The Mysterious Stone

By Roberto Salgado de Carvalho

A work created by aliens from outer space? A monument that proves the presence of the Phoenicians in the Americas? An encoded atomic energy formula developed thousands of years ago? What is the real meaning of the strange symbols engraved in a northeastern Brazils stone? Many theories have been developed in order to explain this masterpiece of the prehistoric past. Roberto Salgado de Carvalho presents ethnological evidence about the true meaning of the engravings that puzzled researchers and the public all over the world in his fascinating new book The Mysterious Stone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499076646

Roberto Salgado de Carvalho

Roberto Carvalho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is an art teacher who is currently employed with the District of Columbia Public School System. This is his second book about Brazilian rock art. Like his first book -“Brazilian Rock Paintings and Shamanism”- he addresses the meaning of ancient pre-historical art that has been puzzling the world.

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Copyright © 2014 by Roberto Salgado de Carvalho.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014917385

ISBN:      Hardcover     978-1-4990-7665-3

                Softcover       978-1-4990-7666-0

                eBook            978-1-4990-7664-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/04/2014

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Contents

Introduction

The Inga Stone

Interpretations of the Stone

The Inga Stone Cultural Background

Tribal Societies’ Ideology

Native Brazilian Religions

Shamanism and the Millennial Nordeste Tradition

Interpretations of Indigenous Art

The Inga Stone and Tribal Beliefs

An Ethnological Comparison

A Structural Analysis of the Inga Stone

The Humanoid

The Lizard

The Ecological Context and the Lizard on the Inga Stone

The Geometric Engravings

Conclusion

Bibliography

To Neusa, the one who always supported me (Saudades …)

To Paulinho and Aldair

Introduction

Indigenous societies contributed much to Western culture, from the use of corn to medicines based on plants. Therefore, studying these cultures should not be regarded as mere academic exercise, far from it. Our knowledge of different cultures could even help us one day to better understand the scope of the human brain’s abilities. For example, in Brazil’s Hixkarayana, the subject-object-verb order sentence is used—a form linguists believed not to exist.

However, the study of vanished tribal societies presents at least two apparently insurmountable obstacles: the lack of writing records and, consequently, the lack of knowledge about their cultural background. Thus, their modern interpreters are left only with the contemporary tribal societies’ ideological and cultural modes, which are not faithful reproductions of the ancient ones. Yet, modern tribal societies may be considered cousins of the tribal groups of ancient times insofar as they are all based on socioeconomic contexts of hunter-gathered or slash-and-burn communities. As a scholar wrote, Ways of thinking, of conceiving the world, and of acting … are often similar in cultures that are at similar stages in their economical and social development, that have a comparable manner of life and social organization (Clottes 2002: 115).

This study aims for a more comprehensive contextual analisis of one of the greatest of the Americas’ prehistoric monuments: the Inga Stone. This monument, a stone engraving located in northeast Brazil, is interpreted in this article in terms of its artistic structure by comparing it with the basic ideological framework found in Brazilian contemporary indigenous societies.

Some may argue that to compare today’s Brazilian native beliefs with old Brazilian rock art is as fruitless as to compare, say, medieval European beliefs with pre-historic European rock art. However, we must keep in mind that all the available archaeological evidence indicates that the economic and technological innovations within Brazilian tribal societies with little or no contact with neo-Brazilians were not as dramatic as the innovations that took place, for example, in Europe between prehistoric and medieval times. Consequently, there are strong reasons to conclude that Brazilian native societies that had very little contact with outsiders resemble their past much more closely than the European medieval societies did. In other words, It’s quite legitimate to attempt to establish the framework of the overall set of beliefs in which (prehistoric ideologies) are situated. These efforts allow us to posit hypothesis, which will be strengthened—or weakened—as new discoveries are made (Clottes 2002: 117).

Another kind of argument raised against the type of approach espoused by this study is that it reduces different indigenous cultures to an elementary model. However, such criticism disregards the fact that any introduction to an ideological context must be based on an overall analysis instead of a detailed one. Thus we find, for example, words such as millenarianism, polytheism, etc., in any reputable dictionary of religions. Of course, it would be absurd to reduce, say, different polytheistic systems of worship to basic terminology as if such terminology could encompass all nuances of beliefs and ethical differences between religions under such label. Instead, labels are only useful as a general introduction in order to contextualize the religious beliefs that they refer to. The labels can’t represent all social and ideological aspects related to such beliefs. Similarly, it would be impossible today to present a detailed description of a long-gone prehistoric society due to the above-mentioned reasons.

In sum, usually in the