PHOENICIANS IN BRAZIL
A study researched, translated and presented by the kind
courtesy of
Mr. Christian da C. Karam, Student of Archaeology, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Phoenician
Colonization
About 11,000 years ago
(9500 B. C.) our planet was hit by a huge cataclysm when a good part of the
Andes Cordillera was raised. The big lake where today the Sahara desert is
dried out, the limits of the Mediterranean sea were altered, and the very
large continent- island that existed in the middle of the Atlantic ocean,
known as Atlantis, sank.
The
causes of the catastrophe are not completely known yet but it is believed
that one of its probable causes was the arrival of a huge mass of a celestial
body that might have passed near Earth provoking tremendous tensions in the
internal magma of the planet. Those real magma "tides" have
submitted the thin solid crust of the planet into stronger pressures than it
could support. In many points the soil became distended and in others it
wrinkled. There were furthermore sinking and rises in some other parts of
soil.
Atlantis
was the main victim of those cataclysms that caused the fall of its powerful
civilization. It is enough to say that various ancient texts state that after
the continent- island's sinking, its survivors went on to Africa.
Plato
tells us about the fights that they had with the Egyptians and Greeks and how
they finally were defeated. However, they left indelible marks on the ancient
people's culture such as in the Phoenician civilization that was their
successor in the sea trade.
The
Phoenicians inhabited the Mediterranean coasts, the narrow and fertile strip
located between the sea and the mountains of Lebanon and Anti- Lebanon. Their
small territory, the presence of powerful neighbours and the existence of
much cedar wood (quite good for naval construction) in the mountain forests
may have been the additional elements that guided the Phoenician civilization
towards the exploration of the seas.
They
built numerous and powerful fleets. They also visited the north African
coasts and all the European south, traded in Italy, entered the Black Sea and
left the Mediterranean Sea by crossing the Pillars of Hercules (today's
Strait of Gibraltar and previously called the Pillars of Melqart) reaching
the Atlantic ocean's African coast, and finally arrived at the Tin Islands in
England. Always trading, the Phoenicians built marts and warehouses along
their routes. When they could, they stole a little but always trying not to
provoke powerful enemies who they preferred to weaken with gold products,
instead of doing it by the sword or by fighting. The Phoenician agents and
diplomats were familiar with almost every war fought at that time and they
used to take advantage of it. They navigated the African continental coast in
order to follow the opposite way that would be traced by Vasco da Gama much
later. And more evidence seems to confirm that the Phoenicians used to cross
the Atlantic Ocean to visit the "New Continent". The Phoenicians
navigated by using the technique of stars orientation, the sea flows and
through the winds courses. So, by following those factors their captains
covered huge distances with precision. They were already influential about
the year 2000 BC but their power grew with Abibaal's (in 1020 BC) and Hiram's
leadership. Byblos, Sidon and Tyre were successive capitals of a state- city
trading empire, united before anything else by ties of interest, habits and
religion instead of a more rigid political structure.
Phoenicians in
Brazil
Brazil is
full of vestiges that corroborate the Phoenician presence in its lands and
everything indicates that they concentrated their occupation in the
northeastern region. A little away from the Longá and Parnaiba rivers'
confluence, in Piaui state, there is a lake where Phoenician shipyards
and a harbour with a place reserved to tie the "Carpássios"
(old long traveling ships) were discovered.
By
navigating the Mearim river up north, in Maranhão state, when
arriving in the Pindaré and Grajaú rivers' confluence we can
find the Pensiva lake before known as Maracu. In that lake's
borders there can be found shipyards made of petrified wood containing thick
nails and bronze dowels. Researcher Raimundo Lopes, born in Maranhão State,
excavated that location at the end of the twenties and discovered typically
Phoenician tools.
In Rio
Grande do Norte state, after roaming a 11 km canal, the Phoenician boats
used to anchor in the Extremoz lake. The Austrian professor Mr. Ludwig
Schwennhagen studied the place's subterranean parts and the embankments
carefully and also some others that exist near the village of Touro
where the Phoenician navigators anchored after roaming about 10 km of a
canal. The same professor Schwennhagen tells us that he found Phoenician
inscriptions in the Amazon in which there were references to many kings of
Sidon and Tyre (887 to 856 BC).
Schwennhagen believes that the Phoenicians used Brazil as a base
during 800 years at least, leaving here, besides material evidences, an
important linguistic influence among the natives.
In the
rivers Camocim (Ceará State), Parnaiba (Piaui State) and Mearim
(Maranhão state) entrance accesses there are stone and lime walls built
by the ancient Phoenicians.
Apollinaire Frot, a French researcher, traveled all over the Brazilian
countryside in order to collect Phoenician inscriptions in the Minas
Gerais, Goiás, Mato Grosso and Bahia sierras. The inscriptions
that he put together are so many that "they would fill uncountable
volumes if they were ever published", according to Frot's statements.
The
translation of those inscriptions refers to Phoenician works in Brazil, to
their trade activity practiced in those distant lands and to the sinking of
Atlantis. Some inscriptions reveal that because of the geological shocks that
hit Atlantis, its survivors went to the north of Africa to found the empire
of Egypt and many other nations of the region known today as the "Middle
East". Those inscriptions still mention the biblical flood that,
according to them, was not a universal catastrophe but only a local cataclysm
in the Mesopotarmia region. This is a fact that scientists accept as
veridical nowadays.
The
economic leadership condition, on whose trade others depended, gave Phoenicia
a kind of stability that allowed its existence to last so long without having
strong armed forces. Phoenicia survived the Egyptian, the Syrian and the
Assyrian hegemonies and even the Persian domination. Finally a strange racial
element appeared the invaders from Europe. Thus Phoenicia trembled, at first
under the Greek invasion headed by Alexander the Great and later under the
power of the Roman legions.
With such
a war the trading practices were interrupted and the far away colonies and
marts now abandoned, started to be destroyed by local populations. The
inhabitants of those regions, too far from the metropolis, withdrew into a
primitive status. Although these are just theories, it would explain the
blond hair and the diverse physical constitutions of savages that can be
found among some Brazilian Indian tribes in the Amazon. It would also explain
the light skin and the big number of Phoenician expressions and words used by
the Tiriós Indians.
Carthage,
the largest of the Phoenician colonies, survived and prospered when it inherited
the sea trade from its ancient colonizing cities. It is Herodotus, the famous
Greek historian, who tells us that "the Carthaginian senate published a
decree in order to forbid -under penalty of death -- to organize or to take
trips to the other side of the Atlantic ocean because the frequent coming of
men and resources were emptying the capital".
Finally, there is the famous inscription in the "Pedra
da Gávea" (Gavea's Rock) in Rio de Janeiro which states:
"Here Badezir, King of Tyre, Jetbaal's oldest son".
There is
no scientific or cultural work in Brazil that has affirmative data about the
Phoenician coming to its territory. However, there are in some foreign
material references to the Phoenecian navigators in Brazilian lands before
its European discovery. Although that information may seem unreal, legendary
and fictitious, I want to believe that it is really true.
Phoenician inscriptions found in Tyre, known today as Sur (its name in
Arabic), are on tombstones, which are now in London. They mention an
expedition of a Phoenician navigator to a region beyond the Strait of Moloch
(today's Gibraltar) where "the sea penetrated into the land..." a
place where there was an abundance of food and lots of wood.
There
still is another --fact: in excavations that took place in Sidon, French
archaeologists found in 1860 many wooden artifacts that only could have been
taken from Brazil, according to archaeological tests. It is the famous "quebracho"
or "quebra machado" (the "ax breaker") as it its
known in the Brazilian countryside. Besides that kind of wood a red coloured
one was found whose denomination today in Arabic remains the same as the one
in Phoenician times: "Shajarat Ahmar" -- known in Portuguese as Pau-
Brasil.
By the
way, what is the origin of the name, which is given to the Amazon River after
its source?
The
answer to that question is in the Louvre Museum archives, in the Royal Museum
of London and also in Vatican and Lisbon historic documents that state the Solimões
River's name came from its primitive denomination, which might be
"Sulaiman". So, it would be
in honour of the great King of Israel -- Sulaiman (Salomon) -- given
by his vassals who arrived in those regions guided by the Phoenicians, a few
years before the Christian Era.
All the
cuneiform inscriptions discovered in the Amazon region, in the Ararí area, as
well as in French Guyana and Surinam such as hieroglyphs and rock characters
demonstrate clearly its origin from Aramaic, Syriac and even Sanskrit
scripts.
In the
National Historic Museum many photographs show us huge inscriptions that are
widely spread from the Solimões River up to the point where its name changes
to Amazon River (from Ararí to Madeira River). Those inscriptions
demonstrate just a little of the greatness of the others that exist all over
Brazil.
Someone
has already tried to show in Rio de Janeiro that the Maya people
might have written the Gavea's Rock inscriptions. Nevertheless they are
hieroglyphic inscriptions mixed with the Phoenician alphabet and originally
engraved by Phoenician navigators. Other evidences are four Phoenician
characters (signs) engraved on the peak of a big rock known as "Pão
de Açúcar" (The Sugar Loaf).
There are
various confirmations that say Brazil was already known by many sailors from
the Near East even before its discovery by the Portuguese. The first European
navigator to be familiar with this land was the Roman Severus Pompeus, whose
documents related to that fact is in the Vatican archives. He obtained from a
"Syrian" slave a report and a confirmation of the existence of
others lands. What is ignored is why that navigator did not try to verify
those stories by himself.
The Phoenician explorers were not
interested in lands. They were really interested in its native products. So,
they were not a colonizing people but a trading one.
Columbus,
the great navigator from Genoa, had never been to the lands of which he used
to talk so much. However, he had an itinerary, a map and other real documents
concerning those distant lands. How did he get them? Some ancient historians
tell the following tale about that: "One day, at his house, without
anything to do, Columbus realized that in his residential area there was
something buried in the ground. So, he started digging quickly and he found a
rotten wooden box. Inside it there was many human bones (even a skull) and
among those bones Columbus found some papyri documents. Because he already
had some nautical knowledge- he was quite a good sailor- he became intrigued
with the discovery and went to look for information with an uncle of his whom
belonged to a religious institution and who also was a very respected person
in the Spanish Royalty. Columbus gave his uncle what he had found, and he
took them to one of his colleagues. Then both of them verified that those
papers were descriptive maps made by a sailor from Tripoli (Trabulus) which
had been buried many centuries before the fifteenth century when the place
where Columbus' house was had been the sea's border.
Afterwards, Columbus got an opinion from a very important cartographer
about those exceptional findings. He declared that region as being a huge
territory located beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar). He
also said that its wealth was so great and there were such valuable treasures
kept in that place that he who could dominate it would be considered
"the Lord of the World".
Then from
that day on and protected by his uncle, Columbus started to visit the
Portuguese and the Spanish courts in order to obtain concession, financing
and support to be the "Lord of the World".
It is
said that such a report is a legend but I believe it is true: Columbus came
and discovered the American continent.
In the
"sambaquís" spread throughout Brazil many objects and rock
inscriptions have been found. Some writers, based on paleontology material,
have been writing that its origin is Indian. Other paleontologists who
searched and penetrated into thousands of caves, grottos and lime cesspools
declared that it its neither possible to define the exact geological erosion
of the Brazilian lands nor to determine an ancient settlement in Brazil
before its European discovery.
Nevertheless, the Maya, the Toltec and the Aztec
civilizations predominated all over the American continent. Those populations
did not spring from the ground and only two other peoples could be their
ancestors: the Phoenicians or the Chinese. From the Phoenicians, because they
dominated the western seas and from the Chinese because they dominated the
Far East seas. However, those basis are uncertain and imperfect just because
until today historians were not able to elucidate such a vulnerable fact
about the American pre-civilization History.
When
Baron von Humboldt, at the end of the eighteenth century, took research trips
to explore the Brazilian countryside, he reached the Orenoco slopes and was
surprised by the greatness that Maya, Inca and Aztec civilizations offered to
anyone's eyes and mind. He verified that the legends about the existence of
the Amazon women- whose name was given to the river- were true.
Beuchat
cites the important Inca influence in the South American civilization as well
as the Aztec influence in Mexico and in Central American societies.
We can
still hear about the lost cities in the Brazilian countryside region, the
petrified cities such as the one known as "Sete Cidades"
(Seven Cities) in the state of Piaui and others in wild zones like the states
of Mato Grosso, Goiás and Amazonas.
From São
Luis dos Cáceres up to the north in the state of Mato Grosso, there are
places that show the existence of buried cities that are the remains of a
millenarian civilization very well.
Dr. Peter
W. Lund, a great Danish scholar, came up with the theory of a precivilization
in Brazil and the Phoenician contribution in its formation.
The Brazilian Indians, known as Carajás and Carajá-ís,
have on their names the etymology of the words whose Phoenician origin
can be found in today's Arabic language. Some other Brazilian Indian tribes
such as the Guaranis, the Tupis, the Guajajaras, the Chambicás,
the Anajás, the Carijós, etc., have in their vocabulary
thousands of Arabian words whose origin is Phoenician.
Maya and
Aztec civilizations differ little from the Phoenicians. Their merchants,
governors, administration, clans and their moral education clearly show us
the ethnology of their civil way of life.
The
Indians who deal with oil, in the north of Brazil, and who still today
execute the Marajoaras work perfectly, adopt the same systems used by
the Phoenician workers with oil who mixed wood and vine ashes with mud (clay)
in order to produce ceramics. The resemblance among these drawings, the pots'
shapes, the small statues and other Indian works and the Phoenician artifacts
is noteworthy.
The same
Phoenician burial ritual -- the one that buried the dead with all the objects
that belonged to them -- also was adopted by almost all Brazilian Indian
tribes.
The
Phoenicians had a factory or a mart in a region, legendarily known as
Atlantis that in their language meant -- according to the Phoenician term
"Al- Atlantic"--: huge, large, extensive, vast, endless. And in
Arabic "Al- Atlantic" means giant, majestic.
When I
went on some trips into the Brazilian countryside, I saw some coins that had
been found in Brazilian ground whose origin is completely unknown. Making a
comparison among these coins and Paraguayan, Bolivian and Peruvian coins
their resemblance to coins from Sidon and Tyre is very great.
In the
Rio de Janeiro National Museum there exist tombstones with Phoenician,
Syriac and Sanskrit inscriptions found in the Brazilian countryside.
Edmund
Bleibel, a distinguished Lebanese historian, in his books "General
History of Lebanon", published in Beirut, states: "when the
Phoenicians were established in Africa, and Gibraltar was the limit of their
empire, they planned to cross the huge ocean towards the unknown".
Then Ilu
of Jbail (Byblos) and his wife Harmonia (Harmony) prepared a big fleet and
navigated the enormous sea looking for the "Eternal Islands"
(Canary Islands) but they disappeared forever. It was said that their souls
embodied two serpents, which meant that their lives had been renewed by god,
Baal's will.
Later it
was corroborated that they had crossed the huge ocean and discovered the
region where today is South America. So, that happened 3,000 years before
Christopher Columbus.
They gave
the first new land they discovered the name of "Barr Ilu" which
means "The Continent of God". When the nation was formed and its
administration was organized, the chosen queen to rule that place was
Mirinieh Mirubieh known as "Queen of the Amazones" which means
"Queen of the Warriors". That queen was sent to Lebanon to save Ilu
of Jbail (Byblos) who was in a critical situation.
The
"Queen of the Amazons" called "The Big Ocean" the ocean
known before as 'Mirubi Ocean" which today is the Atlantic Ocean. This
last denomination was in honour of Atlas, the great Phoenician king of Lybia
Cadmus, the great navigator of Tyre,
left his city -- Cadamiat -- on a scientific mission in order to study the
Cuchite language spoken in Brazil.
A few
historians have been investigating the origin of such a language and they
found many evidences that confirm the Phoenician's coming to Brazil bringing
with them some Greek workers before any other people. The historian Deodoro
told the way they might have arrived here. That fact was confirmed by
Plutarch and was mentioned by the great Brazilian historian Rui Barbosa, as
well as by other Brazilian poets who sang on their lyres the Phoenician and
their monuments on the Brazilian soil.
Each
fleet that left Sidon, Jbail and Tyre had 200 or 300 boats that headed to
Brazil. The smallest one was used to bring the members of the crew with their
support material and equipment. They usually stopped to rest and also to buy
supplies in Tunis and at the Canary Islands.
Among the
Phoenician civilization monuments in Brazil there is a city that was called
"Airo", today completely lost in the admirable immensity of
this country. Its ancient inhabitants were proud of belonging to the
Phoenician lineage just like the Irish people. They used to say that they
were Tyrian descendants who, during King Hiram's time, came to take gold.
They took this precious metal to Tyre and to King Salomon of Jerusalem from
the land of Ofir, where this mineral was very abundant. It is located in the
Amazon River borders.
Finally,
we verify that truth is clear and positive. I wish the Brazilian honourable
governors could help twentieth century dedicated scientists to research, in
the Brazilian entrails, for its pre- historic reality, the one of its archaic
civilization, and maybe we would have even surpassed the Greek and the Roman
civilizations.
References:
1.
Excertos do livro de: Lisboa, Luiz C. e Andrade, Roberto P. "Grandes
Enigmas da Humanidade " - Capítulo 5: "Os que antecederam
Colombo" páginas 96- 100. Círculo do Livro S.A. Editorial. São Paulo, 1969.
2.
3.
Excerpts from the book
by: Lisboa, Luiz C. and Andrade, Roberto P. "Great Enigmas of
Mankind" - Chapter 5: "Columbus antecessors" pages 96-
100. Círculo do Livro Press. São Paulo, 1969.
4.
5.
Excertos do livro de: Bastaní, Tanus Jorge "0 Líbano e
os Libaneses no Brasil" -Parte oitava: "Indícios da vinda dos
Fenícios ao Brasil" páginas 155- 159. Edição independente. Rio de
Janeiro, 1945.
6.
7.
Excerpts from the book
by: Bastani, Tanus Jorge "Lebanon and the Lebanese in Brazil" --
Eighth part: "Traces of the Phoenician arrival in Brazil" pages
155-159 Independent edition. Rio de Janeiro, 1945.
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