Comprehensive translation and interpretation of Manuscript 512
Manuscript 512, an unpublished document dating from 1753, but found only in 1839, is preserved in the National Library of Rio de Janeiro.
It tells about a group of Portuguese adventurers who searched for a long time the legendary mines of Muribeca, traveling for about ten years in the interior of Brazil. During their extraordinary journey they discovered the ruins of a great lost city whose architecture distantly recalls the Greco-Roman style.
We must consider, first of all, that the interior of Brazil about 260 years ago was completely different from that of now. The penetration of settlers did not yet exist and, therefore, the jungles were still in a primary phase, exactly as they were before the arrival of Europeans in America.
The immense sertão, added to the vast territories of Mato Grosso and present-day eastern Bolivia, represented a formidable barrier against European colonization.
The men who traveled on the expedition, which lasted about ten years, remained anonymous (due to the fact that the document is damaged), although some studies carried out in Brazil on the captains of the time suggested that probably the leaders of the so-called “bandeira” (or, exploration trip) were João da Silva Guimarães and Francisco Raposo.
Here is the full translation of the document (from Old Portuguese):
Historical account of a great hidden, ancient and uninhabited city that we discovered in the year 1753 In America... Inside...
Near... The regiment commander... And his entourage, completing about ten years of travel in unexplored territories because he wanted to discover the silver mines of the great explorer Muribeca, which due to the fault of a governor were not made public, since he wanted to usurp the glory of the discovery and kept him (Muribeca) prisoner in the city of Bahia, and thus they remained lost, hidden... I see this news in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the year of our Lord 1754. After a very long journey through the sertão, intoxicated by the insatiable search for enormous riches, and almost lost after many years of travel in this enormous sertão, we discovered a mountain range whose mountains were so high that it seemed that they reached the ethereal region, thus serving as a throne to the wind and the stars themselves. The glow that was admired from afar, just when the Sun illuminated the crystals that made up the mountain range, formed a sight so beautiful and pleasant that strangely it did not bother the eyes: it soon began to rain before we approached the wonderful and crystalline mountain range, and we were astonished admiring the waterfalls that fell from rocky peaks, so much so that the water from afar looked like snow wounded by the sun...
When the rain stopped and the sky became clear again, we decided to explore that mountain range, that wonderful prodigy of nature, and so we headed to the slopes of the mountain, not at all afraid of the intricate jungle and the rivers that we would have to cross; So, trying to circumvent the mountains, we did not find an easy passage to access these Pyrenees or Brazilian Alps, and this saddened and disappointed us.
We camped without enthusiasm and with the desire to return the next day, when a black slave went away following a fawn and trying to gather firewood.
He discovered a small path between two slopes that seemed to be artificial and not the result of Nature; With the enthusiasm of this novelty we began to climb, finding many stones piled up in mounds; So we thought that they were part of a bridle path that had become undone over time. It took us about three hours climbing, also because we lost time looking at some crystals, and as soon as we reached the top of the mountain we stopped and looked around us, seeing in an adjacent field other things that claimed our admiration.
In the distance you could see a large abandoned city; Initially we thought it was a city owned by the regent court in Brazil, due to its grandeur; We then descended into the valley cautiously, finding some terracotta vases. We sent two of our men on reconnaissance.
We stayed two days waiting for them to return, and during the night we heard roosters crow, an obvious sign that that city was populated. When our two men returned they told us that the city was abandoned and this information confused us; Then we sent an indigenous person who was part of our expedition, but when he returned he also claimed to have found no sign of any person. All this confused us even more; In any case, we decided to move forward together, retracing the steps of the native.
Seeing that the testimony of the indigenous was that there was no population of any kind, we set out armed at dawn the next day, and followed the direct path that took us to the city whose entrance was delimited by three large stone arches, the one being the major center and minor external ones; On the main arch there were several strange incisions, perhaps letters, but given the height we could not figure out what they indicated.
Beyond the three arches was a road as long as the three arches, with foundations of houses on one side and sculptured stones on the other. Some of these houses had two stories with terraces, some built with bricks, others with stone ballasts.
Scared, we walked along that road and realized that there was no ceramics or furniture through which we could know the characteristics of the people who lived there: the houses were all dark inside, little light entered and, since the rooms were so big, our voices resonated forming strange echoes, and all that terrified us. After finishing the main street, which was quite long, we arrived at a quadrangular square in the center of which there was a black stone column of extraordinary height and on its top there was a statue of a man of normal height who had his right arm extended, as if indicating the North Pole.
In each corner of that square there were some large spiers similar to those used by the ancient Romans, and others already damaged by time.
On the right side of this square there was a grandiose building, as if it were the main residence of some king or important lord, it had a large room at the entrance, and fearful, we were not able to go through all the rooms, since there were so many... The bats were so many which sometimes crashed into the face of one of us, and made a lot of noise. On the main porch of the street there was a human figure in bas-relief decorated with laurel wreaths: it represented a young person, without a beard; Below this figure there were some strange characters engraved on the wall, partially deteriorated by the passage of time, but they could be partially distinguished:
On the left side of the same square there was another building completely in ruins, and from its shape and style we realized that it could have been a temple, because it still preserved a part of its magnificent frontispiece and some solid stone columns: the The temple was very large and on its ruined walls we could see some figures and portraits carved in the stone with crosses of various styles, birds and other small and strange shapes whose admiration we did not have enough time.
After this building there was a large part of the city almost completely in ruins and partially buried in large cavities in the earth, with no grass, trees or other plants growing there. Only sculpted stone ballasts could be seen... perhaps this destruction was caused by an earthquake...
In front of this square flowed a very wide river, approximately eleven or twelve fathoms whose banks were free of branches or trunks that, in general, floods carry downstream; We wanted to realize its depth and we verified that its deepest parts were from fifteen to seventeen fathoms.
On the other side of the river there are extensive pleasant fields, and all around there are several lakes and numerous streams of fresh, pure water, with many geese easy to catch even with your hands. We walked for three days following the course of the river and found a great waterfall where the falling waters make so much noise as to rival the mouths of the Nile. After this waterfall the river becomes so long that it looks like an ocean, and there are many peninsulas covered with jungle and numerous scattered floating trees. In these meadows we found many animals that ran after us, that chased us. In the eastern part of this waterfall there were several underground galleries and many caverns, so much so that we tried to calculate their depth with ropes, but we almost never managed to touch the bottom. In addition, we found several stones on the ground with silver veins as if they had been extracted from a mine. Among these stones we saw one that had strange, very mysterious inscriptions, they were these:
Above the portico of the temple we saw others with the following shape:
Far from the city, a cannon shot away, there is a building like a country house, with one side two hundred and fifty paces long, and through which one enters through a large portico and exits through a stone step. of various colors that leads to a large square and, all around it, there are fifteen abandoned shacks in ruins, each of whose doors face the square, and nearby we find a column with some strange letters incised in the stone; They were these:
Having admired these things, we began to walk along the river in order to search for gold, and immediately found some encouraging signs of the presence of gold and silver.
We thought that the people who lived in the city must have abandoned the entire area a long time ago; In fact, we did not find anyone in the entire territory who could have told us who this city had belonged to or who could have shown us its ruins and the greatness it had, and told us how many people it had and its opulence in the centuries of its existence. maximum splendor, since today it was, however, populated only by bats, mice, geese and other small animals. Mice have legs so short that they almost jump like fleas.
One of our people left that place along with others, who after nine days of walking sighted the shore of a large bend that the river makes, and in the distance they saw two white people in a canoe dressed in European clothing, with hair black, and they fired the rifle to see his reaction, but...
One of ours, called João Antonio, found near the ruins of a house a gold coin on which a spherical figure was printed, larger than our six thousand four hundred coins. On one side was the figure of a boy, and on the other side a bow, a crown and a dart, but we thought that inside the city it would be difficult to find others because probably everything was partially destroyed by a powerful earthquake, and it would be necessary dig deep to find others of those... I send this news to Your Majesty from this area of the Bay, and from the Paraguassú and Uná rivers, certain that we have not found any person, because we thought that the cities and the peasants had been depopulated; Furthermore, I give you the mines that we have found, reminding you of how much I owe you. Supposedly one of us left our Company with a different pretext... however I ask Your Majesty to abandon the hardships and come to use these greatnesses, using some strategies to attract that Indian, who gave up as lost, and lead to VM to find the aforementioned treasures…
According to some Brazilian researchers, it is possible that the Portuguese government of the time, represented by the Viceroy who was in Rio de Janeiro, tried to hide the discovery of an ancient and great city within its territory for a very particular reason: in that period, the Portuguese Crown had barely negotiated with the Crown of Castile the limits of the empire (treaty of Madrid of 1750), which was based on the fact that the immense lands in the interior of Brazil, although they officially belonged to Spain (treaty of Tordesillas in 1494), had not been colonized and, therefore, would in fact become the property of Portugal as ius possidentis; In fact, the “bandeirantes” (Portuguese explorers and adventurers) had traveled through them and founded small fortresses starting in 1650.
However, if the news of a great ancient city of pre-Greek origin had been divulged, the terms of the treaty of Madrid could have been revised since the colonization and permanence of a people from the Mediterranean or the Middle East in Brazil in past centuries or millennia had been proven and, consequently, the ius possidentis (which actually belonged to the indigenous Americans) would have fallen).
From a careful analysis of the manuscript it appears that the adventurers ended their very long expedition in the Paraguassú River, in the current state of Bahia. However, the fact that they traveled for about ten years makes us doubt the fact that the lost city had to be found in the current State of Bahia.
It is possible that during their very long exploration they reached the current states of Tocantins, Goias, Mato Grosso, to the limits of current Bolivia.
In that period there were maps and compasses, but we must consider that the “bandeirantes” adventurers were mostly illiterate and did not have the geographical and geometric knowledge to correctly locate an archaeological site in such a vast and immense territory: we are referring to several million. of square kilometers. This circumstance supports the thesis that the lost city was located much further northwest of the state of Bahia, towards the current limits of the country, I mean the border with Bolivia.
The fact that ancient people from the Middle East arrived in South America before the Era of Christ still represents a taboo if you listen to some specialized academic scholars.
However, the real evidence of these occasional voyages that led first the Sumerians and then the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, as well as probably some groups of Celts, to arrive and explore the coasts and interior of South America are many: first of all, the petroglyph of Ingá, of clear pre-Phoenician origin; then, the immense treasure of the Cueva de los Tayos, whose origin is the Middle East, and the renowned finds preserved in La Paz, such as the Fuente Magna and the Pokotia Monolith, which date back to the time of the Sumerians. Likewise, the mysterious Cromlech of Calçoene (Amapá), probably built by a group of megalithic Celts who arrived by chance in South America.
However, the city described in the enigmatic Manuscript 512 appears to have been built by ancient inhabitants of the Mediterranean.
The architecture described evokes the way of building of the Romans (for example, the triple arch of the ruins of Lambesis or Timgad, Roman cities built in Algeria).
Also the detail of the statue of a man with his arm outstretched pointing to the North Pole is reminiscent of some
Roman statues, such as that of Octavian Augustus that is kept in the Vatican Museums in Rome.
In contrast, the strange signs engraved on the stone that were described in manuscript 512 were identified by some scholars as “Greco-Ptolemaic.”
The researcher who offered this interpretation, however, was not a linguist, but a marine biologist: he was Barry Fell, a renowned American writer, who supported in his books the thesis of contact between the European/Middle Eastern world and the New World. World long before Christopher Columbus.
According to other researchers, the alphabet used in the inscriptions of “manuscript 512” could be Punic, ancient Phoenician or archaic Aramaic.
In my personal interpretation, it could have been the Carthaginians who arrived in Brazil around the 5th century BC. The Carthaginian navigator Annone, in fact, around the 5th century BC, reached the coasts of Cameroon on a risky voyage. It is possible that a few years later another Carthaginian fleet arrived in Brazil, since we know that, indeed, the trade winds blow incessantly from the Cape Verde Islands towards South America, and this is the reason why some ships occasionally arrived in Brazil.
As soon as they arrived on Brazilian shores, ancient navigators may have searched for precious metals with the help of indigenous people. That's how they arrived at the mysterious mountain range where they founded their city. It is just a hypothesis waiting to be proven in the field.
It is at this point that the question arises: what purpose did the lost city mentioned in manuscript 512 serve?
Several hypotheses can be raised: the first is that it has been deliberately dismantled piece by piece to hide its discovery, so that it would not create problems just after the Treaty of Madrid (1750), so that the crown of Portugal would not lose the right of possession. (ius possidentis).
The second is that the lost city is still hidden somewhere, although seriously damaged by earthquakes or bradyism.
The English explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett searched for it for several years, both in the state of Bahia and Mato Grosso (marking it as city Z), but it disappeared in the Culuene River while heading towards the Sierra del Roncador in 1925.
The territories Mato Grosso and Rondonia are still sparsely populated today (consider that Mato Grosso, with an area of more than 900,000 square kilometers, has only 3 million inhabitants, the majority concentrated in the capital Cuiabá; while Rondonia, with 238,000 square kilometers in extension, it has only one and a half million inhabitants, the majority concentrated in the capital Porto Velho), and the almost completely unexplored areas of intricate jungle are still very numerous.
Another possibility is that the mysterious lost city is located in the rugged Huachaco mountain range (eastern Bolivia), inside the Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, a huge uninhabited and protected area located on the border between Bolivia and Brazil.
YURI LEVERATTO
