Quetzalcoatl: civilizing demigod that crossed the Atlantic to Mexico

One often comes across the myth of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered snake god / bearded white man, of the Aztecs, that was said to have crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and civilized the natives in Mesoamerica, and once is task was done, he sailed back, eastwards, promising to return. The story continues; it says that when the Spaniards reached the shores of Mexico in April, 1519, on the Caribbean Sea, the locals assumed that they were the returning Quetzalcoatl.

It is always a good idea to read the original sources to separate truth from fiction.

Quetzalcoatl

Mesoamericans revered a god named Quetzalcoatl, whose name combines the Nahuatl words for feather and snake. (I have posted extensively about snake myths in America, and civilizing god-men like Amalivaca, or Viracocha). The god is said to have been represented by Venus, and also by a white, bearded man. Furthermore, there was a historic record of supreme priests of the Totlec region, who wre named after him. One of them, Ce Ácatl Topiltzin Quetzalcóatl (999-1051 AD) was the king of Tula and we have written records about his reign (see this Source, in Spanish).

Cortés' Letter to the King of Spain

Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) recorded his conquest of the Aztec empire in Mexico in a series of letters (Cartas del famoso conquistador Hernán Cortés al emperador Carlos quinto, in Spanish) that he sent to the King of Spain, Charles I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire as Charlex V, to justify his conquest of Mexico. He had no permission to do so, so he wrote these letters to soothe the king, and justify his actions.

The text of the second letter written by Cortés also records his encounters with the Aztec leader, Emperor Moctezuma II (Cortés calls him Muteczuma), who told him the story of their origin. I cite him below (my translation), Moctezuma told Cortés that:

""For a long time, we have known from the records of our ancestors that neither I nor any of those who inhabit this land are natives of it; rather, we are foreigners who came here from very distant lands (1). We also know that our people were brought here by a lord —whose vassals they all were— who returned to his own country. He came back again after a very long time —so long, in fact, that those who had remained behind had already married native women of the land, had large families, and had established settlements where they lived. When he wished to take them with him, they refused to go or to accept him as their lord, so he returned home. We have always held the belief that his descendants would come to subjugate this land and us, treating us as their vassals. Given the direction from which you say you come —where the sun rises (2)— and the things you tell us about the great lord or king who sent you here, we believe and are certain that he is our rightful lord; especially since you tell us that he has known of us for a long time. Therefore, rest assured that we shall obey you and acknowledge you as our lord, in the place of that great lord of whom you speak."

The two footnotes to this text, were added by the editor of the 1870 edition, and read as follows: " (1) By tradition, the Mexicans came from the north, by way of the province of Quivira, and their stopping points are known with certainty; as evident proof of this, the conquest of the Mexican empire was carried out by the Toltecs—or people of Tula—which was the seat of the court. (2) This was a mistaken belief held by the Indians, for their ancestors came from the north; and even when coming from the Yucatán Peninsula, they truthfully spoke of it as lying to the east of Mexico."

The Mexican commentary is reasonable, why suppose a transatlantic voyage?

Did Cortés write about Quetzalcoatl to establish that the natives were not the lords of the land, but vassals of a white lord (Christian? European?)? This would help show that their right to owning the land was weak, and justified the Spanish conquest.

Cortés has Moctezuma say that it is likely that the king of Spain is their "rightful lord."

The Bearded White Man

We have another source about Quetzalcoatl, written by a Catholic friar, Bartolomé de las Casas (c.1474-1566). He defended the natives against the exploitation of the Spanish conquerors, and, in his work Apologética, Historia Sumaria... (see p.644-45) he describes Quetzalcoatl, as a god-man:

"But the most celebrated, greatest, and most revered of all the gods —according to universal repute— was the great god of the city of Cholula (located two leagues from the present-day city of Puebla de los Ángeles), known as Quetzalcoatl.
According to their histories, he came to Cholula from the region of Yucatán; he was a white man of tall stature, with a broad forehead, large eyes, long black hair, and a rounded beard. They exalted him as their supreme god and held him in the deepest love, reverence, and devotion...
They claim he stayed with them for twenty years, after which he returned along the path he had come, taking with him four virtuous young noblemen from Cholula. From Coatzacoalcos, a province over a hundred leagues away toward the sea, he sent them back with instructions; among other teachings, he told them to assure the people of Cholula that, in times to come, white men with white beards, like himself, would arrive by sea from the direction of the sunrise, guided by the stars. He said these men would become lords of those lands and were his brothers.
The Indians always expected this prophecy to be fulfilled; when they saw the Christians, they immediately called them gods—sons and brothers of Quetzalcoatl, though once they witnessed and experienced their deeds, they no longer regarded them as celestial beings...
Others say the people of Cholula always believed he would return to rule and comfort them; when they saw the Spaniards' ships sailing in, they said their god Quetzalcoatl was returning and bringing the temples where he would dwell across the sea. Yet, when the men disembarked, they said: "These are many gods ('tequeteteuh' in their language); this is not our god Quetzalcoatl." "

In a future post I will explore the possibility that Quetzalcoatl's depiction as being white was a manipulation by the Spanish conquerors: the "black" Quetzalcoatl hypothesis. Pictured below. New July 19: see the post here.

Quetzalcoatl was Saint Thomas, the apostle

Another account written by Friar Diego Duran (1537-1588) in his Historia de las Indias de Nueva Españ, which assimilates Quetzalcoatl, named Topitlzin (an alternate name for the god), with Saint Thomas, one of Jesus' apostles (see p. 73 and following): "There is a fine likeness of him which I saw painted on very old paper preserved in Mexico City; it depicts a man of advanced years with a venerable bearing: a long beard, streaked with gray and red; a somewhat long nose, marked by bumps or perhaps eroded; a tall stature; and long, very straight hair. He sits with great composure..." in the following pages, he is described as the exploits, civilizing efforts. Duran mentions that the natives told him that the saint had left a book, written in strange symbols, that they later burned out of superstition. Duran wonders if it was written in Hebrew (p. 76), he also reported that a native told him that "He had gone toward the sea and nothing more was ever heard of him, nor is it known where to which port he went; it is only known that he went to alert his bretheren, the Spaniards, about this land, and that he brought them back to exact vengeance; and thus, because these Indians held a long-standing prophecy regarding the arrival of strangers, they remained constantly on the alert." Vengance because the natives had insulted his chastity by placing a whore in his room, a woman named Xodviquetzal. He was so offended that he decided to return to his homeland.

The mythical history of Saint Thomas the Apostle in America appeared in the 16th century. It was probably made up by the Catholic church to justify the priority of Christianity over the natives. Nevertheless, there are stories about Saint Thomas in Kerala, India, and a short note written by Eusebius of Caesarea (see 3.1.1.) c.320 AD, telling about his presence there shortly after the death of Jesus (c.50 AD). Did St. Thomas follow the route of the Phoenicians from the Levant, to India and eastwards to America? See my post on Crawford's theory.

My next post will look into the myth about Saint Thomas in South America, in Paraguay, Brazil, and Patagonia. (See this post here).

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

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 © 

Newberry Tablet - Minoan script in the Great Lakes

In post on Jewell and Fell's theory about Minoan presence in America, engaging in copper trade between the Levant and the Great Lakes, I mentioned the Newberry Tablet as evidence put forward by them to back their theory. This post will look at the tablet with a critical eye.

Did it ever exist?

As you can verify by googling the phrase "Newberry Tablet", there are no formal, serious, scientific articles about this artifact. There are some newspaper articles, a few blog posts, and one "paper" (if we can call it that), discussing the characters. All of them reproduce the same image of the tablet, shown below, supposedly a picture taken by the Smithsonian Institution, or taken in Michigan and sent to the Smithsonian in 1896:

Photograph of the Newberry Tablet. Source

The tablet's fate is not quite clear, some sources say it crumbled into dust (it was a clay tablet) as it was not properly preserved or treated, another, posted by the museum in St. Ignace, Michigan, that houses it, shows a deteriorated piece of brown clay asserting that it is what remains of the tablet. See the image below:

Newberry Tablet nowadays. Source

The photograph and the the clay tablet look very different from each other. Are they the same object?

The story behind the Tablet

The museum's post adds that "The Newberry Tablet is shrouded in mystery. The tablet was discovered in the 1890s under a tree in a farmer’s field. Since its discovery, it has ignited imagination and debate about its origins and its meaning. Despite the long-held belief that the tablet is fake, new research is being conducted testing the theory that it was left by an ancient group of people called Minoans. So, is it an ancient relic left behind by Minoan explorers or a clever hoax? You decide."

A local newspaper published an article about it in 2015 which states that the tablet measured 19 by 26 inches (48 x 66 cm) and had a grid with 140 squares that contained symbols of some unknwon language.

It was discovered in 1896 when two loggers were felling trees on a plot of land close to the town of Newberry, Michigan, USA (See the spot in Google Maps). They discovered the tablet and two clay figures next to it (McGruer's Idols). They were tangled in the roots of an old tree (perhaps as some proof of their great antiquity). As nobody understood the symbols, they were photographed and the pictures were sent to scholars at the University of Michigan and the Smithsonian in Washington. The tablet was dismissed as a forgery, a hoax, quite common at that time when mound-diggers produced many inscribed objects to sell them at a profit.

They were kept in town until they were bought by Henry Vaughan Norton and moved 60 miles away to the town of St. Ignace, on the Straits of Mackinac and exhibited as an attraction at a tourist site owned by Norton, called Fort Algonquin. He opened it in 1926 (Source) and ran it until the mid 1950s. Its remains can still be seen (Google Maps), below is an old postcard.

Norton died in the 1980s, and according to the story, the tablet was acquired by Dr. Donald Benson (1924-2005). Benson, a local orthodontist founded the Fort de Buade Museum around that time (1980s) and housed it in a building he owned, which he had purchased for his AM radio station in the mid 1960s, and shut down in 1979. Benson stocked the museum with ihis personal collection of local historic artifacts. After Benson's death in 2005 the Michilimackinac Historical Society took it over. (see this source and this one).

The online posts (see this one as an example) embrace Jewell and Fell's theory and hint that the inscription is probably Minoan, but show some skepticism: "One theory is they have to be a hoax because if they are supposed to be hundreds or even thousands of years old, from the time of the Minoans, how did they survive for so long only to be eroded away in a short amount of time after they were discovered. Like I wrote at the beginning of the post, I am not sure it is real or a hoax, but it is an interesting story."

Another blog, Archaeological Fantasies (Occam's Trowel, Sifting archaeological fringe to get to archaeological fact), has an objective post that dismisses the tablet as a hoax, and summarizes the story, along the lines I gave further up, and concludes with a sober disqualification of the tablet:

"What we can say for sure is that the tablet is not Minoan, Hittite, or any of the other cultures it’s supposed to be written by. Since it’s not any of those cultures, there is no way it could be translated. So any claims that the Tablet proves contact with Pre-Columbian peoples is not valid.
It is my opinion that the Tablet in the Museum is not the same Tablet as the one in the pictures from 1898. I base this on the images as they have been provided. It’s not the best way to evaluate them, I admit that, which is why this is my opinion on the matter and not a fact of any kind. If evidence comes to light that can prove the Tablet’s existence and location over the 60+ year gap between photographing and being purchased by Dr. Donald Benson, then I would re-evaluate my position.
With all of that, I must declare this Tablet a hoax. Neither the facts about the Tablet, nor the speculation is convincing enough to say otherwise.".

Nevertheless, an article (Mormonism’s Encounter with the Michigan Relics by Mark Ashurst-McGee while accepting that another set of articles (the Scotford artifacts) are forgeries, and a hoax, has a different approach regarding the Newberry stone and accompanying figures: "The inscribed stone, discovered in 1896 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, does not fit within the spatio-temporal context of the Scotford scheme. Scotford worked in the state’s main land mass. Except for the first phase of the hoax, which was very localized, Scotford’s work took place after 1896. The Newberry tablet bears only a superficial resemblance to the Scotford-Soper artifacts. Figurines of the Newberry type are without parallel among Scotford’s known productions." Of course, it does not state whether the tablet and the figures are genuine or fakes.

Not the only Tablet

My research uncovered a new fact, there was another tablet discovered in the same region at roughly the same time! Such coincidences are so improbable, that they mean that the artifacts are hoaxes or, a naturally occuring phenomenon that were interpreted as a manmade objects. The latter may well be a good explanation for these tablets.

This is the story: The Newberry tablet was not the first one to be discovered in St. Ignace. Apparently in 1892 (one year before the Chicago World Fair, another tablet was unearthed while digging a ditch at the St. Ignace Court House, where the future office of A. J. Gennell, county clerk, would be later built (Source), the following article published in a local newspaper at that time, describes the event:

The facts tie in with this information: In 1883 Alfred J. Gennell owned a grocery and general store, he was born on Mackinack Island in 1844, and moved to St. Ignace in 1881, (Source), he later became a Public Notary, Real Estate Dealer and city clerk (1888 to 1906). He passed in 1935.

This second tablet existed, and was reported by the Smithsonian Institution on page 180 of its 1914 Report on the progress and condition of the United States National Museum for the year ending June 30, 1914 pictured, and titled "GENNELL, A. J., St. Ignace, Mich.: Fragment of limestone with natural markings resembling ornamental designs. (55998)" This is a list of "List of Acceessions to the Collection During the Fiscal Year 1913-1914." This means that a piece of the tablet was sent to the Smithsonian, accepted, and added to its collection. However, note that the description says "natural markings resembling ornamental designs." The piece of sandstone was not manmade, it had natural inscriptions that resembled symbols. The Smithsonian received the sample of the tablet in 1914, roughly twenty years after the stone was discovered.

McGruer's Idols

One of the versions about how the tablet was found says that it was unearthed on the McGruer farm, located close to Newberry, with the stone idols also known as McGruer'

I searched for John McGruer on ancestry.com, and came up with his bio: "John McGruer was born on February 12, 1858, in Canada. He married Catherine (Kate) McMillan in 1883. They had one child during their marriage. He died on May 20, 1917, in Newberry, Michigan, at the age of 59." He was a pioneer, and also operated timber business, the Tahquamenon Logging Museum preserved his homestead house, which can be seen on their website in a picture, it has a sign that reads "McGruer House" on it. The place is 2 km (1.3 mi) north of Newberry (Google map) on the south bank of the Tahquamenon River.

The figures are on exhibition in St. Ignace with the remains of the tablet. Pictured below in color, and a black and white picture supposedly from the Smithsonian. The images came from this source and this one.

In a book titled This Land: America 2,000 B. C. to 500 A. D., by May, W. N. (2012), you can read about the tablet and the figures, which are not made of clay, but of stone! It cites a local Newberry newspaper article as follows (my comments in brackets):

"Jacob Brown and George Rove, both residents of Newberry were looking for deer, and in the course of their hunting, startled a mink, which made for a swamp nearby and took refuge in a hollow stump. In digging under one side of the stump to get at the mink, they struck stone which bore evidences of the handwork of man. Becoming interested, they secured picks and spades, and unearthed the stones. As a result of their labors, thre stone images were uncovered, also a large stone tablet. All four objects were cut from brown sandstone, the rock probably coming from the northeastward where the pictured rocks, great cliffs of sandstone, worn by the wind and wave into fantastic forms frown for many miles upon the blue waters of the great lake [learn more about these cliffs]. Of the three images, the largest is that of a man in a sitting posture, nearly life size. This statue is on a pedestal formed from the same piece of stone. The second image, from point of size, is that of a woman, and is a trifle under three feet in height [90 cm], while the third is an image of a child, and like the man, is postured in a sitting attitude and is about two feet high [60 cm]. All three of the images were found placed with faces towards the east, which may have been accidental, but more probably intentional, and this points strongly to sun worship...
Near these figures was found a slab of brownstone averaging six inches [15 cm] in thickness and eighteen by twentyfive inches on each face.
One side was smoothed as carefully as the coarse structure of the rock had allowed, while upon the other face were engraved a series of inscriptions each set in a square of approximately one and a half inches, there being 140 of these."

The description of the tablet coincides with what I have mentioned further up, but this source states that the tablet was made of sandstone, not clay. Yet Betty J. Sodders (1928-2018) in the paper mentioned further down in the next section, after stating that together, the statues weighed almost 1,000 pounds (453 kg) and made from pinkish clay adding, that the initial reports said they were made of brownstone (Sodders, B, p. 24).

Very few "Serious" articles about the Tablet

Betty Sodders lived in St. Ignace, and was an amateur historian, she wrote about the tablet in her 1990 book Michigan Prehistory Mysteries, and according to online forums, she wrote to Mrs. Benson about sending the clay tablet to California to be radiocarbon dated, but the results were never published. She also wrote a paper: Betty Sodders, McGruer’s Gods and the Newberry Stone, The Ancient American 1 (March-April 1994): 24–26.

Another paper was written by Dr. Minas Tsikritsis in 2024, who is a school professor of informatics who is interested in Aegean scripts, based in Heraklion, Crete, Greece, his article is titled The Newberry Stone, ESOP, The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers · Volume 30 p.220. (it can be read online). In his paper, Tsikritsis attempts to identify the script, concluding that it may not be a forgery:

"The Newberry Tablet is a unique artifact... Consequently, cannot be attempted a replacement of the symbols with possible phonetic values, which have been attributed in table 1, since only the 24 out of 39 symbols are similar to the cyprominoan script. Since the remaining 15 cannot be recognized, the subject of reading and interpreting the inscription still remains open. Nevertheless, the replacement of the symbols that have great resemblance to the symbols of the Cypriot-Minoan script, gives us words that are actually names of people who come from the region Kamiros ofRhodes and they are mentioned as ka-mi-ri-ta-wi.
Probably the inscription was written between the 12th and the 8th century BC and its symbols were influenced by the Cypriot-Minoan script. A percentage of 25% approx of its symbols has to be a local creation. The modification of a syllabic system in another region is a known phenomenon. A similar case was the case of Cypriot-Minoan script (1650-1050 BC) that was based on Linear A (1800-1530 BC). We should also note that the horizontal and vertical lines of the Newberry Stone is a characteristic not found in other script artifacts of the Cypriot-Minoan writing system. Regarding the authenticity of the tablet, we may argue that the Stone is probably not counterfeit, because it could not have so many Cypriot-Minoan symbols, since by the time that Newberry tablet was found —in 1896— the symbols of the Cypriot-Minoan script had not been found yet. The first symbols of Cypro-Minoan were found on two cylinder seals found in 1875 in Cyprus but did not receive publicity until 1957. These seals were bearing 5 and 4 symbols Cypriot-Minoan script respectively. Two of symbols found on the seals exist also in the Newberry stone tablet"

Closing Comments

Interesting story, very likely a hoax, well done, but a hoax or, people believing that a natural sandstone bears manmade inscriptions. The idols or gods seem to confirm the artifacts are fakes. I don't think that Minoans reached the Great Lakes and left some tablet and idols hidden in a lost river in the middle of nowhere.

Some blogs and other sources

There is a blog, Noahs age that deals with this artifact, and includes texts, translations, interpretations, and wild theories about comets!

Up North Michigan mentions the tablet.

Another blog, archaeological fantasies.

Charles Sprague Taylor, 1991, Tahquamenon Country: A Look at Its Past. page 113

C. Fred Rydholm, 2006, Michigan Copper, the Untold Story: A History of Discovery. page 123

Mertz, Henriette, 1964, The Wine Dark Sea: Homer's Heroic Epic of the North Atlantic. United States: Mertz. page 131.

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

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 © 

Hittites in America, Pedra do Inga, Brazil

Gabriel D'Anunzio Baraldi (1938-2004) was born in Italy, and moved to Argentina when he was 22. He later relocated to Brazil and later, to Europe. He was known as the "Last Atlantean", having published Os Hititas Americanos — The American Hittites, (1997) and A Descoberta Doc.512 — The Discovery Doc. 512, (1997).

In his first book, he wrote about supposed Hittite inscriptions on a rock in Paraíba, in Brazil, linking them to Atlantis. He also managed to involve extraterrestrials in his theory. His second book dealt with a lost city that he discovered in northern Brazil, called Ingrejil, which he believed was the mysterious "lost" city that Percy Fawcett had been searching for when he vanished in the Mato Groso jungle in 1925. (I will discuss this in my next post).

The Pedra de Inga

The pedra (stone) do Ingá: (of Ingá) is a large rock shaped like a wall, that is 24 m long (75 ft), located in the state of Paraíba, in northeastern Brazil by the town of Ingá (see map). It has 497 inscriptions. Baraldi claimed to have translated these symbols which he says should be read from bottom to top, and from right to left. Baraldi says they are written in the language of the Hittites and this is proof of the arrival of "proto-Hittite" people to America c.1350 BC. He also added that the Tupi language of the Guarani people of South America, is an archaic form of Hittite.

The Hittite civilization flourished in Anatolia, in what is now Turkey, during the Bronze Age (1,650-1,150 BC). They adopted the use of iron earlier than their rivals, the Egyptians and the Assyrians, and built an empire that challenged them. Pharaoh Ramsses II clashed with them, and after the battle of Kadesh in Syria, both powers sought peace (1274 BC). The Hittites are not known for the navigation expertise. They were land-based people. So, how did they reach America?

Pedra do Inga. Source

According to Baraldi, the Atlanteans fled from their island-city of Atlinatis when it was destroyed by a great cataclysm. He says that the stone inscriptions mention the volcanic eruption that covered a city built with stones, on the Atlantic coast, with ash, and that it was very intense, the fleet of the empire was at risk, so the sailors set out to sea to save their ships and the lava nearly burned them. The Atlaneans took refuge in Brazil where they carved the monolith. Only later did they head back east, across the Atlantic and settle in Anatolia, becoming the Hittite empire.

Below is a comparison of Rapa Nui (right) and Ingá (left) symbols (Source), and Hittite inscriptions (c. 1500 BC) (Source).

Of course, andy similarity is coincidential. For instance, I made out some Latin letters an M (row 4), a U (row 4 col.2), a W (row 5), and even a Y (row 8), which goes to show that coincidences exist, and that the human mind loves finding patterns and similarities even if there are none.

Anyway, Baraldi used Laroche's table of Hittite hieroglyphs to decipher the text (for those interested in Laroche's work, you can see the symbols here, online, as Fig. 2)

The stone is made of hard metamorphic rock like granite, and the deep grooves of the symbols (1 cm deep and 3 cm wide - 0.4 and 2.25 in) would have been very hard to carve using stone tools. Some have suggested the use of metallic tools, which the natives lacked. Baraldi said that the inscriptions had been made by using molds pressed into the hot lava that issued from a now extinct volcano, that had been channeled here by the proto-Hittites while it was fluid.

But the rock was never fluid lava running from a crater. Instead it was altered deep inside the Earth, and like most rocks, it extruded, intruded, to the surfaceo (see the image above showing the rock — Source). It is known as biotite-granodiorite, a compact, fine-grained igneous rock with high hardness (Source).

Not an original idea

Baraldi was not the first to imagine a pseudoscientific origin for the stone. Gilvan de Brito wrote a book about it (Journey into the Unknown) Viagem ao desconhecido os segredos da Pedra de Ingá: inclui outros registros rupestres, in 1988. In it, he mentions similarities with Hebrew, Toltec, Hittite, and Rapa Nui symbols, he also imagines it is a calendar and that it involved extraterrestrials. 1994 Zilma Ferreira Pinto suggested that the stones had Muslim, Jewish, and Christian inscriptions. A Kabbalistic stone.

Facts

The rock is the work of local natives, who painstakingly engraved and polished the stone. They probably used iron oxide to stain the symbols (Source). Erosion, and visitor vandalism has erased some of them. The work is probably up to 6,000 years old. No UFOs, no Hittites, no molten lava printing, just plain Native Americans.

Further Reading

Those who want to learn more about the stone can read these two books online (In Portuguese):

• Maria Tereza Santana de Costa Rodrigues Almeida, 2009, A Pedra do Inga: A Reproducao do Mito, A Reproducao da Fe, a thesis with a scientific point of view.
• Vanderley de Brito, 2009, A Pedra do Inga, Itacoatiaras na Paraíba, a serious scholarly review of the stone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea Bianco's Map

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

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

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

Bianco's Text

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

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

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

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

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

Opposing View

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

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

"

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

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

Saint Brendan and Sancho Brandão

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

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

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

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

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

Assis Cintra

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

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

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