Brazil

Published June 6, 2010

Brazil was arguably (re)discovered by the Pinzon brothers, before Columbus first reached the West Indies according to Steven Sora^(g). However, it is more generally accepted, particularly by Brazilians, that the Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral was the first European to discover Brazil in 1500.

Brazil has had few serious investigators propose it as the location of Atlantis. Although, in 1947 Harold T. Wilkins claimed^[⁰³⁶³^.97] that Quetzalcoatl was from Atlantean Brazil. Earlier in the 20^th century, Col. P.H. Fawcett, the famous explorer, disappeared while searching in the Brazilian rain forest for a ‘lost city’ that he called ‘Z’. A 2009 book by David Grann about Fawcett’s searches in Brazil, entitled The Lost City of Z ^[0772] was the basis for a film released in 2016. Sprague de Camp listed^[⁰¹⁹⁴^.329] a George Lynch supporting a Brazilian Atlantis in 1925. In fact, Lynch was a fund-raiser for Fawcett. However, the Atlantisforschung website is adamant that there is no evidence that Lynch favoured Brazil as the location of Atlantis⁽ⁱ⁾!

However, although there is growing evidence of ancient roads, plazas and bridges in Brazil’s vast tropical forests, further data is needed before we can attempt to fit these structures into any specific culture or chronology.

An article^(e) in the August 2017 edition of Antiquity offers evidence that humans lived in Brazil more than 20,000 years ago, which is many millennia before the Clovis people arrived in North America.Americo Huari Román is a Peruvian electrical engineer who was born in the former Inca capital of Cuzco. He is the author of La Atlantida y el Imperio de los Incas (Atlantis and the Empire of the Incas) ^[1448]. Before the Great Deluge, Huari claims that most of central Brazil had been a huge inland sea and that Atlanteans and Arawacs lived around this lake and that the one artefact left by them is the enormous carved Ingá Stone^(j⁾.

The possibility of Phoenician contact with Brazil has a number of supporters and a range of websites supports this controversial view⁽^a⁾. One such advocate, Ronald Barney, maintains^[¹¹⁸⁵^] that they concentrated their influence in the northeastern region of the country citing the work of Ludwig Schwennhagen^[¹⁵⁵⁰^] and Apollinaire Frot^(f).

There would appear to be evidence for 3rd century AD Roman contact with Brazil^(h). The 1982 discovery of Roman amphorae in a shipwreck in Guanabara Bay near Rio de Janeiro, 15 miles offshore in 100 feet of water. This was badly received locally as it dispensed with the claim for Pedro Alvares Cabral having been the first European to land in Brazil^(k)(l). The large number of amphorae found in the wreck would seem to indicate that their cargo had not been offloaded and as it was located 15 miles offshore, we have no reason to think that the ship ever reached land. I would speculate that the Guanabara wreck was simply blown of course while on a trading mission.

Whether other Roman vessels reached America with greater success is a more contentious matter. A variety of Roman artifacts have been discovered since the early nineteenth century, at various locations in America, inciting what was often furious debate^(m)(n)(o). If the Romans had established links with the Americas, I find it hard to accept that they would not have broadcast the fact, if only to inflate their imperial ego!

May 2013 saw a flurry of media interest when a Japanese submersible found evidence in the form of granite suggesting of a previously unknown continental mass that sank about 900 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Members of the expedition have played down any attempt to link this discovery with Atlantis^(b)(c).

This reminiscent of the reaction in 1931 when two islands were reported to have emerged from the sea off Brazil and within a short time, claims that they were a returning Atlantis were widely quoted^(d).

Any suggestion that the land of Hy-Brasil in Irish mythology has any connection with Brazil or Atlantis is just wild speculation.

^(a)https://phoenicia.org/brazil.html

^(b) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/brazilian-atlantis-japanese-submersible-atlantic-ocean_n_3231437.html?utm_hp_ref=world

^(c) https://www.counselheal.com/articles/5276/20130507/scientists-found-atlantis-coast-brazil.htm

^(d) https://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/98134066?searchTerm=Atlantis&searchLimits=

^(e) https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/stone-age-people-brazil-20000-years-ago

^(f) https://web.archive.org/web/20200430123023/https://faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/biados/texts/brazilph.htm

^(g)See: Archive 3480

^(h) The Mysterious Ancient Underwater Roman Relics of Brazil | Mysterious Universe (archive.org) *

⁽ⁱ⁾ George Lynch – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)

^(j)http://www.messagetoeagle.com/unsolved-enigma-of-the-inga-stone-and-its-mysterious-ancient-undeciphered-signs/

^(k) Guanabara Bay Evidence: Did the Romans Reach the New World Before Columbus? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)