History says that Portuguese ocean navigators discovered the Azores in the early 1400s and found them unoccupied. But recently scientists have been puzzling over strange and mysterious constructions and other signs that suggest people lived here long before the fifteenth century. Who were they, what happened to them, and are there any more signs of ancient civilisations on these remote islands? Let’s delve deep into the history of the Azores, and see if we can find any other ancient mysteries to puzzle over while you’re there.
Azores mysteries – 4000 year old structures
Physicist Dr Felix Rodrigues has been looking at ruins on Terceira island, where he lives, and he believes the structures he’s seeing date back thousands of years, to long before the Portuguese seafarers first arrived.
Dr Rodrigues thinks prehistoric people used these dolmens – which are a lot like the dolmens found across the UK – to place the remains of their dead, in strange cylindrical cavities created by moving vast rocks horizontal to vertical positions to create caves. The stone has clearly been worked by humans. Material from the cavities has been dated to at least 2500 years old and he’s also found shards of pottery at the site that appear to be even older, maybe more than 4000 years old.
There are two mysterious structures near the sea on the island, perhaps giving us more clues about the people who lived here so very long ago. Dr Rodrigues thinks they’re part of the same complex, which might have been used for rituals. There’s an odd basin in the ground connected to the outside by a duct, and there are more of the same structures elsewhere on Terceira island, together with beautifully-carved volcanic rocks, some with perfect 14cm diameter holes cut through them. Then there are marks in the ground that look like they’ve been made by cartwheels but could also be a lot older than they look at first glance.
You can see images of the finds here on YouTube.
The rock art surrounding the megalithic constructions in the Azores is very similar to the art found across Europe, opening up new questions about whether Bronze Age and Iron Age people managed to reach the islands by boat.
The man-made rock basins, megalithic constructions and inscriptions on the stones that look a lot like ancient petroglyphs are convincing evidence, but there’s more. A small bowl engraved into the rock on Terceira Island can’t be explained by natural erosion, meaning there’s no doubt it’s human-made.
The president of the Portuguese Association of Archaeological Research, Nuno Ribeiro, says he’s certain the rock art and remains of human-made structures indicate the Azores were indeed occupied by humans thousands of years ago. The wider theory is that there was once a trade route between the Phoenicians, Norse, and New World people, thousands of years before European explorers made the connection. Other experts say these ‘perceived remnants of an ancient civilization’ are either natural rock formations or modern structures from the past few hundred years.
Underwater pyramid off the Azores – is it human-made?
In 2015 a massive pyramid structure was found underwater off the coast of the Azores by Diocleciano Silva, who was surveying there. He says the pyramid is perfectly shaped, found between Terceira and São Miguel, with an almost perfectly square base. GPS tech revealed the structure is 60m tall and the base measures 8000m2.
As you can imagine the finding revived the old myth of Atlantis, but it’s highly unlikely since that part of the ocean floor has been underwater for at least 20,000 years, 17,000 years before the Mesopotamians were doing their thing. Others, including the Portuguese navy, say it’s actually a volcano, one of many unusual geological features created by violent volcanic activity over the millennia.
A 1778 article, coins, calendars and maps
Antonieta Costa, a post-doctoral student at the University of Porto in Portugal, refers to a 1778 article by a man called Johan Frans Podolyn who talks about the discovery of Carthaginian coins on the Azorean island of Corzo. Because Carthage was founded in the 1st century BCE in Tunisia, it’s possible the Phoenicians knew how to get to the New World, as evidenced by ancient artefacts like the petroglyphs found in Peterborough, Canada. Others say the coins were fakes or had been left there by much later settlers.
On the other hand, some of the markings on Azores rocks are very like those found in North America. Costa has looked at mysterious cuts made in rocks on the Azores, which could be down to relatively modern quarrying but don’t seem at all helpful in quarrying rock. She thinks they might be a very old calendar system, with some of the marks aligning east, other smaller ones facing in different directions, and slits that seem to align with the solstices.
She’s also interested in the idea of ancient maps, since some of the carvings in the bedrock look very much like maps identified in Stone Age rock art in mainland Europe. But it’s all guesswork, as is the idea that some of the rock formations on the Azores are just like those found in Lapland, including several strange basins that could have been used for ceremonial purposes near rock formations that naturally look like animals or people, just like the ancient Laplanders did. The jury’s still out but Costa is keen to study everything in more depth.
The Azores pyramids
Nobody could accuse the larger-scale Azores Pyramids of being natural. These dramatic stepped stone formations on several of the islands were discovered in the 1800s by Portuguese soldiers but weren’t explored properly until the 21st century. Their origins remain shrouded in mystery, with no clear consensus about who made them but plenty of theories.
Some say they were built by the Phoenicians, others say it was the Carthaginians or ancient Greeks. Responsibility has even been laid at the feet of early Portuguese settlers. There’s no sign of them being occupied or used. Some are simple small piles of rock, others are definitely pyramid-shaped. They’re mostly made of local volcanic rock, without cement or mortar. The stones were probably stacked skilfully like dry stone walling is to this day. Some are surprisingly geometrically precise and others align with the solstices and equinoxes. If they are indeed made by humans, they’re prehistoric.
One theory says they’re the remnants of an ancient civilization that knew how to navigate the Atlantic, maybe used for landmarks or to monitor the stars. Some say they’re the result of old farming practices by early settlers. So far dating them has proved impossible because there’s nothing organic to analyse using radiocarbon dating.
Science from 2021
In 2021 New Scientist magazine revealed how one of history’s greatest journeys had been uncovered, proving that people had arrived on the Azores at least 700 years earlier than previously thought. Pedro Raposeiro from the Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources in Ponta Delgada on São Miguel Island said while it wasn’t clear who the first colonists were, there’s some evidence that they were Norsemen.
According to the study, which examined lake sediment cores, Viking seafarers may have arrived centuries earlier than the Portuguese explorer de Silves, but the Vikings were long gone by the time he arrived. Intriguingly, Norse rodent stowaways might have left their genetic mark on the islands’ rats. Now all we need is for someone clever to do some Azorean rat DNA analysis.
As the Science.org website says: “In a sedimentary layer dating to between 700 C.E. and 850 C.E. taken from Peixinho Lake on the Azores’s Pico Island, the researchers saw a sudden uptick of an organic compound called 5-beta-stigmastanol, which is found in the feces of ruminants such as cows and sheep. They also saw an increase in charcoal particles and a dip in the abundance of native tree pollens, perhaps pointing to humans cutting down and burning trees to clear space for livestock to graze, Raposeiro says.
A similar signal shows up in cores from Caldeirão Lake on the Azores’s Corvo Island dating to about 100 years later. Pollen from a nonnative ryegrass shows up in layers from Pico Island dating to about 1150, and at 1300 on São Miguel Island, also part of the archipelago. Taken together, the results suggest humans were occupying and exploiting the natural resources of the Azores at least 700 years earlier than historians traditionally believed”.
When you’re next in the Azores, keep your eyes peeled for artefacts, weird structures and unusual landmarks. You never know, you might be the one to find something awesome and play a part in solving this thrilling ongoing mystery .
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