impact with Europeans was so severe that entire tribal groups, particularly on the Atlantic side of the Americas, were completely decimated, leaving no genetic trace of their existence. Native Y chromosomes were quickly replaced by those from the Old World, and mitochondrial DNA variation was greatly reduced."

Interestingly it also addresses the issue of European-like or African-like genes in America, they are always attributed to Post-Columbian events: "If mtDNA lineages are observed in the Americas, even in tribal groups considered deeply indigenous who belong to mtDNA groups known to be African, European, or even Asian, the argument most readily given is that they have been introduced more recently, after the rediscovery of the New World by Europeans" (p.269) and "Perhaps the greatest challenge faced by scientists is to be able to assign clearly and unequivocally any European or African lineage found in the Americas to the pre-Columbian era. The generalized view among population geneticists is that after the initial arrival of Paleo-Indians toward the end of the Last Ice Age, no other migrations took place until the discovery of the double-continent by Europeans in 1492... the common consensus, whenever any DNA is found that does not fit with the classic Native America genetic types, is an automatic assignment of such DNA to the post-Columbian migration wave of European or African migrants." (p. 271-272)

About Lehi and America

Lehi and his people arrive in the promised land (America), painting by Arnold Friberg (See 1 Nephi 18, pages 41–43). Source

For the non-Mormons, the group mentioned in this work as accompanying Lehi were Jews, who were inspired and led by Lehi's father, Nephi, a Hebrew prophet who guided his family and friends from Jerusalem to the land that the Lord promised them in the west (America). This took place c.600 BC when the Babylonians struck Jerusalem. Lehi and his sons built a ship and sailed across the ocean to America, and settled there.

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

Votan

Continuing with ths subject of my previous post, today I will share smore information on the demigod Votan.

French abbot, Brasseur de Bourbourg, mentions Votan in his work published in 1857-59, Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique-Centrale : durant les siècles antérieurs a Christophe Colomb Vol. 1 chap. 3

Brasseur de Bourbourg disclosed his sources: "Having been unable to obtain the original documents in the Tzendale language, which record the history of Votan and his successors, we are reduced to collecting the short fragments found scattered in the manuscript works of Ordoùez and Cabrera, and in the Diocesan Constitutions of Nunez de la Vega, Bishop of Chiapas, etc. (see footnote 1 on p. 82).

Votan came by Sea

"In accordance with Yucatec traditions, Tzendal historians trace the origins of the famous Votan, whom their commentator believes to be on the island of Cuba, to Valum-Votan several centuries before the Christian era. After sailing along the coasts of the Peninsula, accompanied by other chiefs of his people, he advanced among the thousand islands of the Terminos Lagoon.
... Votan then traveled up the Uzumacinta River, and it is on the banks of one of the tributaries of this great river that the cradle of civilization is placed. His stay there gave birth to a city which, since then, has had the honor of being the metropolis of a great empire. It was situated at the foot of the Tumbala Mountains: the name Nachan, which is attributed to it, is less well known than that of Palenque, whose majestic ruins were revealed, barely a century ago, to the astonished eyes of travelers.
... The astonishment of the Tzendales was perhaps as great then as that which they felt, two thousand years later, at the sight of the Spaniards. For these foreigners had large boats, and wore long and loose clothing, which led to them being given the name "Tzequil", or men in women's skirts, which remained with them in this region; a tradition adds that they spoke the Nahuatl language, and that it was they who brought it to America.The Tzendales welcomed them as brothers, and Votan was rewarded with unique insights they imparted to him concerning divinity and the governance of men. Their settlement in the land was soon followed by an alliance with the Tzendale women. Enlightened and instructed by them, Votan wisely worked to organize the administration of his states; from this time truly dates the foundation of the Palenquean empire.
... Nevertheless, the circumstances of his first voyage, as Ordonez extracted them from the Tzendal histories, are too remarkable not to give them verbatim here: “Votan,” it is said, “wrote a collection on the origin of the Indians and their transmigration to these lands. The main argument of his work is reduced to proving that he descends from Imos, that he is of the race of Chan, the Serpent, and that he originates from Chivim. He was, he says, the first man whom God sent to this region to populate and divide the lands that we call America.” He describes the route he followed and adds that after founding his settlement he made several trips to Valum-Chivim. These trips numbered four: in the first, he recounts that, having left ValumVotan, he took his way towards the "Abode of the Thirteen Serpents." From there, he went to Valum-Chivim, from where he passed to the city where he saw the house of God, which was being built. He then went to the ruins of the ancient edifice, which men had erected, by the command of their common ancestor, so that they might, by this means, reach heaven. He adds that the men with whom he conversed assured him that this edifice was the place from which God had given each family a particular language. He affirms that upon his return from the house of God he went a second time to examine all the underground passages through which he had already passed, and the signs that were found there. He says that he was led through an underground path that went beneath the earth and ended at the root of the heavens: regarding this circumstance, he adds that this path was nothing other than a serpent's hole, into which he entered because he was the Son of the Serpent."

The story continues, with his actions (like introducing the tapir into the region), and travels. There is no hint of a European or Asian origin in this text. The arrival of Votan took place 2000 years before the Spaniards reached Mexico (which took place in the early 1500s) so this happened around 500 BC.

The nonsense of Votan, Babel, and Noah

Brasseur de Bourbourg also translated the Mayan book known as "Popol Vuh" and in his introduction, he mentions Votan once again: "Don Ramon de Ordoñez y Aguiar, canon and provost of the bishopric of Ciudad-Real, otherwise known as San-Cristobal de Chiapas, appears to have been the first to have had knowledge of Ximenez's historical works, and to have used the translation of the Quiche manuscript: he copied this document, altering it from beginning to end, in order to melt it into his indigestible work entitled Historia del cielo y de la tierra, etc., where he tends to establish that Votan, placed as the third sign of the tzendal calendar, was the descendant of the Hivites*, that is to say of the Canaanites, driven out of Palestine by Joshua, and who, having emigrated to the Canaries, would have passed from there to the Antilles. Its main objective was to prove that Quetzalcohuatl was the same as the apostle Saint Thomas, who was said to have been miraculously brought from India to America to preach the Gospel.

* Hivites are a nation mentioned in the Bible in Israel, in Joshua 11:3.

Interestingly Alexander von Humboldt also mentioned Votan and Odin (Vues des Cordilleres, published in 1810) as follows (page 72):

"In the kingdom of Guatimala (sic), the inhabitants of Teochiapan preserved traditions that dated back to the time of a great flood, after which their ancestors, led by a chief named Votan, had come from a land to the north. In the village of Teopixea, descendants of the family of Votan or Vodan (these two names are the same, as the Toltecs and Aztecs did not have the four consonants d, b, l, and s in their languages) still existed in the sixteenth century. Those who have studied the history of the Scandinavian peoples in heroic times must be struck by the discovery in Mexico of a name reminiscent of Vodan or Odin, who reigned among the Scythians, and whose lineage, according to Bede's remarkable assertion, "gave kings to a great number of peoples."
If it were true, as several scholars have supposed, that these same Toltecs, whom a plague combined with a great drought had driven from the Anahuac plateau around the middle of the eleventh century AD, reappeared in South America as founders of the Inca Empire, how could the Peruvians not have abandoned their script to adopt the Toltec hieroglyphic writing? Almost at the same time, at the beginning of the twelfth century, a Greenlandic bishop had brought, not to the continent of America, but to Newfoundland (Vinland), Latin books, perhaps the same ones that the Zeni brothers found there in 1580."

On page 148, von Humboldt again mentions Votan: "We have already drawn our readers' attention above to this Votan or Wodan, an American who appears to be related to the Wods or Odins of the Goths and peoples of Celtic origin. Since, according to the scholarly research of Sir William Jones, Odin and Buddha are probably the same person, it is curious to see the names Boud-var, Wodans-dag (Wednes-day), and Votan designate, in India, Scandinavia, and Mexico, the day of a short period. According to ancient traditions collected by Bishop François Nuñez de la Vega, "the Wodan of the Chiapas people was the grandson of that illustrious old man who, during the great flood in which most of humankind perished, was saved on a raft, he and his family." Then, he mentions the tower of Babel! "Wodan cooperated in the construction of the great edifice that the men undertook to reach heaven: the execution of this audacious project was interrupted; each family was henceforth given a different language, and the great spirit Teotl commanded Wodan to go and populate the land of Anahuac. This American tradition recalls the Menou of the Hindus, the Noah of the Hebrews, and the dispersion of the Cuscbites of Singar."

In his "Historia antigua de Mexico..." Francesco Saverio Clavigero (1731-1787) cites Nuñez de la Vega, bishop of Chiapas, who mentions Votan as moving on after the Babel tower incident (p. 136), and being the first to people Chiapas after the Noachian flood (p. 152).

Even the Mormons took advantage of an "Israelite" Votan to further their religion. You can read an interesting article online here, Votan, the culture hero of the Mayas published in the Juvenile Instructor, Vol. 14, No. 5 (1 March 1879), pp. 57–58.

However, the Middle East connection does not necessarily imply Israelites, it could also involve Phoenicians, which makes more sense.

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

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 © 

Humboldt on Transatlantic pre-Columbian contact in America: Amalivaca

Continuing with some interesting information published by von Humboldt (see my previous post on pygmies and white indians), today's post will look into his comments on an ancient god who reached the interior of Venezuela, by boat, coming from a distant land beyond the ocean.

During his journey along the Orinoco in Venezuela in the year 1800, Humboldt described the myth of Amalivaca. Below is the relevant text from his work Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent during the years 1799-1804.

This text can be found on page 597:

"All mankind or to speak more correctly all the Tamanacs were drowned with the exception of one man and one woman who saved themselves on a mountain near the banks of the Asiveru called Cuchivero by the Spaniards. This mountain is the Ararat of the Aramean or Semitic nations and the Tlaloc or Colhuacan of the Mexicans. Amalivaca sailing in his bark engraved the figures of the moon and the sun on the Painted Rock Tepumereme of Encaramada. Some blocks of granite piled upon one another and forming a kind of cavern are still called the house or dwelling of the great forefather of the Tamanacs. The natives show also a large stone near this cavern in the plains of Maita which they say was an instrument of music the drum of Amalivaca. We must here observe that this heroic personage had a brother Vochi who helped him to give the surface of the earth its present form. The Tamanacs relate that the two brothers in their system of perfectibility sought at first to arrange the Orinoco in such a manner that the current of the water could always be followed either going down or going up the river. They hoped by this means to spare men trouble in navigating rivers but however great the power of these regenerators of the world they could never contrive to give a double slope to the Orinoco and were compelled to relinquish this singular plan.
Amalivaca had daughters, who had a decided taste for travelling. The tradition says, no doubt in a figurative style, that he broke their legs, to render them sedentary, and force them to people the land of the Tamanacs. After having regulated every thing in America, on that side of the great water, Amalivaca again embarked, and “returned to the other shore,” to the same place from which he came. Since the natives have seen the missionaries arrive, they imagine, that Europe is this other shore; and one of them inquired with great simplicity of father Gili, whether he had seen the great Amalivaca yonder, the father of the Tamanacs, who had covered the rocks with symbolic figures.
These notions of a great cataclysm; of a couple saved on the summit of a mountain, and throwing behind them the fruits of the mauritia palm-tree, to repeople the Earth; of that national divinity, Amalivaca, who arrived by water from a distant land, prescribed laws to nature, and forced the nations to renounce their migrations; these various features of a very ancient system of belief, are well worthy to fix our attention. What the Tamanacs, and the tribes whose languages are analogous to the Tamanac tongue, now relate to us, they have no doubt learned from other people, who inhabited before them the same regions. The name of Amalivaca is spread over a region of more than five thousand square leagues; it is found designating the father of mankind (our great grandfather) as far as to the Caribbee nations, whose idiom approaches that of the Tamanac only in the same degree as the German approaches the Greek, the Persian, and the Sanscrit. “Amalivaca is not originally the Great Spirit; the Aged of Heaven, that invisible being, whose worship springs from that of the powers of nature, when nations rise insensibly to the sentiment of the unity of these powers; he is rather a personage of the heroic times, a man, who, coming from afar, lived in the land of the Tamanacs and the Caribbees, sculptured symbolical figures upon the rocks, and disappeared by going back to the country he had previously inhabited beyond the Ocean.
The anthropomorphitism of the divinity has two sources diametrically opposite; and this opposition seems to arise less from the various degrees of intellectual culture, than from the different dispositions of nations, some of which are more inclined to mysticism, and others more governed by the senses, and by external impressions. Sometimes man makes the divinities descend upon Earth, charging them with the care of ruling nations, and giving them laws, as in the fables of the East; sometimes, as among the Greeks and other nations of the West, they are the first monarchs, priest-kings, who are stripped of what is human in their nature to be raised to the rank of national divinities. dmalivaca was a stranger, like Manco-Capac, Bochica, and Quetzalcohuatl ; those extraordinary men, who, in the alpine or civilized part of America, on the table lands of Peru, New Grenada, and Anahuac, organized civil society, regulated the order of sacrifices, and founded religious congregations. The Mexican Quetzalcohuatl, whose descendants Montezuma thought he recognized in the companions of Cortez, displays an additional resemblance to Amalivaca, the mythologic personage of savage America, or the plains of the torrid zone. When advanced in age, the high-priest of Tula left the country of Anahuac, which he had filled with. his miracles, to return to an unknown region, called Tlalpallan. When the monk Bernard de Sahagun arrived in Mexico, the same questions precisely were put to him, as those which were addressed to father Gili two hundred years later in the forests of the Oroonoko ; he was asked, whether he came from the other shore, from the countries to which Quetzalcohuatl had retired."

Humboldt also saw petroglyphs, with symbols engraved and painted on rocks along the Orinoco. He gives their location and guesses that they were done by people who preceeded the current inhabitants: "We have seen above, that the region of sculptured rocks, or of painted stones, extends far beyond the Lower Oroonoko, beyond the country (latitude 7° 5’ to 7° 40’; longitude 68° 50’ to 69° 45’) to which belongs what may be called the local fable of the Tamanacs. We again find these same sculptured rocks between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo (lat. 2° 5’ to 3° 20’; long. 69° to 70°); and between the sources of the Essequibo and the Rio Branco (lat. 3° 50'; long. 62° 32’). I do uot assert, that these figures prove the knowledge of the use of iron, or that they denote a very advanced degree of culture; but even on the supposition, that, instead of being symbolical, they are the fruits of the idleness of hunting nations, we must still admit an anterior race of men, very different from those who now inhabit the banks of the Oroonoko and the Rupunuri."

The Tamanac People

The Tamanacs were a tribe that belonged to the Cariban linguistic group and lived in the area comprised by the Cuchivero River, which flows into the lower Orinoco in Venezuela. The Jesuit missionaries attempted to group them in the mission of San Luis de Encaramada in 1749 (approx. location map) and Father S. Gilii (mentioned further up by Humboldt) remained there for 18 years until the Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish colonies in America in 1767. He recorded the myth (more on his writings below). The mission passed on to another order, but it declined, and during the independence wars in the 1810s and 1820s they suffered a high death toll which nearly wiped them out.

They had a mythical deluge myth of noachian scale, which left only one man and one woman alive. They survived by climbing to the summit of the Tamanaca mountain. Amalivaca came to their land after crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and civilized them in a Promethean way, he counted with the help of his brother. He is the one who engraved the symbols mentioned by Humboldt, on cliffs and rocks.

Gilli's Account

Filippo Salvadore Gilii (1721-1789) wrote his account (Saggio di storia americana o Sia storia naturale, civile, e sacra de regni, e delle provincie spagnuole di terra-ferma nell'America meridionale, 1780). Below is the text about Amalivaca (See vol. 3, p. 5).

" The Indians know, or rather, calling themselves Gentiles, also knew a tribe on which the inferior tribes depend, and they call them in their language the Amalivacà. The Parians call them the Amarivacà, the Caribs call them the Amarivacà; and the name given to them by the Zavaricotti, the Guaichiri, the Chirichiripi, the Machiritaria, and by many others, whose catalogue we will give elsewhere, is not very different.
The Tamanachi [Tamanacs] give to Amalivacà a brother called Voce, and they say that with him he created the earth. In the formation of the river Orinoco there was a long conflict between the two of them.
...
Amalvacà had a daughter (the story of the Tamanachi continues) who, like many of her peers, loved walking; and her father, to prevent her from doing so, broke her legs.
Amalivaca stayed for a long time with the Tamanachi in the place called Màita. There they show the cave, which is nothing but a steep cliff on the top of which there are some rocks shaped like a cave. When I saw it, it was called the Amalivacà-jeutitpe; that is, the cave where Amalivacà lived. Your drum is not far from that cave is his drum, a large rock, on the road to the Màita, to which they give that name.
Amalivacà after he had been living for many years with the Tamanachi (their stories continue), finally chose a canoe and returned to the other side of the sea, from where he had come. You, for sure, they said to me, must have seen him there.
When leaving (here is some final news) Having already entered the canoe, he turned to the Tamanachi and said in another voice: uopicaccetpe mapkateccì; that is, you will change your skin so much. What he wanted to indicate with those words, the Tamanachi say that our ancestors did not die, but that by perpetually rejuvenating themselves, they would only have changed their skin like crickets, serpents, and other similar animals."

On page 30, Gilii notes that this deity was very human: " the Tamanachì speak of him as of a man (who was with them in Màita, they say, who had to be dressed, that he was white, and similar things not applicable to one who creoles, but to one who was the first to bring them to those places."

The Rock Art

In vol. 2, p. 234 he mentions the petroglyphs: "About eight miles from Ecaramada, there is a rock called Tepu merème, that is, the painted stone. I thought I would see some memorable stone there, and, eager to clarify, I went to see it. But as far as I could see, the paintings they have on the ceiling of the aforementioned rock are nothing but rough outlines, made in ancient times with some kind of stone, and have no appearance of letters. The Indians do not give them any meaning, and only say that they are made by Amalivacà, who they consider their god."

A paper describes the site of Amalivaca Cave (Tarble de Scaramelli, Kay, and Franz Scaramelli. 2021. Cueva de Amalivaca: Tradición y memoria. Boletín Antropológico 39: 35–65) with images of the rock art and details about its location, age, use, and interpretation of the symbols.

In 1810 Humboldt wrote a letter to a French colleague with the symbols that a friar named Juan Ramón Bueno had sent him, copied from rocks in Urbana, very close to the Gilli's Jesuit Mission site. These symbols, pictured below, were incised into hard granite rock, and Humboldt asked his colleague for help, as he wanted to decipher them. See this Paper in Spanish about this script, with Humboldt's letter. Also read his comments with a plate showing the script (French) in his book "Vues des Cordilleres, et monumens des peuples indigenes de l'Amérique", Humboldt, p.61.

Punic letters?

In "Vues des Cordilleres..." Humboldt wrote the following: "One might recognize in these characters some resemblance to the Phoenician alphabet; but I strongly doubt that the good monk, who seemed to take little interest in this supposed inscription, copied it with great care. It is quite remarkable that, of the seven characters, none is repeated more than once: I had them engraved only to focus the attention of scholars who may one day visit the forests of Guiana on such a worthy subject." (p. 61

Urbana, Venezuela: Symbols in rock art

Humboldt continues: "It is quite remarkable, moreover, that this same wild and deserted region, in which Father Bueno believed he saw letters engraved on the granite, presents a great number of rocks which, at extraordinary heights, are covered with figures of animals, representations of the sun, the moon, and the stars, and other signs that are perhaps hieroglyphic. The natives recount that their ancestors, in the time of the great floods, reached the summit of these mountains by canoe, and that at that time the stones were still in such a soft state that men were able to trace lines on them with their fingers. This tradition suggests a horde whose culture is quite different from that of the people who preceded them: it reveals a complete ignorance of the use of the chisel and any other metal tool."

The Transoceanic Implications of Amalivaca

The deluge myth appears to be universal, it is mentioned by different cultures around the world, and probably reflects the flooding of coastal plains during the period following the end of the last Ice Age when areas like doggerland, the Black Sea, and the Sunda shelf were submerged by the rapid sea-level rise provoked by large-scale ice melt.

The interesting features of the Amalivaca myth are his civilizing activities, the bark or canoe that brought him across the Atlantic, to America, and his return to his place of origin after he finished his work here. He was a human, white, wore clothes, had a brother, and a daughter, and produced rock art.

Amalivaca was a human being.

His transoceanic origin is similar to the myth of the white, bearded, tunic-clad god-like people mentioned in other Amerindian myths: Quetzalcoatl among the Mesoamericans and also Viracocha among the Incas, who was also bearded, white, and wore special clothes, and whose name means "wide" (vira) and "sea" (cocha) and is said to have vanished by crossing the Pacific.

I am not implying that white, bearded Europeans or Egyptians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, etc. visited America in a civilizing mission, but point out a common myth that is shared by Aztecs, Incas, and the Orinoco jungle people. It must be an ancient one, with very old roots, perhaps dating to the times when America was peopled, contemporary with the post-glacial floods that originated the deluge myths across the Americas.

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

Purple dyestuff from shelfish: Phoenician influence in America?

The Phoenicians discovered how to produce a pruple dye, that was highly appreciated in the Mediterranean region. They kept the secret of its production to themselves and sold the dye at high prices. Roman emperors dressed in purple, it was a symbol of wealth and extreme luxury. ipsum

They obtained it from the murex shellfish. A vast quantity of shells had to be processed to obtain small amounts of the purplue Tyrian dye (one-eighth of a drop of dye from each shell). 60,000 shells were required to produce one pound (453 g) of dye. In 1971, J. P. Robinson (Tyrian purple. Sea Frontiers 17: 77-82) noted that one pound of silk dyed with Tyrian purple would have cost $28,000 (this is equivalent to $224,000 in 2025 value).

Murex shells, and a purple-dyed cloth. Source

The Phoenicians exploited murex to the brink of extinction, and had to expanded their production to the Northwestern Atlantic Ocean coast of Africa, where they harvested and processed shellfish for this purpose.

Phoenicians used Banded Dye Murex (Murex trunculus L.) and the Spiny Dye Mureх (Murex brandaris L.), they also used the Rock Shell (Thais haemastoma), known as buccinum at that time.

Shellfish dyes in the Americas

Robinson noted that the Phoenicians broke open the shell to access the punicin dye compound or removed the gland that produced it. instead, the Mixtec Indians of Oaxaca and Guerrero, in Mexico, milked the snails, which preserved them.

The natives in Nicoya, in Costa Rica,dyed cotton with shellfish at the time of the Spanish conquest.

An article (Purple Dyes from the Carlos Museum Pre-Columbian Textiles Collection: Direct Mass Spectrometry and HPLC Analyses. Jennifer Campos-Ayala, Reneé Stein, Rebecca R. Stone, and Ruth Ann Armitage, 2017) investigated the chemical makeup of different purple dyes used in coloring textiles in ancient Pre-Hispanic Peru.

The textiles span almost 1,500 years (between 100 and 1470 AD) and different colors were obtained by combining dyes and overdying the cloth repeatedly. The authores noted that "Purple derived from mollusks is well known in the Old World, and was also used in Central and South America, though originating from a different species of marine snails./p>

But some purples were obtained by combining red and blue: "Red yarns were overdyed with blue, or vice versa, to produce purple. Red dyes in ancient Peru were generally derived from the roots of the Relbunium plant or from cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) insects... cochineal dye can yield a purple color when copper is used as the mordant. Blue dye was obtained from the Indigofera, Isatis and Polygonum genera.".

They did detect one dye that was a true purple, obtained from shellfish because it had the typical chemical signature of such an origin: "Only a single sample showed traces of dibromoindigo, characteristic of shellfish-derived purple dye."

Another article looked into the specific species of shellfish that yield the purple dye dibromoindigo. These species are found around the world, and also in America: "Three of them have been reported to inhabit the Pacific coast of South America: Red-mouthed rock shell of the Eastern Pacific (Stramonita biserialis) from Mexico to Chile; Loco (Concholepas concholepas) from Callao, near Lima, Peru, to the Strait of Magellan in the southern end of Chile, including the Juan Fernández Archipelago, and Chocolate rock shell (Stramonita chocolata or Thais Chocolata) from Peru to Valparaiso, Chile".

The Chilean natives in northern Chile used them 9,500 years ago as food, tools, and containers. This article mentions "the use of this dye for textile production, Phipps indicated that dyed purple yarns appeared no later than 500 AD... In 1963, Saltzman and collaborators found shellfish purple dye in pre-Hispanic cloth, and Michel identified it on a fabric from Pachacamac, Peru, dated back to 900–1200 AD."

Phoenicians in America?

José Imbelloni published a long article titled "Mollusks and the ancient migrations of Mediterranean peoples to America according to the Manchester School" (Los moluscos y las antiguas migraciones de pueblos mediterráneos hacia América según la Escuela de Manchester - Estudio crítico. Revista del Museo de La Plata, 1926, Vol. 29) in which he critically reviews the evidence on Phoenicians in America as put forward by the "Manchester School" as espoused by Elliot Smith, W. J. Perry, J. Wilfrid Jackson, and W. H. R. Rivers.

Jackson proposed in 1916 that the Egyptians had reached America with their "heliolithic" culture, and introduced the use of shells as money-cowries and shell-trumpets, as well as purple dye. Imbelloni argues against the money and trumpet uses of shells, and although he accepts the ancient tradition of the use of shellfish dyes in Tehuantepec, Mexico, Costa Rica (Nicoya), and Santa Elena in Ecuador, and possibly among the Incas of Peru. But, he states that there is nothing extraordinary in these facts as there are several mollusks that produce purple dye, living in the Caribbean and the Pacific coast of America. He disagrees with Jackson's conclusion that "Mediterranean sea farers" introduced the secrets of purple dye into America.

You can read Jackson's book here: J. Wilfrid Jackson, 1917 Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture, Manchester University Press.

Jackson mentions the use of Purpura patula in Central America adding that it is similar to the "Purpura hemastoma of the Mediterranean, one of the species used by the ancient Tyrian dyers, and which, as previously mentioned, is still used by the Minorcan fishermen to mark their linen." On the Pacific coast, the natives of Panama and Guatemala dyed "Poupre de Panama" using Purpura perszca.

For Jackson, "all the foregoing, in addition to other associated elements of culture, could have developed independently in the Old and in the New World is inconceivable." It was discovered once, in the Old World, and transmitted to America:

"It seems almos easier to believe that certain elements of an ancient European culture were at one time, and perhaps once only, actually transmitted by the traditional small band of ... Mediterranean sea-farers, than to explain how, under totally different conditions of race and climate, the identical ideas and customs should have arisen. The peculiar and distinctive character of the shellpurple industry is in itself sufficient justification for this conclusion, as it is altogether unlikely that different people could have adopted so remarkable a custom, along with identical methods of extracting the precious purple matter from shell-fish."

Map showing the distribution of the Shell Purple Industry. Jackson

As the map shows, the use of this dye was also known in Japan. We know that (Source) the Japanese used the Rapana bezoar for dyeing, and that it was used by professional divers to stain their cotton diving suits because they believed that the snail purple had supernatural powers.

Closing Comments: No Phoenician influences in America

In my opinion, like many other discoveries (agriculture, domestication of animals, metallurgy, etc.) the use of purple dye obtained from shellfish was a convergent discovery, it took place in different locations among different people, just by chance.

So, no, the Phoenicians did not bring their know-how to America.

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

The inscriptions on a Patagonian Axe - Adze - Stone plaquette

In my post on engraved stones, better known as "Stone Plaquettes", where I mentioned Father Molina's theory of an "Oceanian" (Polynesian) origin for them, I included the stone pictured below. I was intrigued by the "letters" (or symbols that resemble letters) engraved on the top of the stone tool, which is unique among all the native artifacts I have seen to date. So, I tried to learn more about it. This post is about what I learned during my investigation.

78 - Axe in basalt with inscription and red paint. - Patagones, collection of Mrs. Julia M. De Serrano

The Story Behind this Axe

I came across an interesting paper on stone axes (Source) which mentions this particular artifact.

Argentine anthropologist and professor, Milcíades Alejo Vignati (1895-1978), studied several Patagonian sites and his studies identified the Gennakenk (Northern Tehuelche) people and culture. He investigated many objects and artifacts that were held in private collections by local farmers and ranchers. In a letter written in the late 1930s, he asked a teacher living in Carmen de Patagones, Mrs. Emma Nozzi, to track down some stone axes he had first seen in 1916. He gave her the details of eight of them, one of which was this strange axe.

Local rancher Juan P. Martín had two artifacts. Nozzi wrote back to him with the information, and said:

"the axes that belonged to D[on] P. Martín are kept by his daugher Doña Julia M. de Serrano. I have held the pieces in nmy hands, both very interesting, but “they will not go out of the house of their owner”. Her father did not allow it, neither will she. They were found at "Los Duraznos" -Guardia Mitre- and photographed by the professor German Fish. If you wanted to study them your only option would be to meet the owner, extremely possessive, yet friendly and elegant like the ancient Maragatos [people who founded the town, and came from a region in León, Spain, called Maragatería] that history tells us about. During her youth she explored her father's fields, and for this reason it would be very interesting for you to talk with Mrs. Serrano."

Evidently Molina managed to see the axe in the early 1970s while he prepared his book, "Patagónica". But Vignati never published any article about it.

Trying to track down Mrs. Serrano, I found out that her maiden name was not Martín, instead, it was Martini. The Martinis were part of the "upper class" of the town of Carmen de Patagones. Mrs. Martini wass born as Julia Martini, on Sept. 5, 1890. She died in 1960. She married Pedro Antonio Serrano in 1916, he was the Governor of the Río Negro Territory from 1913 to 1916. Her father, the owner of the ranch in Guardia Mitre was her father Juan Pedro Domingo Martini (b.1859), her mother was Leopoldina Secundina Miguel. Her eldest brother was Mayor of Carmen de Patagones (1929-30), and she had two other brothers, and two sisters. (Source)

Emma Nozzi continued working as a teacher, but she got more involved in anthropology and archaeology and eventually wound up as the Director of the Carmen de Patagones Museum which she had helped create in 1951, with a collection of artifacts that she had gathered and obtained for the Museum, as donations. (See this bio of Nozzi). In 1991, the Museum was renamed after her.

The museum's website does not provide much information about its collections. I asked them if the de Serrano collection objects form part of their current inventory. The museum replied, thanking me for the context that I had provided in my information request, and confirmed that they do have this piece in their collection ("Dear Austin, Thank you for your message and for all the information you shared; it really provides some very interesting context. We can confirm that we have an axe in our collection that matches the description you provided. We don't have any further information to add at this time, but we appreciate your inquiry and are interested in receiving any information you may have. We remain available to continue exchanging information or references on this and other topics related to the region. Best regards.")

What is it?

The use given to these engraved stone plaquettes, stones axes or adzes remains a mystery. Several theories have been proposed, below are some of them:

• "Models or schemes of textiles, especially ponchos." A design template for weaving ponchos. This theory was put forward by Hector Greslebin in 1928. (Nueva hipótesis sobre el destino de las placas grabadas de la Patagonia prehistorica, Physis, Revista de la Sociedad Argentina de Ciencias Naturales, Vol IX, 1928-29 pp.223-233). Greslebin noted that one of the plaquettes was found beside a spindle whorl, suggesting they were used together.
• They were spades or shovels, used to dig. Vignati wrote an article about this use (Vignati, Milciades A. 1923. Las llamadas hachas patagonicas, Descripcion. de ejemplares y nueva interpretacion, Comunicaciones del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural Bernardino Rivadavia, vol. II (1923-1925), no. 3, pp.17-44.) concluding that:
  "1. The so-called Patagonian "axes" are suitable for digging the earth and would have been used to prepare graves;
  2. In addition to being a tool, they can be considered a distinctive mark of the women who carried out the funeral ceremonies. The ornamental designs presuppose a value for the axes that transcends their simple utilitarian purpose;
  3. The graves where axes are found probably belong to women who were buried with the tool and as a symbol of their profession."

The symbols on this axe

The Tehuelche people who lived along the Negro River in the area close to Guardia Mitre, where the adze was found, did not have any form of writing or script. Their neighbors, the araucanized Puelche people, and the Mapuche from the upper Rio Negro valley also lacked writing.

The natives had symbols, and designs that they painted on their guanaco-fur blankets, known as quillangos. They also scratched them on the stone plaquettes. Lacking ceramics, they did not use them to decorate baked clayware.

To interpret the inscription on this axe we have to define which is the top and which is the bottom. As shown in the figure below:

The symbols resemble the following text: Z ſ S I ❯ K, or, if inverted, Ʞ ❮ I S ȷ Z.

The "inverted, or backward K" does not exist as a letter in Spanish. The "long s" (ſ) and the inverted C or "greater than" (❯) symbols are not used in that language either.

And they are not Polynesian symbols either. The Rongorongo script found in Easter Island (Rapa Nui) uses glyphs that do not resemble letters, and neither do the Hawaiian petroglyphs from Waianae. Molina's conjecture of an "Oceanian" origin does not seem to apply to this artifact.

The symbols are not punic in case you suspect some Phoenician or Carthaginian envoys visiting Patagonia in the distant past. Yes, you could argue that the K is an aleph (𐤀), the inverted K is kaf ( 𐤊), the S is a nun (𐤍), the C ia a lamed (𐤋), and the inverted C, a pé (𐤐), but there is no Z character in punic.

I believe that the text is just a mimicry of Latin symbols, and meaningless, probably used to evoke the power of the Spanish conquerors.

Further reading

The following article contains plenty of information on axes and plaquettes that were discovered in Patagonia:
R. Lehmann-Nitsche, (1909). Hachas y placas para ceremonias procedentes de Patagonia, Revista del Museo de La Plata, Vol. XVI (2da Serie V.III), p.204.
Below is one of the many figures included in this paper:

That same issue has an interesting article by Lehmann-Nitsche on the ceremonial stone head-shaped clubs, or clava from Chile and Argentina (Clavas Cefalomorfas de piedra procedentes de Chile y de la Argentina, p. 150).
The following image of a clava is from this article:

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