Phoenicians in Brazil?

Phoenicians in Brazil?
by Me. Claudio Fernandes
When studying Ancient Age, Phoenician civilization has much prominence, especially when it comes to the wars that the Romans promoted against Carthage (Punic Wars), the main city built by the Phoenicians, located in north-west Africa. In addition, the creation of the first alphabet - the famous Phoenician inscriptions - and the intense maritime trade routes further highlight the importance of this civilization.
However, at times the story appear recurrently some outlandish theories related to these ancient civilizations. One of them relates specifically to the Phoenicians, or rather the evidence of the presence of the Phoenicians in Brazil. This theory is the result of a combination of factors that take into account: ancient European legend, prior to the discovery of Brazil, and archaeological finds on Brazilian soil, which would only be satisfactorily explained from the advancement of archaeological studies in the twentieth century.
The former European imagination the great voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the consequent discovery of the American continent, conceived a series of legends about lost civilizations and great adventures overseas, that is, maritime incursions across the Atlantic Ocean, so far Poorly explored. The story of the lost island of Atlantis is the most famous of these legends.
The Phoenicians were Eximios maritime traders and had been able to establish routes for virtually the entire Mediterranean Sea. For this reason, Europeans imagined the mythical foundation of a Phoenician colony on an island of the Atlantic - there was the prospect that there could be a continent sea beyond. This island would be part of unknown regions since the time of the flood, reported by Genesis.
After the discovery of Brazil and the colonization process, the first European scholars who have made expeditions into the northeastern hinterland encountered quite impressive archaeological finds, mainly inscriptions and petroglyphs. The most famous of these inscriptions are the itacoatiaras ("stone paintings", in Tupi-Guarani) of Inga, in the state of Paraiba.
The inscriptions on rocks Inga, Paraiba, contributed indirectly to the legend of the Phoenician presence in Brazil.2The inscriptions on rocks Inga, Paraiba, contributed indirectly to the legend of the Phoenician presence in Brazil.2
According to information from archaeologist Gabriela Martin, in his work Prehistory of Northeastern Brazil, the inscriptions of Inga have "converted" in the second half of the nineteenth century, in Phoenician inscriptions. This occurred partly because the great authority on archeology in Brazil at that time, Ladislau Netto, believed it could be true. Netto had contact with an alleged transcript of Phoenician inscriptions that have been found by someone named Joaquim Alves da Costa, in the city of Pouso Alegre, in the Paraíba valley, and sent to the Marques de Sapucai, director of IHGB (History and Geography Brazilian Institute) in season.
It is known today that the city of Pouso Alto and Joaquim Alves da Costa never existed and that the alleged Phoenician inscriptions were actually the itacoatiaras of Inga, referred to above. Probably someone who knew the Marques de Sapucai and Ladislau Netto sent them a transcript of a Phoenician any text, suggesting, in bad faith, which had been found in rocks of Paraíba. Ladislau Netto had studied in Europe and was a student of the great archaeologist Ernest Renan, expert Phoenician archeology, which still gave more credibility to the history of the presence of the Phoenicians in Brazil. However, in 1875, in an article entitled "Description Phenicia" L. Netto admitted that he had been a victim of fraud and recognized that there was no concrete evidence on the presence of Phoenicians in Brazil.
Also according to Gabriela Martin, another personality who contributed to the legend of the presence of the Phoenicians in Brazil was Ludwig Schwennhagen. Schwennhagen was Austrian and had an eccentric interest in cave paintings and structures of archaeological finds in northeastern Brazil. He was in Brazil in the 1910s and 1920s, teaching and traveling the backcountry. This Austrian researcher united archeology methods with the ancient legends fantasies, as the legend of the Seven Cities (a legend that arose over the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages, around the eighth century, which was about the vigem the last king of the Visigoths to found a civilization overseas, known as Seven Cities) and the legend of the mythical city of Tutoia in the Paraíba Valley. In the latter, according Schwennhagen, the Phoenicians would have joined the Trojans and built several cities, among which the most important: Tutoia.
These fanciful stories were made possible, in large part because of the lack of sophistication of the techniques of archaeological dating, that only in the mid-twentieth century would be developed and applied here. But, as can be seen with the above information, the ancient legends, motivated by the mystery generated by the immensity of the Atlantic Ocean, before the discovery of America also contributed to the imaginary stay for a long time taking the place of the strictest explanations.