Ancient trade routes
This adventure begins at the court of Solomon, ruler of the kingdom of Israel around 950 BC, son and successor of King David. Under his command, the kingdom extended from the Euphrates River to Egypt and he also had two very important allies: King Hiram, leader of the Phoenicians, the great navigators of antiquity, and the Queen of Sheba, who dominated an extended kingdom. in present-day Yemen and Ethiopia whose capital was Aksum, which supplied it with gold, incense, perfumes and spices.
Her reign is considered by the Jews to be an ideal age, similar to that of the Augustan period in Rome. His wisdom, described in the Bible, is considered proverbial. During his regency the Temple of Solomon was built, which became legendary for its many symbolic values.
The homonymy of the Phoenician King Hiram with the architect from the city of Tire selected by King Solomon for the construction of the Temple leaves us to think that in reality the two could have been the same person.
The Bible presents Hiram Abiff as the greatest artist of his time. Famous in his hometown, Tire, for the magnificence of his works, honored and admired by the sovereign for the extraordinary abilities demonstrated in the arts, he was sent by him to the powerful King Solomon for the construction of the great Temple, the House of the Lord. No one knew how to work metals better than Hiram, he mastered the secrets of the art, a fine carver of stone and wood, he had accumulated great experience in governing workers and workers.
We will talk about the navigation knowledge of the Phoenicians, extremely advanced for the time, later and they will be useful for investigating the location of the gold deposits which allowed the Kingdom of Israel to become one of the richest nations of the time during the reign of King Solomon, thanks to the close relationship he had with his second powerful ally: the Queen of Sheba.
The Queen of Sheba reigned over a territory that stretched between Africa and the Arabian peninsula, more circumstantial in Ethiopia and Yemen where recent archaeological discoveries have brought to light what appear to be the remains of the palaces of the sumptuous kingdom of King Solomon's consort where perhaps one of the most precious and mysterious artifacts in Jewish history is hidden: the Ark of the Covenant.
The Arabs knew her as Queen Bilquis, the Ethiopians called her Macheda, to the Jews and Christians she is the Queen of Sheba. The queen learned of Solomon's fame and went to Jerusalem to learn his wisdom. She arrived with a large entourage and camels loaded with spices. The story of the Queen of Sheba probably has Jewish origins, but there is also a Persian version, we also find it in the Koran, in fact the Arabs say that she believed in the greatness of Halla.
From the visit to Jerusalem, which took place between 1000 and 950 BC, there is mention in the Jewish Talmud, in the Bible - Old Testament, in the Koran and obviously in the Kebra Nagast, Glory of the Kings which is the fundamental book for the history of the highland empire, developed in Ethiopia in the 14th century, and one of the sacred texts of the Rastafarian movement.
The myth of the Queen of Sheba mixes with the legend of the lost city of Ubar. Also known as "Iram of the Pillars", Aran or Ubar, it was located in the Arabian Peninsula and was a mercantile city built in the Rub' al Khali desert, the largest sand desert in the world.
Tradition has it that the city survived from 3000 BC until the 1st century AD, enriching itself year after year thanks to a flourishing trade; subsequently all traces of him were completely lost, perhaps because, as the Koran recalls, he suffered the same punishment as the Banu 'Ad tribe, an Arab race who lived during the pre-Islamic period who dared to defy Allah by raising tall stone buildings and for this reason it was punished first with a terrible drought, then by a violent rain followed by a very strong wind that destroyed all their buildings; a story similar in some respects to the divine condemnation following the attempted construction of the Tower of Babel as narrated in the Bible.
The ruins of the City of a Thousand Columns would still be found beneath the desert sands, forgotten even by time. This story remained one of the many oral traditions told around the fire, at least until it reached the West following the translation of the famous "One Thousand and One Nights". During the 2nd century AD, Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer and geographer, drew the map of a mysterious region which, according to him, was inhabited by an equally enigmatic people, the Ubarites, or the ancient inhabitants of Ubar.
In more recent times, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known to most as Lawrence of Arabia, often showed considerable interest in this city, which he himself defined as the Atlantis of the Sands.
And indeed, remnants of lost civilizations sometimes appear from beneath the sands of the Yemeni desert. When the wind moves the dunes, sometimes momentary glimpses of buried walls and foundations appear to the Bedouins, immediately covered again by time and more sand. Rumors of the existence of a great wall led archaeologists to discover a huge complex, which turned out to be the most secret and mysterious site in the Middle East. A large stone wall about 20 meters high, 5 meters thick, forms an oval that protects a large courtyard that has yet to be excavated. On the wall there is a myriad of symbols that we don't know (yet) how to translate. The archaeological site is located in Mareb, Yemen, in what is known as the "empty zone". It is a dry and desolate territory, with sand dunes and kilometers of desert.
Similar symbols appear on one of the most mysterious but least known finds of Israeli archaeology, which consists of a simple terracotta shard. An Israeli archaeologist claims that the five lines on this shard may represent the oldest example of Hebrew writing ever discovered. The fragment was found by a teenager, who was digging as a volunteer, about 20 km southwest at the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa, overlooking the Valley of Elah, where the Bible says the Jew David, father of Solomon, fought against the Philistine giant Goliath. It contains signs believed to be from an ancient alphabet, called proto-Canaanite or First Language.
Experts at the Hebrew University said it was written 3,000 years ago – about 1,000 years before the Qumran scrolls. The era corresponds roughly to the time of the first temple, dominated by the biblical figures of David and Solomon, and would pre-date the same alphabet, also used by the Queen of Sheba (presumably married to Solomon), in what is now called Yemen. Writings found in Yemen in this same alphabet and their ancient Hebrew translations pointed to the hiding of the Ark of Moses at a site near Mareb (Ma'rib, in the ancient kingdom of Sheba).
The use of this language, at the beginning of the history of Hebrew, would explain why it was also used in the ancient kingdom of Sheba. In legend, and in the Holy Quran, it is assumed that the Queen of Sheba was invited to visit King Solomon, that they married and had a son, Menelik. Further research conducted by Gary Vey and John McGovern led to the recent discovery of the queen's supposed palace, in Mareb, Yemen, with inscriptions in the same alphabet, describing the transfer of the famous Ark of the Covenant to that site by Solomon's son, following the destruction of Jerusalem. Both Vey and McGovern believe that to this day the Ark remains in Yemen.
The results of Vey's translation work revealed prose that described the "chest of El" and spoke of a "son" and a "father." Vey later learned that this was a reference to the Ark, to Solomon and Sheba's son Menelik, and for the "father" – to Solomon himself.
He reads the inscription as follows:
"... because the son was aware of the nature that was in him ... but the son's happiness was poisoned by the news that his father was dying, the anger grew, but to the son it was revealed by his father the placement of the great chest of EL. And the gracious action of the beautiful Lord made the son happy, who swore to protect the chest of EL, and to be associated with the spirit of the Lord.”
Unfortunately, the site has been transformed into a dangerous outpost of extremists since September 2001 and no further intervention has been possible.
The Bible suggests that the Kingdom of the Queen of Sheba was extremely rich in gold as it flowed into the coffers every year. King Solomon 666 talents of gold equivalent to just under 20 tons.
Two Italian archaeologists, Alfredo and Angelo Castiglioni, would have located King Solomon's mines from which the gold given to him by the Queen of Sheba came Ethiopia but was made known today, in Rovereto, during the last day of the XXI International Archaeological Film Festival. According to the two archaeologists, there is still no certainty, but all the clues seem to point in this direction.
"We carried out five missions, between 2004 and 2008, to search for ancient extraction areas - the two scholars said - The first three, in Beni Shangul (southwestern Ethiopia), resulted in the discovery of enormous gold-bearing areas, exploited in 'antiquity; even today they work with the same methods and tools as then, and some deep tunnels are still called by the local people 'the ancient mines of King Solomon'".
But another hypothesis, even more fascinating, sees the origin of all that gold in a region thousands of kilometers away from Ethiopia and Yemen, even beyond the Atlantic Ocean, involving the Phoenicians and the knowledge they obtained from the legacy of one of the most mysterious peoples in history and the Middle Eastern region: the Sumerians.
We already know how King Solomon's most important work was the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem, where the Ark of the Covenant was deposited, containing the tablets of the Law, which according to tradition had been delivered directly by Jehovah to Moses.
To build the Temple of Jerusalem, Solomon needed a disproportionate quantity of gold and silver, as we have seen, largely obtained thanks to the alliance with the Queen of Sheba. According to the Book of Kings in the Bible, the origin of the precious metals was to be found in the legendary country of Ophir. The merchant fleets commanded by expert Phoenician navigators left from the Red Sea or from the Phoenician ports of the Mediterranean and returned after three years of navigation, full of gold, silver, precious stones and perfumes.
Many historians have attempted to locate this mythical country in Africa or India, but the thesis we want to explore today is that of Benito Arias Montano who places the mythical Kingdom of Ophir beyond the Atlantic Ocean and more precisely in Peru, even if to date there has been no exhaustive evidence as to its whereabouts.
To confirm this bold theory, the research carried out by the independent researcher Yuri Leveratto comes to our aid. Yuri Leveratto is an independent researcher with several expeditions to South America to his credit and several publications including "Indigenous Chronicles of the New World". With this book, which is a recompilation of seventy articles by him, the author wanted to provide a broad vision of the fascinating history of the native peoples of the New World, from the beginning to the present day. His work was fundamental for us to deepen the connections that existed between the Middle Eastern and South American worlds thousands of years ago.
One of the first supporters of the theory of the ancient presence of the Phoenicians in Brazil was the Austrian history professor Ludwig Schwennhagen (20th century), who in his book "Ancient History of Brazil" cited the studies of Umfred IV of Toron (12th century), which in turn had described the voyages of Phoenician ships up to the Amazon River estuary.
As we know, there is various archaeological and documentary evidence on a possible ancient presence of the Phoenicians (or Carthaginians) in Brazil: the stone of Paraiba, the pictograms of the Pedra de Gavea and the petroglyphs of the Pedra do Ingà, in addition to the mysterious document 512.
However, it is another archaeological piece of evidence that suggests a possibility on the probable coincidence of the land of Ofir with Upper Peru: the existence of an ancient and very long path, called in Portuguese "Caminho do Peabirú", which from the current coasts of the State of San Paolo and Santa Catarina (Brazil), leads, after approximately 3000 kilometres, right up to Potosì, and continues up to Tiahuanaco and Cusco.
For several years now, some Brazilian archaeologists and independent researchers have been studying an ancient path, known by the name of "Peabirù" which in the Tupi Guaranì language means "outward and return path". According to Yuri Leveratto's interpretation, since in the Guaranì language "pe" means "path" and Birú was the ancient name with which Peru was identified, it is not a gamble to consider the name "Peabirú" as "path to Peru".
This is a path, approximately 1.4 meters wide, which originates from the San Vicente area in the current State of Sao Paulo and from the coast of Santa Catarina, in particular from the bay known as Cananea, during the era of discoveries geographical. The two trunks join in the current state of Paraná, to proceed to the current border with Bolivia, near the city of Corumbá. Then, after crossing the Chaco prairies, the route heads to Potosí.
In reality the path continues, dividing into two branches: one goes towards Oruro, Tiahuanaco and then Cusco, while another branch heads towards the Pacific Ocean, in what is now northern Chile. In practice, the Peabirú path interconnected with the Inca paths of the empire which in turn linked Samaipata, the Inca fortress located further south (now Bolivia), with Cusco and other "mysterious" sites of the Andean cultures.
The existence of the ancient Peabirù path is very important, because it proves that in ancient times it was possible to reach the Cerro Rico of Potosì which we remember as the mountain richest in silver in the world, from the coasts of Brazil, with a journey of about 2 months.
The question that fascinates us is who were the creators and builders of these routes?
The members of the Guaraní ethnic group attribute the construction of the path to their legendary demi-god Sumé, who was a civilizer and colonizer who lived before the flood, who taught the Guaraní agriculture, craftsmanship and imposed on them the foundations of law in way completely similar to what was narrated by the Andean peoples regarding the god Viracocha.
How can we fail to find in all this the strong analogy with the process of "Rebirth" perpetuated by the Anunnaki god Enki, which according to what was stated in the research of the Atlanticus Project involved primarily the Middle Eastern area since the end of the Wurm glaciation around twelve thousand years ago on the Iranian and Caucasian plateaus starting from the slopes of Mount Ararat on which Noah and his "Ark" ran aground and where the cities of Gobekli Tepe and Kisiltepe are located?
If the two things are connected then perhaps the path of Peabirù could be considered as one of the many remains of an antediluvian civilization later reused by the custodians of certain knowledge, let's say esoteric, handed down by the ancient civilizing gods (Enki, Viracocha, Sumè, etc. etc.) to their favorite peoples: Sumerians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Jews.
This strengthens the hypothesis, supported by the well-known and late Bolivian archaeologist Freddy Arce, that the Peabirú path could have been used subsequently, albeit in very remote times, by the peoples of the Middle East, such as the Sumerians (from which the word Sumè derives ), and later by the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, to venture into the continent and thus reach the largest silver mine on the planet thanks to the knowledge referred to in the previous paragraph.
We also know that the finds that recall Middle Eastern cultures are different in South America, such as the Pokotia Monolith and the Fuente Magna, the large ceremonial stone vase found near Lake Titicaca, inside which there are inscriptions in the Sumerian.
According to the official version, the vase was discovered in Bolivia in 1960, by a farmer, in private land said to have belonged to the Manjon family, located in Chua, about 80 kilometers from La Paz, near Lake Titicaca. On the external part of the vase there are some zoomorphic bas-reliefs (of Tihuanacoid origin), while on the inside, in addition to a zoomorphic or anthropomorphic figure (depending on the interpretation), there are engraved two types of different writings, an ancient, proto- Sumerian, and quellca, the language of ancient Pukara, a forerunner civilization of Tiwanaku.
A further element of evidence is provided to us by the so-called "Manuscript 512", an unpublished document dating back to 1753, but found only in 1839, preserved in the National Library of Rio de Janeiro which describes the daring adventure of a group of Portuguese explorers in search of of the legendary mines of Muribeca, during which research they discovered the ruins of a great lost city, whose architecture distantly resembled the Greco-Roman style and where inscriptions were found which were copied by the explorers into the document.
According to other researchers, the alphabet used in the inscriptions of "manuscript 512" could be Punic, ancient Phoenician or ancient Aramaic.
It is not surprising that history books do not mention this document. If the news of a large ancient city of pre-Greek origin had been disclosed, the terms of the Treaty of Madrid could have been revised as the colonization and permanence of a Mediterranean or Middle Eastern people in Brazil over the centuries would have been proven. or millennia passed and Portugal's ius possidentis on Brazilian lands would therefore have collapsed.
If to these finds we add the petroglyph of Ingà of clear pre-Phoenician origin, the treasure of the Cueva of Los Tayos in whose research none other than the recently deceased astronaut Neil Armstrong participated, we can state with reasonable certainty that the existence of the New World was perfectly known to the Phoenicians and Carthaginians who already circumnavigated Africa in the 1st millennium BC and who derived their knowledge from the Sumerians.
It is known that the Sumerians sailed their boats through the Tigris and Euphrates canals for the purpose of trade. However, the maritime navigation of the Sumerians is little known. They had the current island of Bahrain as their base, where recent excavations have demonstrated the existence of a commercial port that was active in the third millennium BC. In the Sumerian texts, modern-day Bahrain was identified as Dilmoun, and from that point the Sumerian fleets left for the mouth of the Indus from where they remounted the great river, arriving at Mohenjo-Daro, to exchange fabrics, gold, incense and copper. Sumerian boats were launches that could displace up to 36 tons.
According to Bernardo Biados, the Sumerians circumnavigated Africa already in the third millennium before Christ, but, upon arriving at the Cape Verde islands, they found their passage blocked by contrary winds blowing incessantly towards the south-west. They therefore found themselves forced to head west, seeking favorable winds. Thus it was that they occasionally arrived in Brazil near the coasts of present-day Piauì or Maranhao. From those points they explored the continent by going up the tributaries of the Amazon River, in particular the Madeira and the Beni or by following the aforementioned "Peabirú Path".
In this way they arrived at the Andean plateau, which probably did not have such a cold climate in 3000 BC. Thus they mixed with the Pukara people who in turn came from the Amazon (Arawak expansion), and with the Colla people (whose descendants today speak the Aymara language). The Sumerian culture influenced the people of the plateau, not only from a religious point of view, but also lexically. In fact, many linguists have found many similarities between Proto-Sumerian and Aymara.
A story that mixes with the legend of Akakor, a lost antediluvian kingdom flourishing on the banks of the Amazon River basin, which made headlines thanks to the invaluable contribution of Colonel Percy Fawcett, colonial expert and cartographer of the British Cartographic Society. Passionate explorer and lover of past civilizations, he collects oral traditions and astonishing legends from the Indians of the various tribes. The careful study that the colonel made of all the material collected leads him to the conclusion that all the myths testify to the divine origin of all those peoples.
He also comes into possession of indications and strange stories about enormous abandoned and mysterious cities, which lead him to travel far and wide through the jungle of South America, until, in Rio, he had the opportunity to consult the Bandeirantes Manuscript, preserved in the local Indian Museum; inspired by the document he decides to undertake an expedition to Mato Grosso in search of the fantastic lost city. He tries several times without success, until Fawcett is sure he has the decisive indications and the exact orientation for the revolutionary discovery. He leaves with a few trusted men, but his march is followed until half of the route he had planned, then he disappears into the virgin forest and nothing more is known about him. It was 1925.
The kingdom of Akakor was perhaps one of the antediluvian nations of which we retain the memory of Atlantis, creator of all the incredible megalithic structures of the South American continent such as Tiahunaco, Machu Picchu, Cuzco, the City of Caral, etc.etc. as well as the road network exploited by the Inca empire thousands of years later of which the Peabirù or Peru road represents a segment? We honestly think so.
Just as we think that the legacy of these antediluvian civilizations reached the Middle Eastern peoples, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Ethiopian-Yemenites (Saba) and Jews, including the Sumerians, who exploited their knowledge for commercial purposes.
But our Solomon, where this adventure of ours began, did not only obtain gold and silver from the commercial exploitation of these ancient routes.
In a previous article of ours we addressed the topic of the Shamir, a powerful object, presumably technologically advanced, which appears in numerous Jewish midrash including one which refers precisely to the King of our article.
the midrash that speaks of the Shamir reports that, for the construction of the Temple, Solomon had given very precise orders. According to the Mosaic Law, Divine Law, no material forming part of the Temple was to be worked with iron tools, the metal of which weapons that bring death are made, thus avoiding contaminating the sacredness of the place.
The altar, above all, was not to be desecrated in any way by that contact, and not even a nail was to enter the construction site; nor hammers, chisels, pickaxes or anything else. So much so that the building material - or at least, certainly, the stone - had arrived on site already squared, if not finished, so that during the works "no noise produced by metal tools was heard in the Temple". The only alternative way of working the stone without using iron tools was to use the "magical Shamìr". God himself, according to tradition, had given it to Moses on Sinai, who had used it to engrave the names of the twelve tribes on the stones set in the breastplate and in the "ephod" which were part of the vestments of the High Priest. Since then, however, the Shamìr had disappeared and it was no longer known what happened to him.
The Shamìr was also used to cut the stones with which the Temple was built, because the law prohibited the use of iron tools for this work as we can read in the Talmud and in midrashic literature. Perhaps the Shamir technology is the same that was used in antediluvian times to work and cut other stones... the enigmatic H blocks of Puma Punku.
Furthermore, again from the same sources, we know that Shamìr cannot be stored in a closed container made of iron or any other metal, as it would cause it to explode, perhaps due to the emission of gas or heat resulting from a possible radioactivity of the element. Radioactivity which would justify the ailments of King Solomon and King David after the use of the Shamir and the high mortality of those who handled it for longer without probably taking the necessary precautions.
Other incredible applications of the Shamir are described in the story of how Solomon managed to take possession of the instrument in question. The demon Asmodeus, who knows the location of all the hidden treasures, was forced to reveal to the king that God had delivered the Shamìr to Rahav, the Angel (or Prince) of the Sea, who never entrusted it to anyone except not, rarely and only for good purposes, to the wild cock, which lived far away, at the foot of mountains never explored by man: he used it to "forest" entire bare and stony hills, producing - by means of the Shamìr - countless small holes, in which he then planted seeds of various plants and trees. This was done in the imminence of the migration of tribal groups that had become too numerous, who would later, arriving on site, find a livable environment.
How can we not connect to this description the thousands of man-sized holes dug into the bare rock near Valle Pisco, Peru, on a plain called Cajamarquilla. These strange holes (apparently 6900), extend for about 1450 meters in an approximately 20 meter wide band of mountainous and uneven terrain and have been here so long that people have no idea who made them and why.
This supports the incredible hypothesis that the Egyptians, or at least someone before them, managed to reach South America, giving rise to the first Mesoamerican civilisations. Scholars have established that day one of the Olmec calendar coincided with August 13, 3113 BC, the date of the birth of the Olmec civilization, an extraordinary event for all the civilizations of Latin America on a par with year zero of the Christian calendar. But 3113 BC indicates precisely the exact date of the exile of Thoth and his African followers from Egypt at the hands of his brother Ra, towards the ends of the world for the colonization of new lands.
Presence of Egyptians in South America which would justify the strong similarities on an architectural and cultural level between the pre-Columbian civilizations, Maya primarily, and ancient Egypt of which the pyramids represent the most striking example. Something more than a simple theory according to some in-depth studies that we wish to share with readers.
In fact, there is a series of hieroglyphics dating back to different eras which refer to an unidentified country called Punt where some pharaohs sent expeditions; the first of which we know is the one ordered by Pharaoh Sahura of the 5th dynasty. The Punt must have been a land rich in resources and precious materials given that the inscriptions speak of ships loaded with gold, silver, spices and all sorts of wealth including rare animals and plants such as leopards and, presumably, also cocaine and tobacco, traces of whose plants have been found in the tombs of some pharaohs.
The last to send expeditions to the Punt was Queen Hatshepsut, upon whose death Thutmose III erased, as was customary, every trace of the previous sovereign's past, and with them the references to the Punt and its location.
The interesting thing about this research is that, at the behest of the pharaoh, the workers sent to the Punt had to be "... from the country of the Thebans...", that is, coming from the Nubian cultures of present-day Sudan dominated by Egypt characterized by a population with somatic characteristics Negroids. These Nubian slaves would then have been left in South America to lighten the Egyptian boats returning to Egypt, giving rise to the Olmec culture which would justify the discovery of monumental Olmec heads with typically Negroid features, perhaps sculpted in honor of the first representatives of the Olmec civilisation.
A logical path that essentially retraces the slave routes during the colonial period of historical eras much closer in time to us.
The Olmecs had a fundamental importance in the development and evolution of the cultural and religious aspects of the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, Maya in the first place, to which they transmitted their knowledge inherited from the Egyptian domination in Nubian land, including pyramidal structures.
The presence of indigenous tribes made up of black-skinned individuals within the forest, probably descendants who regressed to the prehistoric state of the first Egyptian slaves, founders of the Olmec culture, was also witnessed by the first Spanish and Portuguese explorers during the colonial conquest of South America in the 16th century.
The last piece of evidence in support of this theory that I want to mention, aware of the existence of many others not addressed here, is represented by the three Olmec calendars, the best known is the one defined as the Long Count which foresees the start of an Enigmatic Day One (our equivalent of before and after Christ, an extraordinary event for Christians marked by the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.) Scholars have established that Day One coincided with August 13, 3113 BC as the birth date of the Olmec civilization, an extraordinary event for all the civilizations of Latin America.
But 3113 BC "strangely" marks precisely the exact date of the exile of Thoth and his (African) followers from Egypt at the hands of his brother Ra (beginning of the reign of the pharaohs), towards the ends of the world for the colonization of new lands: just an extraordinary coincidence?
Precisely that Thoth, custodian of the secrets of a mother civilization pre-existing those historically known and directly connected to the myths inherent to the civilization of Atlantis as a technologically advanced global super power, according to the Anunnaka-derived Atlanticus Project.
And do you want to know the fate of the most precious artifact in Latin America, that is, a baby elephant that attributes the true birthplace to American civilizations? Mysteriously disappeared, along with the original Olmec calendars engraved on three columns in Veracruz.
The conclusion of this long journey which has led us to address various issues often addressed by official historiography as not connected to each other is always the same. That is, history as we know it probably needs to be rewritten.
Just as, in the light of these discoveries, the story of a Genoese navigator (?) should be reviewed who, in searching from the east to the west, found himself in lands unknown according to history... but this will be the subject of another article of the Atlanticus Project.