Minoans in America

Not long ago, I wrote a post about the Native Americans from the Great Lakes region of U.S.A., who mined native copper and used it for practical and ornamental artifacts (axes, jewels, spear heads, etc). For over 5,000 years different tribes operated this mining, processing, and trading emporium across North America.

However, some authors have suggested that the copper was extracted by Mediterranean people (i.e. Phoenicians, Carthaginians, or Minoans). In today's post we will look into some of these wild theories.

Minoans and copper trade, Jewell's theory

In his book, published in 2000, "Ancient Mines of Kitchi-Gummi: Cypriot / Minoan Traders in North America", Roger L. Jewell gives his support to the Minoan discovery of America and their use of the native copper mines in Lake Superior. The name "Kitchi-Gummi" is the the Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) name for Lake Superior

Mainstream scientists agree that the copper was not only used locally but also traded across North America. Some of the metal artifacts were buried in graves, other pieces were lost, and, following the discovery of America, most Native objects were taken (looted, stolen) and melted down for other uses. However, Jewell argues that the natives couldn't have dug 5,000 separate mines 4,500 years ago or consumed the 20 to 50 million pounds (9,000 MT to 22,000 MT) of pure copper that were extracted from these mines.

But, according to Wilband, 1978 the figure is even higer than the one given by Jewell: "500 million pounds to perhaps more than one billion pounds" citing: Drier, R. W., and Du Temple, 1961, Prehistoric copper mining in the Lake Superior region. Published privately by the authors.

Though the figure may seem large, it adds up to 227,000 to 554,000 MT. To grasp it, its volume is roughly 25,000 to 50,000 cubic meters, or 883,000 to 1,766,000 cu. ft. Averaged over, say, 5,000 years of mining it isn't much: 5 m³ or 17.6 cu.ft. of pure copper per year. This was traded across the continent and widely dispersed.

As I haven't bought the book, I will simply summarize the arguments put forward by the author in his book's overview, and on its website, as well as information I came across on online forums. All of them agree, and sound quite serious, but, in fact they don't add up to support the Minoan connection with America.

Overview of the theory

The copper mines are located in the Isle Royal region of Lake Superior in Michigan, USA (Google maps). They were operated by Native Americans who were managed by European people on how to extract the copper. These Europeans then loaded their ships with the copper and sailing east, along the Great Lakes, and the -Saint Lawrence River, crossed the North Atlantic and took the copper to Spain where they smelted it. The copper ingots were then traded across the Mediterranean by Minoans from Crete or merchants based in Cyprus, who sold it to the Egyptians. All of this is said to have taken place around 4000 BC. (perhaps too early in my opinion, regarding the Minoan Culture on Crete.

Dolmens

As evidence, Jewell says these mines in Michingan have been dated to 4000 BC by radiocarbon methods. He adds that European culture can be seen in the region because there are dolmens on the shores of Lake Superior. Dolmens are megalithic (large-stone) structures common in bronze-age Europe 3,000 to 4,000 years BC. A dolmen generally consists of two or more upright slabs supporting a flat slab layed across them. They are table-like structures. Jewell adds that some of these dolmens are inscribed with the word "BAAL", the name of a Semitic god (from Phoenicia and Canaan) —which seems strange if the miners are Minoan or Cypriot! The script used to write the word is Ogham, another oddity because it is much more recent, from the Irish Middle Ages.

Below are some European Dolmens, they are structures that a person can enter, and stand inside. Their appearance is very different from the "dolmen" of Lake Superior pictured futher down, which is resting on some big boulders, not on tall slabs.

European dolmens.

The "dolmen" at Sawbill, Michigan:

Sawbill Dolmen stones near Lake Lujenida. Photo by Gary Meinz. Source

The supposed Dolmen is interesting, but I don't see the need to link it with Minoans. The picture above forms part of an article that states that dolmens "are commonly found in the Eastern United States. It is believed that this dolmen is the only one in Minnesota. The Dolmen measures approximately 4 feet high by 6 feet wide and seems to be oriented to the sunrise at the Summer Solstice. It has been speculated that this Dolmen may have been used to observe planetary/star movements, or as a worship area marking changes in the seasons".

Interesting speculatin, but notice the phrasing "it seems" so it isn't a fact that the boulder points towards the summer solstice. In my opinion is it not man-made, it is an erratic boulder (see this article, with a picture of a similar looking natural dolmen in Austwick, England). Erratic boulders are large stones hewn by glaciers and transported on the ice sheet for hundreds of miles and deposited when the ice melted.

Newberry tablet

Jewell adds further evidence in the shape of the Newberry Tablet (my next post will deal with it), a clay tablet inscribed with "proto-minoan script" and the clay figures knwon as McGruer's God's; all of which were discovered in 1896 along the Tahquamenon River in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. They are said to be the work of Minoans who visited the region.

The Sutton Deed signatures

Jewell also noted that the first English settlers (in fact they lived in Sutton, Massachusetts, which by the way, is very far from Lake Superior) purchased their land from the Native American Algonquian-speakig tribes, who signed the deed in 1681/2 using Basque language symbols (Basques live in Spain, hence the connection Spain-Basques-Cree-Lake Superior). He also points out that a treaty signed in 1727 between English and Native Americans had 32 Cypriot symbols used by the native chiefs as their signatures. The blending of Basques, Cree alphabet, and Cypriot symbols seems complicated and confusing. Below is a summary on how these elements are supposed to support the Minoan-Great Lakes connection.

I found an interesting 46-year-old article (Sutton Historical Society, Sutton, Massachusetts, 1704... and Before That, Bulletin, Vol 6, No. 4, Dec. 1980) that tells this same story, as reported by Barry Fell, an epigraphist in his book published in the late 1970s (America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World).

According to Fell, who uses linguistics to support his wild claims, the Celts of Gaul and the British Isles who used Ogham script, reached New England and left inscriptions in rocks there. Carthaginians travelled with Celts (and also left inscriptions). Phoenicians and Egyptians joined in the trade with America and finally, Basque sailors came too. He left the Minoans out of his theory.

But, let's go back to Sutton, which is linked to Jewell and his copper trade theory. The native Nipmuck Indians, who were Algonquian, used Cree syllabic script, an original alphabet. It seems that in the early 1800s, missionaries learned about the existence of an ancient native "Cree" scripts, and used them to christianize the Indians. One of these missionaries, Rev. James Evans (1801-1846) even printed religious texts using it.

But, this nice story ignores the fact that the Cree didn't have a pre-Columbian writing system. Their symbols appeared after their contact with Europeans. There are two versions about who created the Cree script. One version is that, at first, Reverend Evans tried to use Latin characters to express the native language, but when that failed, he implemented a syllabic script inspired on the symbols used for the Cherokee language (devised by Sequoyah). Evans used special symbols that he designed for the Cree language. The other version differs, and states that the Cree invented the language themselves before the missionaries arrived.

Interestingly, Sequoyah was born in Tennessee, ca. 1770, the son af a white man, Nahtaniel Gist, and a Cherokee woman. His father abandoned them when Sequoyah was a child. He became a silversmith and blacksmith, and was a good artist. He also devised a written alphabet for the Cherokee language which he finished in 1821. He moved to Arkansas in 1818 and in 1828, he explored the lands in Oklahoma that the Federal government would give the Cherokee in exchange for their territories east of the Mississippi. He lived in what is now Sequoyah (a village on Route 66) in Oklahoma and died in in 1843 during an expedition. His is the first and only case of somebody who never learned to read or write and created on his own a new written language. (The image shows Sequoyah. It is a lithograph from the portrait painted by Charles Bird King in 1828. He is pointing at the script he invented).

Going back to the Cree script, the second version, the one involving a Cree myth, says that it was handed down by the spirits to a chief called Calling Badger, a man who returned from death, and wrote the symbols on a scroll of birch bark c.1830. These were then adopted by Evans. Neither story mentions a pre-Columbian origin, or Minoans.

Further reading: See this source for a serious explantion of the development of the Cree script.

Barry Fell, in his explanation of the Sutton deeds, jumps to Spain, and asserts that some inscriptions from Basque stone tablets in Spain, that predated Columbus, were sent to him for study, and he noticed they had lines of symbols identical to the Cree ones. Using the Cree "sounds" or phonemes (as a sillabic language, each Cree symbol is linked to a syllable) for these symbols, the language of the inscriptions turned out to be Basque. So ancient Basque inscriptions had been written in Cree-Algonquian script.

Fell added that the Sutton land deed was signed by natives using two types of alphabets, those native chiefs who had been educated in the New England schools used English (Latin) letters for their names while others used the Cree script (or mamalohikan) which Fell says uses ancient Cypriot alphabet letters, only deciphered in 1871, much later than the land deed.

This version contradicts the "Evans origin" of Cree symbols c.1840, and the Cree myth of Calling Badger inventing it in 1830. The Sutton deeds and the Basque inscriptions are theoretically much older and employed Cypriot characters!

Finally, Fell also noted the 1727 treaty signed at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, Canada had 32 Cypriot symbols. The Cypriot alphabet died out in Europe around the third century BC, during the days of Alexander the Great meaning that it had to reach America before that date.

So, some Canadian Indians used a script invented in Cyprus over 2,300 years ago, while others used one used by Basques prior to 1492. Confusing indeed! Seems scientific, but it hogwash.

The image above, from the Cree Language Grammar book written by John Horden in 1881 clearly states that "The Indians possess no written characters of their own, and their only mode of communicating with each other, except verbally, before they received instruction from European Missionaries, was by means of rude hieroglyphic symbols. They are now In possession of a "syllabic system"." So you can choose, the pro-native version that does not accept that the script was created by the invading "white Europeans" and imposed on an inferior race of natives, or the more politically correct version that the Cree people invented it themselves shortly before the arrival of the missionaries, inspired by their ancestral spirits.

Jewell's arguments, a Summary

Jewell's website (see it on archive.org) provides snippets of the main arguments that according to his book, support the presence of Minoan-Phoenician-Carthaginian-Basque traders in the Great Lakes region:

• The copper mines are far too old. He argues that they dates are "much older than would be expected" ranging from 2470 BC to 1050 BC. Stating that at that time there were "No developed cultures were here to use the copper." These people were hunter-gatherers. I can't imagine why he supposes that the Native Americans were not capable of mining and using native copper, which is almost pure. They used it to make tools, ornaments and traded it with other native groups. No Minoans needed for this.
• Where did all the Copper go? Arguing that it was shipped to Europe and Egypt because "the copper is missing" and can't be found in America. This overlooks the fact that it was traded all the way to Mexico, a lot of it was interred, placed in tombs and graves, and lost. Since corrosion affects copper, some of the artifacts must have disintegrated. Plenty of copper was looted and smelted by European settlers after their arrival in the mid 1500s.
• Scripts and Texts. There is evidence of other scripts like the Newuberry Tablet which is said to be written in "an ancient script known as a Cypriot Minoan Syllabary", and brought to America by "Minoan traders".
• Dolmens and the Stone Chambers. There is a "Stone Chamber" discovered in Putnam County, New York, oriented according to the Winter solstice and another facing the Equinox. Then there is the Sawbill Dolmen in the Superior National Forest supposedly marking the water divide between the Hudson Bay and the St. Lawrence River basins. I have already dealt with the "dolmens" further up. Regarding the Stone Chambers, they deserve a post for themselves: see it here.
• The mtDNA X haplogroup. I have posted about this in the past and discussed it in depth. Jewell says that the Algonquian people carry it because they were in contact with eastern Mediterranean, Spanish, and West European people "thousands of years ago." These people brought the X mtDNA haplogroup to America by sailing across the Atlantic Ocean.

Closing Comments

None of these arguments, support the Minoan trade network assumed by Jewell. One that spanned the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, and also required navigating 1,170 km (730 mi) up the St. Lawrence River skirting rapids, and then continuing 1,750 km (1,100 miles) inland, bypassing Niagara falls, and crossing the Great Lakes and the St. Mary's rapids to reach the copper mines they didn't even know existed when they set out from Europe. Furthermore, for those who'd believe that the natives could have guided the Mionan expeditionaries from the Atlantic seabord to the the Isle Royale mines, I must point out that the French missionaries and explorers who reached the shores of Canada c.1600s saw copper objects but couldn't get the natives to explain or identify their exact source (see Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior, by Charles Whittlesey, 1862.

The Cree-Basque-Cypriot script link is tenuous at least, and a fantasy if we look at it objectively. The stones inscribed with the word "Baal" sound like nineteenth century forgeries, and I have not (yet) been able to find any formal research papers mentioning them.

In my opinion, if the Minoans visited America, it was a chance event driven by a storm or strong winds, an accidental voyage, and not a systematic and consistent trade route driving copper from America to the Levant. For those interested in the subject, I have mentioned Minoans in some previous posts.

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

Elephants or Mammoths in Native American Art

Paleoindians coexisted with mammoths, and hunted them until (for reasons still unknown) these gigantic hairy elephant-looking creatures died out some 10,000 years ago. Mammoths managed to survive a bit longer in the Wrangel Island on the north coast of Northeastern Siberia, very close to Bering Strait (see map) until around 3,700 years ago (Source) 800 years after the great pyramid of Cheops was built in Egypt. And these Wrangel creatures are said to be the last mammoths on earht.

Ingram and "elephants" in the 1560s

In a previous post mentioned the account of David Ingram, who said he had seen elephants while he walked all the way from Mexico to Nova Scotia, Canada, as a marooned sailor in the 1560s, and wondered if what he saw was a group of surviving mammoths, creatures unknown to Ingram, but elephant-like.

What do we know about the interactions of humans and mammoths in the Americas? Could they have survived until the sixteenth century?

Mound-builder and Elephants or Mammoths

While reading about mounds and mound-builders, I came across some interesting images in old, late 1800s publications, depicting an elephant or mammoth-like creature. Below are two images from that period, depicting objects that were discovered inside mounds in North America.

The first report was published in 1883, in Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley, by Henry W. Henshaw. It has some interesting text about a mound shaped like an elephant! See the image below.

Elephant Mound, Grand County, Wisconsin. Fig. 27 in Henshaw's book

The author is skeptical that the mound actually represents a mammoth, I will quote him in full:

"THE "ELEPHANT" MOUND.
By far the most important of the animal mounds, from the nature of the deductions it has given rise to, is the so-called "Elephant Mound," of Wisconsin.
By its discovery and description the interesting question was raised as to the contemporaneousness of the Mound-Builder and the mastodon, an interest which is likely to be further enhanced by the more recent bringing to light in Iowa of two pipes carved in the semblance of the same animal, as well as a tablet showing two figures asserted by some archæologists to have been intended for the same animal.
Although both the mound and pipes have been referred in turn to the peccary, the tapir, and the armadillo, it is safe to exclude these animals from consideration. It is indeed perhaps more likely that the ancient inhabitants of the Upper Mississippi Valley were autoptically acquainted with the mastodon than with either of the above-named animals, owing to their southern habitat.
Referring to the possibility that the mastodon was known to the Mound-Builders, it is impossible to fix with any degree of precision the time of its disappearance from among living animals. Mastodon bones have been exhumed from peat beds in this country at a depth which, so far as is proved by the rate of deposition, implies that the animal may have been alive within five hundred years. The extinction of the mastodon, geologically speaking, was certainly a very recent event, and, as an antiquity of upwards of a thousand or more years has been assigned to some of the mounds, it is entirely within the possibilities that this animal was living at the time these were thrown up, granting even that the time of their erection has been overestimated. It must be admitted, therefore, that there are no inherent absurdities in the belief that the Mound-Builders were acquainted with the mastodon. Granting that they may have been acquainted with the animal, the question arises, what proof is there that they actually were? The answer to this question made by certain archæologists is—the Elephant Mound, of Wisconsin.
Recalling the fact that among the animal mounds many nondescript shapes occur which cannot be identified at all, and as many others which have been called after the animals they appear to most nearly resemble, carry out their peculiarities only in the most vague and [Pg 154] general way, it is a little difficult to understand the confidence with which this effigy has been asserted to represent the mastodon; for the mound (a copy of which as figured in the Smithsonian Annual Report for 1872 is here given) can by no means be said to closely represent the shape, proportions, and peculiarities of the animal whose name it bears. In fact, it is true of this, as of so many other of the effigies, the identity of which must be guessed, that the resemblance is of the most vague and general kind, the figure simulating the elephant no more closely than any one of a score or more mounds in Wisconsin, except in one important particular, viz, the head has a prolongation or snout-like appendage, which is its chief, in fact its only real, elephantine character. If this appendage is too long for the snout of any other known animal, it is certainly too short for the trunk of a mastodon. Still, so far as this one character goes, it is doubtless true that it is more suggestive of the mastodon than of any other animal. No hint is afforded of tusks, ears, or tail, and were it not for the snout the animal effigy might readily be called a bear, it nearly resembling in its general make-up many of the so-called bear mounds figured by Squier and Davis from this same county in Wisconsin. The latter, too, are of the same gigantic size and proportions.
If it can safely be assumed that an animal effigy without tusks, without ears, and without a tail was really intended to represent a mastodon, it would be stretching imagination but a step farther to call all the large-bodied, heavy-limbed animal effigies hitherto named bears, mastodons, attributing the lack of trunks, as well as ears, tusks, and tails, to inattention to slight details on the part of the mound artist.
It is true that one bit of good, positive proof is worth many of a negative character. But here the one positive resemblance, the trunk of the supposed elephant, falls far short of an exact imitation, and, as the other features necessary to a good likeness of a mastodon are wholly wanting, is not this an instance where the negative proof should be held sufficient to largely outweigh the positive?"

The Elephant Pipes

The same author mentions "pipes": "As regards likeness to the mastodon, the pipes before alluded to, copies of which as given in Barber's articles on Mound Pipes in American Naturalist for April, 1882, Figs. 17 and 18, are here presented, while not entirely above criticism, are much nearer what they have been supposed to be than the mound just mentioned." See the image below.

Elephant pipes from Iowa. Figs. 28 & 29 in Henshaw's book

Henshaw points out that neither pipe has tusks, and ivory tusks of mammoths would have been noticed by the natives, who used it for many different purposes. They also lack tails. He also notes that the origin of the pipes is suspicious:

"As the manner of discovery of such relics always forms an important part of their history, the following account of the pipes as communicated to Mr. Barber by Mr. W. H. Pratt, president of the Davenport Academy (American Naturalist for April, 1882, pp. 275, 276), is here subjoined:

The first elephant pipe, which we obtained (Fig. 17) a little more than a year ago, was found some six years before by an illiterate German farmer named Peter Mare, while planting corn on a farm in the mound region, Louisa County, Iowa. He did not care whether it was elephant or kangaroo; to him it was a curious 'Indian stone,' and nothing more, and he kept it and smoked it. In 1878 he removed to Kansas, and when he left he gave the pipe to his brother-in-law, a farm laborer, who also smoked it. Mr. Gass happened to hear of it, as he is always inquiring about such things, hunted up the man and borrowed the pipe to take photographs and casts from it. He could not buy it. The man said his brother-in-law gave it to him and as it was a curious thing—he wanted to keep it. We were, however, unfortunate, or fortunate, [Pg 157]enough to break it; that spoiled it for him and that was his chance to make some money out of it. He could have claimed any amount, and we would, as in duty bound, have raised it for him, but he was satisfied with three or four dollars. During the first week in April, this month, Rev. Ad. Blumer, another German Lutheran minister, now of Genesee, Illinois, having formerly resided in Louisa County, went down there in company with Mr. Gass to open a few mounds, Mr. Blumer being well acquainted there. They carefully explored ten of them, and found nothing but ashes and decayed bones in any, except one. In that one was a layer of red, hard-burned clay, about five feet across and thirteen inches in thickness at the center, which rested upon a bed of ashes one foot in depth in the middle, the ashes resting upon the natural undisturbed clay. In the ashes, near the bottom of the layer, they found a part of a broken carved stone pipe, representing some bird; a very small beautifully formed copper 'axe,' and this last elephant pipe (Fig. 18). This pipe was first discovered by Mr. Blumer, and by him, at our earnest solicitation, turned over to the Academy.

It will be seen from the above that the same gentleman was instrumental in bringing to light the two specimens constituting the present supply of elephant pipes."

Another Account about the Elephant Pipes

The book "The mound builders; their work and relics" by Stephen D. Peet, published in 1892 shows another image of the "elephant" pipe of Fig. 29, it can be seen as Fig. 15 on page 13. and the story of its discovery is given, as follows; notice that Peed does not doubt that the pipes are genuine: "In the Davenport Academy there are two pipes made in imitation of the elephant or mastodon. One of these pipes is said to have been taken out from the depths of a mound in Louisa County, Iowa. A German clergyman, Rev. A. Blumer, having first discovered it, handed it to Rev. J. E. Gass, his companion in exploration. It is unreasonable to doubt the genuineness of this find, even if the re markable discoveries which were made by the latter gentleman have been discredited. A second elephant pipe (Fig. 13), which had been discovered in a corn-field by a German farmer by the name of Myers, after wards came into the hands of Mr. Gass."

On page 46 he provides more information: (highlight is mine):

"The third discovery is the one the most relied upon. This discovery was also made by the Rev. Mr. Gass, in the spring of 1880, several years after the discovery of the tablets [more on the tablets below]. Mr. Gass was accompanied by Rev. Mr. Blcomer. A group of ten mounds, arranged in irregular rows, was situated along the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi bottoms west of Muscatine Slough [in Iowa, see Google map]. The first mound opened proved to be a sacrificial or cremation mound, situated on the extreme edge of a prominent bluff, having ravines on both sides. It was a flat cone, thirty feet in diameter, elevation three feet. Near the surface was a layer of hard clay, eighteen inches thick; below this a layer of burned red clay, as hard as brick, one foot thick; under this a bed of ashes, thirteen inches deep. In the ashes were found a portion of a carved stone pipe, bird form, by Mr. H. Haas; a very small copper axe by Mr. Gass ; a carved stone pipe, entire, representing an elephant, which, Mr, Bloomer says, "was first discovered by myself." The other mounds of the group were explored, and contained ashes and bones, but no relics. Mr. Gass makes no report of finding the elephant pipe, but leaves that to Mr. Bloomer. During the same year he discovered, in the mounds in Mercer County, Illinois, several Mound-builders pipes one representing a lizard, one a turtle, another a snake coiled around an upright cylinder and covered with some very thin metallic coating. Mounds on the Illlinois side, near Moline, and Copper Creek and Pine Creek, had previously yielded to Mr. Gass carved stone pipes, one of them representing a porcupine, anothera howling wolf. The pipes were composed of some dark-colored slate or variety of talc, thus showing that the Mound-builders of the region were in the habit of imitating the animals which they saw, making effigies of them on their pipes."

The pipe shown in Henshaw's Fig. 28 is reproduced here too, as Fig. 17 on page 41, it is the one discovered by Myers in a corn field. Peet points out (p. 47) that the pipes lack tusks because they would be difficult to carve, and if carved, they would have broken off easily.

Peet and the Elephant Mound

Peet also mentions the elephant mound in Chapter III, with the same image posted further up. He escribes how the "Elephant Mound" was discovered, and surveyed by Jared Warner in 1874, accompanied by J.C. Orr and J.C. Scott. It was located near Wyalusing, close to the Mississippi River. It was Warner who drew the image shown further up. Peet was not convinced that it was actually an elephant, probably a bear (see page 42): "'The head is large, and the proportion of the whole so symmetrical that the mound well deserves the name. The mound was in a shallow valley between two sandy ridges, and was only about eight feet above high water.' There are many mounds in this section of country in the shape of birds, bears, deer and foxes. We would say that the effigy of the bear, which is very common here, and which was the totem of the clan formerly dwelling here, has exactly the same shape as the so-called elephant, but is not so large and lacks the proboscis. The projection at the nose called the proboscis is not really one, but is the result of the washing of the soil. It was a mere prolongation of the head, had no curve, did not even reach so far as the feet, and can be called a proboscis only by a stretch of imagination."

The Davenport Tablets

Interestingly, Peet mentions that Gass also unearthed tablets with inscriptions on them, dug from mounds! These, Peet deems to be fake, and I agree with him. See the images below (p. 44-45), which transcribe the "text" found on the tablets:

Rev. Gass explored some mounds near the city of Davenport, Iowa (map), on the bank of the Mississippi River in 1874. In Mound number three, he discovered the tablets. The mound contained two graves, and was excavated in 1877. Gass, accompanied by seven men, two of which were students dug and close to the bottom, they found two tablets, with inscriptions.

This finding is surely a fraud, not one committed by Gass, but by another person (or more than one person), who planted them in the mound for him to find. The tablets deserve their own post, which I have published here on April 23rd, 2026).

Mammoths and Paleoindian Rock Art

We do know now that mammoths were depicted in rock art, and they have been discovered in different parts of America by serious researchers. For instance, in Bluff, Utah, US, according to Malotki and Wallace, 2011, there are mammoth images that are ~11 to 13,000 years old.

Purdy et al., 2009 reported an engraving depicting a mammoth, on mammoth ivory, 13 kya, found at Vero Beach, Florida. This is the first, and only one found in America (in Europe, there are plenty of them), and the oldest artistic object in America. It is pictured below (Source)

Further afield, in the Amazon region of Serranía de la Lindosa, Colombia, in South America, Iriarte et al., 2022 have identified rock paintings that depict megafaunal animals, including proboscideans (Gomphotheriidae) and dated to 12.6 kya. See it below:

(a) Gomphothere painting at La Lindosa: 1. proboscis; 2. fingers; 3. flared ears?; 4. moderately domed head. (b) Artistic reconstruction (Mike Keesey). Fig. 4 in Iriarte et al., 2022

Holly Oak Mammoth Pendant: Far too recent

This controversial object was discovered in 1864 by Hilborne T. Cresson, who worked at Harvard's Peabody Museum as an assistant in the archaeology section and W.L. Suralt. Cresson came forward in 1889 announcing that he found it near Holly Oak railway depot in Delaware, US, in a layer of peat. It is incised on the shell of a marine snail (Busycon sinistrum), and depicts a woolly mammoth.

It was considered to be a fake, as it looked very similar to an engraving discovered in France a few years earlier. However, it was reassesed in 1976 in an article published in Science (making its cover, see image below) authored by John C. Kraft and Ronald A. Thomas, they found that the "carvings appear to be aged in asimilar manner to the remainder of the shell."

This meant that it wasn't an old shell recently incised as a hoax! The authors even suggested it could be as old as 40,000 years based on the age of the sediments at Holly Oak.

But the controversy lingers on. A few years later, Griffin et al., 1988 dated the shell to 1,500 years BP, and discarded it as a hoax because the authors stated that there were no mammoths alive in America at that time.

Contemporary Mammoths

This leads me to ask: Isn't the 1500-year-old pendant proof that someone saw and depicted a mammoth at that time? And is proof of its existence? Isn't science built on evidence like this? or, is it based on preconceptions like "mammoths died 4000 years ago and that is final".

This brings me back to David Ingram, who claimed seeing "elephants" in the 1560s. So, why couldn't there have been a pocket of extant mammoths in Delaware in 500 AD? They were seen and depicted as an incised image on a shell.

There are some Native American myths about mammoth-like creatures (Jandác̃ek, 2018) like the "Stiff-Legged Bear - Katci-to-wαck'w... it has skin, which is Pachyderm, resistant to arrows. It is believed by many experts, e.g. Strong (1934:81) to be based on the mammoth and the mastodon" Citing: Strong, W. D. (1934). North American traditions suggesting a knowledge of a mammoth. American Anthropologist, 36, 81. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1934.36.1.02a00060 🔒

I found another source quoting Strong "Naskapi, an Algonquin tribe living in Labrador at the time, speaks of a monster with large, round footprints, "a big head, large ears and teeth, and a long nose" and was very large overall. These characteristics could not be solely observed from fossilized remains, indicating that a prehistoric memory persists and is contained in this oral narrative - making it a myth of historical traditions" (the natives actually saw the mammoths!)

Other sources mention that the Salish of British Columbia have a mammoth song and a mammoth dance. The Osage people describe sloths, giant bears, dire wolves and mammoths battling each other (See: O'Donnell, J. (2024). Fountain Creek: Big Lessons from a Little River. United States: Torrey House Press). However, authors like Mayor, 2007 while mentioning mammoth myths among Delaware and Shawnee natives considers these, and the Osage "monster battle" myth as constructions built when the natives came across fossil bones of megafaunal animals. They were not contemporaries, they just happened to find fossil bones.

Less serious sources like this creationist one Mammoth Trapping in the Yukon: A review of Northern Tutchone oral history evidence supporting the survival of Woolly Mammoths in the Yukon Territory within the past 1,000 years by Johnson, 2019, published with the intention of promoting the Creationist pseudoscientific viewpoint, offer an insight into other native myths (leaving aside creationism), and the recent survival of mammoths in northern North America.

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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 © 

Molina on the "engraved stones": Oceanian (Polynesians) in Patagonia

In the past, I have posted (see below for some links to these posts) about the strange engraved stones that were discovered in different parts of Chubut province, Patagonia, during the 20th century, and which were sent to the Salesian Museum in Rawson (their Facebook page), Chubut, and are exhibited there. See these pictures from their Facebook, they show the "engraved stones": Picture 1, Picture 2.

In his book "Patagonica" (online here), Father Manuel Jesús Molina mentions these stones and includes them as plates in his publication. Below are these images and his original captions are translated in each image's caption-

But first, let's read his interpretation of these engraved stones:

"Sculpture style - They are works executed in counter- and bas-relief on stone slabs of very different materials: granodiorite, granite, compact basalt, marble, sandstone, quartz pophyry. They have sulpted human figures seen from the front, and profile, animals, and birds, sometimes forming scenes; weapons and work tools; signs can be seen in the inscriptions that appear to be letters, the phases of the moon, and a symbolic sign that give mental uniformity to the works. In general they have a frame of lines or frets... Decorated (or not), axes and the oquewa [sic] belong to it... With this style is the engraved ceramic of Patagonia, especially in Chubut. The Rawson Museum preserves a slab of stone on which they have reproduced in basrelief different shapes of ceramic objects with their respective decorations. With them, came the engraved plaques, done many times on soft materials like volcanic tuffs. All this makes us suppose that this style is of oceanic origin as shown by the symbolic cross-shaped sign of its bearers. The painted skulls of San Blas would also belong to it, which bear the same magical sign that is seen among the oceanic creatures of the Marquesas Islands, and is engraved on the back of the mythical lizard and painted in red in a dotted circle at Punta Gualicho, in Lake Argentino. An old Alakulup tradition says that long ago, some very bad men arrived in large canoes. Their bodies were painted with large stripes, and they killed everyone they encountered. Surely, their gateway must have been Puerto Aysén; they must have crossed the Andes through Coyhaique and reached Lake Colue Huapi via the Mayo and Senguerr rivers, where they established their settlement. There they mixed with the Patagonians and reached the coast, which they traveled as far as the Paraná River, where they formed the Canals Frau Littoral Group. It can be dated to around 500 AD."

The Engraved Stones and their Captions

From Molina's book Patagónica Figures 70 to 79:

70 - Sculpture style: small bust whose pedestal exhibits sculpted emblems on its four faces - Salesian Museum of Rawson No. 737
71 - Sculpted art: small bust with an engraved pedestal with emblems on its four faces - Salesian Museum of Rawson No. 737

72- Three sculptures: in th emiddle, a "Mature Mere" with sculpted effigy and signs of 27x9 cm; to the left a trapezoidal slab of prophyrite of 26x19 cm with ostriches and their chicks; to the right a basaltic stone of 23x18 cm with an indigenous effigy and its emblems - Salesian Museum of Rawson, N. 752, 738, 751

73- Boulder with the figure of a strange animal represented with only two legs, inscription, emblems and frets - Salesian Museum of Rawson, No.742

74 - Three sculptures: in the middle a porphyrite axe of 20x14 cm found in chullucurá; to the right, cross with double border and emblems, in white marble of 14x12x4 cm found in Puerto Visser; to the left, oval with the portrait of a native, 15x12 cm - Salesian Museum of Rawson, N. 748, 746, 747

75 - Guanaco that looks at you on dark shale of 43x36 cm, with various emblems, the condor and a serpent. - Salesian Museum of Rawson, No. 743

76 - Black basalt slab of 54x29 cm with a perimetral border: a collection of naitve artifacts and emblems: the hunter wears a loincloth. - Salesian Museum of Rawson, No. 736

77- Various artifacts and emblems

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

79- Oceanic artifacts: 1. Okewa, of 27x13x3.6 cm (n. 204); 2. Okewa, of 18.5x 10.6x2 cm (n. 1297); 3. Triangular axe, of 18x14.5x2 cm (n. 1300). - Fancisco de Viedma Museum, Patagones

Okewa

When Molina mentions "Oceanic" he is referring to the Polynesians. The "oquewa" ini the text (sic) and "okewa" pictured above are the words used to designate polished rock clubs used by certain Polynesian groups such as the Maoris of New Zealand. They can also be found under different names, and made in wood, in different islands across the Polynesia.

In a future post we will look into the ceremonial clubs found in the Americas that hint at a Polynesian link or visit to the New World.

Visitors from the West

Molina mentions an ancient myth of the Alakaluf about canoes full of men painted with stripes that murdered their people. These myths could refer to European ships or expeditions from Chile southwards along the Pacific coastline which usually ended up with the Europeans killing the natives. A big canoe could equally be a Polynesian vessel or a European caravel or galleon. Bodies painted with large stripes could refer to clothes (the Alakaluf people just wore some seal skins).

My previous posts on these stones

The "Phoenician" stones were definitively not made by native Tehuelche or Mapuche people, they are very different. And we can therefore conclude that they are either:

• Fake. A forgery, a hoax. That is: someone deliberately crafted these stones with "native" motifs, with the intention of making them appear as authentic native or Phoenician crafts (hence the use of Semitic letters), to sell them to gullible amateur archaeologists.
• Genuine, made by some non-native people like European settlers. By genuine I mean that the persons who made them, did so for some religious, cultural, social reason, and left them behind when they returned to their homeland or disappeared (famine, illness, war). Probably some were made and sold for a profit, to fool those who bought them believing they were genuine native handicrafts.

The posts on these stones:
Tehuelche rock inscriptions. Comparison to "Phoenician" stones.
Phoenicians, Tehuelches, Patagonia and cryptozoology - Part 1 where I asked if "are they genuine or are they forgeries? If genuine, were they carved by the Tehuelche natives? or by someone else?"
Genuine Tehuelche "inscribed or engraved" stones
Analysis of Tehuelche - Phoenician - Celtic (?) intertwined snakes : Strange snakes of alleged Celtic or Phoenician origin found engraved on Patagonian rockss. Native or Semitic - Celtic art?
Cryptid on Phoenician - Tehuelche carving, a cryptid on a Tehuelche engraved stone with Phoenician symbols. (" a very peculiar stone which differs from the standard native artistic expression.")
Phoenicians and Hebrews in Pre-Columbian Patagonia

An Article on the Stones

The issue No. 171, of Argentina Austral, published in September 1945, (online here, see p.12) included an article "¿Eran nómades o sedentarios los Tehuelches?" (Were the Tehuelche nomads or sedentary?) by Father Justo M. Ducco. In it, he discusses these engraved stones, and includes more photographs of them, including more samples such as a tortoise in pink granite (pictured below).

The article mentions the stone sculptures as follows (In it, Ducco, interviews Father Antonio F. Fernández, principal of the Rawson Salesian School, which served at that time as the "museum"):

"But what gives this Museum its unique character is the "Archaeological Collection," with its lithoglyphs that intrigue the observer. A dozen or more granite-porphyry plaques, exquisitely engraved in relief, with heads of indigenous people, animals of the region, tools, symbols, and probable inscriptions, surrounded by a geometric border like a fretwork. The stone chosen for these works is solid and fine-grained; diverse in color and composition. And there is an exception, a small marble plaque less than two square decimeters in diameter. [2 dm = 200cm² = 31 sq.in.] The engraving, or at least its retouching, was executed by percussion with pointed stones, with the patience necessary to achieve impeccable forms and surfaces. Father Fernández tells me that other visitors, more or less dedicated to archaeological matters, expressed their fears that these lithoglyphs may have been brought from Peru in ancient times; or perhaps they are local works by European carvers. I spoke at length with the Father; we examined the plaques and other similar works repeatedly, including a small bust of an indigenous person; we exchanged opinions, suppositions, difficulties, and arguments; and finally, we synthesized our shared opinion in several statements, which I present and elaborate upon here.
1°) The objects are heavy, some of the plaques weighing up to thirty kilos, and the Father has seen some of even greater proportions. We therefore dismiss the suspicion of allochthonous origin, taking into consideration that during the time of their long migrations, the indigenous people lacked vehicles that would have allowed them to carry more than the bare necessities.
2°) Regarding the hypothesis of the European origin of these sculptures, we note first that not all of them contain a single example of an exotic theme. If Europeans had engraved or simply directed the engravings, they would have imprinted their concerns as foreigners on them.
3°) Nor does the horse appear among the animal figures, which can only be explained by accepting that these are productions from a time before the arrival of the Spaniards to our shores; since with the first founding of Buenos Aires, the wild cattle descended from the escaped or abandoned cattle already began to spread towards the pampas.
4°) None of the plaques have a symmetrical face, even if only approximately. Their creators were aware of symmetry, as evidenced by the perfection with which they reproduced the Indian heads seen frontally in low relief, with their fringed headbands and geometrically arranged necklaces; likewise, the turtles, arrows, and other naturally symmetrical motifs. But they were not concerned with symmetry as European or Europeanized artists were; therefore, the outline of the work, traced by a simple fretwork, and the distribution of the figures, lack intentional symmetry.
5°) The works show the work of different hands, as can be seen from the compositions, the details of their execution, and even more so from the fact that the sculptures were found in different, very distant locations. At first glance, the themes might seem repetitive, were it not for the fact that the objects typical of the Patagonian moorland were specifically few: rheas, guanacos, pumas, snakes, lizards, the sun, the four phases of the moon... and add to that two almost indispensable symbols: arrows, such as those found in the riding arenas in their most common and elegant form; and another symbol that leaves us intrigued: Something like a uniform club or a bundle of rods, with two radiating bows or ties, also uniform and without a terminal notch, the whole of which resembles a crude schematization of a lizard's body seen from above. To these elements of the sculptural compositions, we must add several small signs that appear to be hieroglyphs. And there is precisely one plaque that contains about twenty of them, as if it were a mnemonic or learning manual.
6°) It will be objected that, since these were "nomadic" Indians, we cannot attribute to them the perfection displayed by the carvers of these stones."

Next Post: Okewa in the Americas

In a future post I will explore the presence of these okewa in the Americas.

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

Prehispanic Cattle in Patagonia (revisited)

I posted about native bovids in Patagonia several years ago. Today I found an interesting interview published in June 1969, in the Boletín de Intercomunicación de la Familia Salesiana, which appeared in a 2011 blog post. The Boletín is a magazine of the Catholic Salesian Congregation, a religious organization founded in the 1850s by Father "Don" Juan Bosco to help the young vulnerable people. The Salesians worked in Patagonia helping the Natives, starting in the 1880s. There are many Salesian schools, and even a University in Argentina.

The person that is interviewed is father Manuel Jesús Molina (link to a post with his bio), and the part I quote below deals with "bovids" and horned animals. There are no known native bovids (cows, buffalo, bison, antelopes, or goats) in Southern South America yet, there are many native myths involving horned animals.

"— Who, when, where, and how were these rock engravings and paintings done?
— The natives, the oldest of which date back to ten or eleven thousand years ago; there are other which are more recent: six thousand years. I have just concluded an investigative work at Lake Posadas, in Santa Cruz, precisely about rock engravings and paintings.
— How old are they...?
— I had already received information from a technician of the museum who had been sent there ten years ago, to investigate the area, and he brought a series of really good photographs. Later, one of our pupils -a rancher- sent me another set of photographs. When I compared them and studied them, I found that there was something that wasn't running, that wasn't clearly visible: but it gave me the impression that some of the paintings of bovids were from the Spanish period. As I alreay had photographs of bovid scenes that were much older, when I conducted my study, I imagined that those at Lake Posadas were more recent. Well, now I went back to conduct a complete study of the site, and I came across this new finding: that these bovids which I had interpreted as being from the time of the Spaniards, were clerarly from the native period, and so ancient, that I found them painted at a height of five meters [16 ft.] on the rock walls in the middle of the Cordillera...
—Painted by…?
—The Patagonian indigenous people.
—Could you explain how they could paint at five and a half meters high? How tall were the Patagonians?
—It means the following: the Patagonian didn't bother to paint high up; they painted at ground level, about half a meter up.
—How did they manage to paint? What did they use? What did they rely on? What were those paintings like?
—To explain the origin of those paintings, I only had to look at the geological formation of the region. It was once a large glacial lake. The remnants are the small lakes that remain: Posadas, Lago Salitroso, Lago Pueyrredón. But there was a time when all of that formed an immense interglacial lake. Later, as the ice retreated, the lateral moraines (which are large accumulations of rocks, rubble, clay, and mud) left behind sediments that settled against the hill. When the indigenous people arrived, they found the sediments at a height of about five meters, and—standing on the moraines—they created their paintings. Then, over time, five or six thousand years, those moraines eroded, crumbled, and were demolished by erosion. Today they are almost at that level.
—How tall were the Patagonians?
—Between 1.80 and 2.30 meters tall.
—Do those paintings date back eleven thousand years?
—Those paintings date back to an imprecise time, after the lake drained. One could say eight thousand years.
—What other interesting details about those paintings could you give us?
—The most interesting thing about these paintings is this: I've corrected a mistake I made when analyzing the previous photographs, because I had always believed that these paintings were from the Spanish period. Now I've discovered that they're not from that era, but from the old indigenous period. At first, I interpreted them as Spanish bovines: bulls and cows from the Spanish colonial era. Now—having been there and taken photographs of those paintings—I've found that they represent animals called unicorns, that is, animals with a single horn. And there isn't just one representation, but four, including a large, curved horn, which is identical to the painting I had documented near the Santa Cruz River, dating back six or seven thousand years before Christ. Now it turns out it's the same animal in four different representations: the male depicted with a horn, and the female without. It's an interesting case, because there's no unicorn animal in Argentine paleontology. Once, when Dr. Frenguelli published something about a bovid, all the Argentine paleontologists denied it. When I sent the photograph of that animal to the prehistorian Dr. Osvaldo Menghin, he didn't take it seriously; but when he later saw the diagram drawn by a technician, he said: "Now we have in hand an argument to prove that bovids, or at least unicorns, existed in Argentina, and that Frenguelli was right." The fact is, unicorns did exist in Argentina."

Analysis and Comments

The site of these paintings is Cerro de los Indios (map), close to Lake Posadas, the eastern tip of Lake Pueyrredón. Below is an image of the paleolake formed by these two lakes, plus Lake Salitroso. To the north is Lake Buenos Aires / General Carrera. During the Last Glacial Maximum, they drained eastwards across the steppe into the Atlantic (A). Now, after the ice field melted, they both drain west into the Pacific and their level has dropped (B).

Paleolake Pueyrreón LGM and nowadays. Source

Another view of the Paleolake and its evolution, the colors indicate different water levels, pale blue color marks the current lakes Pueyrredón, Posadas, Salitroso (left to right) and Ghio center-right. Number 5, marks the Cerro de los Indios, site of the unicorn paintings.

Paleolake Pueyrreón, at different levels. Source

Molina mentions Joaquín Frenguelli and a publication about bovids. I found the publication, but it is not digitalized (Frenguelli, ]., 1933. Restos de Bovino en el Lujanense de Santa Fe. Anales de la Sociedad Científica de Santa Fe, 5: 14-24.) the title is "Remains of Bovine in the Santa Fe Lujanenese".

Another source about Frenguelli and his comments on bovids is a newspaper article, Were there Horses and Cows in the Prehistoric Pampas? Crítica, July 8, 1935, p.6. This article mentions Joaquín Frenguelli, Director of the La Plata Museum, and his discovery of prehistoric bovids in Argentina, it says that "The Findings of Dr. Frenguelli... nevertheless does not got beyond believing very possible, and in no way proven, the bovine origin of the remains he found." It also mentions a previous finding by Florentino Ameghino and Muñiz of the remains of primitive American oxen, though later Ameghino said they were antelopes. The photograph below is from the Critica article:

Fragment of a skull of Nothobos Pampaens, the horns, as can be seen, are similar to those of cows. Critica, 1935

This is the link to Ameghino's bovid publication, which he die not publish with Muñiz, but with Gervais (Mamíferos Fósiles de América del Sur. Henri Gervais, F. Ameghino, 1880). The text reads:

"1ANTILOPE ARGENTINA - H Gerv and Amegh SYN.
Bos pampaeus - Amegh
We establish this species on the extremity of a horn belonging without a doubt to an antelope. It has been collected in the province of Buenos Aires.
LXX GEN. PLATATHERIUM - H Gerv and Amegh
We propose to create this generic name for a large ruminant found in fossil form in the province of Buenos Aires and represented in the collections of the Museum of Natural History of Paris by a left half of the lower jaw, some limb bones, and a portion of the hip.
PLATATHERIUM MAGNUM - H Gerv and Amegh We will call the only species of this genus Platatherium magnum and give an idea of the size of this animal by saying that the space occupied by the molars of the second dentition must be at least 0.164 m The lower half of the jaw is provided with all the teeth of the first dentition. These teeth are close to falling out and the permanent molars are already visible underneath, ready to replace them. The molars of the P magnum are very compressed, very different in shape from those of deer, but on the contrary, they seem to resemble those of antelopes. The true molars are composed of two yokes or columns and present in the external groove that divides the two parts a column quite similar to that which occupies the inner part of the upper molars of cattle. The false molars, at least of the first dentition, differ in shape from those of antelopes, resembling in their characteristics those of cervines and bovines."

Fig 4 in Torricelli's Obras Completas Vol. 9 (Complete Works of Ameghino), shown below is the "tip of one of the horns of the Platatherium pampaeum.

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