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Dighton
Rock is a fascinating “woman”! |
Dighton Rock has not been like the Greek Goddess of Love Aphrodite nor the Roman’s Venus. But it has excited, during various centuries, a fascinating attraction upon various historians, archaeologists and even amateurs.
It has been damaged physically, its face has been bruised, during several hundreds of years and it has been defamed, and even called mysterious, and a liar!
Dighton Rock was during many centuries covered by tidal waters about 20 hours per day. This fact prevented its inscriptions from been more damaged by vandalism. Up until October 1963 the rock was in the water of the Taunton River. This photo was taken at middle tide, on May 10, 1960, by Dr. Luciano da Silva
The most dramatic aspect of Dighton Rock is that several investigators considering themselves “genius” have given their opinions regarding its inscriptions WITHOUT EVER examined this monument IN LOCO. This is the same thing as a physician that makes a diagnosis WITHOUT ever examining the patient! It is like killing the patient! No one should ever behave like that, if a correct diagnosis and treatment is scientifically desired.
Another thing that happens, and is even more serious, is that a certain number of the so called historians, Portuguese and Americans, have uttered their “doctoral” opinions, based exclusively on the present face of Dighton Rock. The PRESENT FACE of Dighton Rock is loaded with wrinkles, typical of a woman that went through menopause and had raised several children
We should not put aside the beauty of Dighton Rock during its youth and of ‘mature woman’! We should not be so cruel. We should be at a minimum, gentlemen!
No, no, my friends! For us to study deeply and scientifically the Dighton Rock inscriptions we should obtain a good clinical history concerning its youth and its adolescence, for us to better comprehend completely its present stage of a “menopausal woman loaded with wrinkles”
“The Writing Rock” – Before 1680
We should note that the very first name given to Dighton Rock was “Dighton Writing Rock” (before 1680), thus called “The Writing Rock”, like a black board in a class room, with a 55 square feet surface, where anyone could write their initials or scribe any other acts of vandalism.
Up to date ( July 2003) not even one Portuguese historian or epigraphist , specialized in the XV and XVI centuries, EVER examined Dighton Rock IN LOCO!
This is a pity and shameful! But the so called “wise guys” in Portugal, such as Damião Peres and Luis de Albuquerque have already uttered their “wise’ opinions. Albuquerque even wrote that from Portugal (without ever seeing Dighton Rock in loco) “he could see his proper name inscribed on the face of the rock” . Albuquerque must possessed a very long pencil!… Unfortunately it has been individuals of this caliber that have been educating the various generations of Portugal!
The youth of Dighton Rock
For us to understand very well the Dighton Rock inscriptions we have to analyze in detail the first drawings that were done BEFORE the invention of photography in 1836 (Louis Daguerre) and based in direct rubbing of the face of Dighton Rock, by authors that never thought of the possibility that the inscriptions might be Portuguese. Obviously they were not favoring in any way the Portuguese theory.
Historical Cartouche of Dighton Rock
If we have the guts to ask of the Portuguese and Americans historians, how many of them know the Historical Cartouche of Dighton Rock, how many positive answers do you think we would get? ZERO!
Anyone that does not know the Historical Cartouche of Dighton Rock will never be able to make the correct diagnosis of the original inscriptions. Here is such Cartouche:
We are going, from now on, to analyze the various parts of he face of Dighton Rock to verify that some of the inscriptions that WERE visible and very clear almost four centuries ago, are NOW NOT distinguishable, due to the vandalism that has damage its face during such a secular period!
First document – 1680
If we analyze the first document of the inscriptions made by the Reverend John Danforth, on October of 1680, (the original is now in the British Museum, in London, England), we verify, very easily, that the upper part of the face of the rock has drawn two Portuguese Crosses of the Order of Christ, revealing very clearly, theirs extremities at 45 degree angles!
Drawing
made by John Danforth—1680
Danforth called these two crosses “ships without master and a peninsula” because of the regional Wampanoag Indian tradition “that a wooden house came up the river Assonet and men of another country in it”.
Rubbing done by James Winthrop – 1788.
One hundred and eight years later,
James Winthrop, made a much more exact study of the inscriptions. He made a
rubbing of the inscriptions using very large sheets of paper and then reduced
the rubbing by scaling it to a smaller drawing.
On his drawing we can distinguish one
Portuguese Cross of the Order of Christ much more complete on the upper part of
the face of the rock, revealing, very clearly, the extremity of the Cross at 45
degrees.
On the north part of the face of the
rock there is another Cross of Christ and the so called “face of the
mermaid” which in reality is the Quinas of Portugal, or the Portuguese
National Symbol.
On the south end of the face of the
rock we begin to see the Portuguese
Coat of Arms in “V” shaped and
another branch of the Portuguese
Cross of the Order of Christ with 45degree angles.
We should note
that James Winthrop did not recognized any of these symbols as Portuguese
icons!
Baylies and Goodwin—1790
Two years later, in 1790, Baylies and Goodwin made another rubbing of the face of the rock which offered us more details of the letters of Migvel Corte Real and the Portuguese Coat of Arms in “V” shaped. Let us take a look at their drawing:
Rhode Island Historical Society—1830
Six years before the invention of photography, (1836), it was requested of the Rhode Island Historical Society, located in the city of Providence, R. I. , a copy of the inscriptions of the face of Dighton Rock, to be sent to Denmark.
On this reproduction more letters of the name of Migvel Corte Real are revealed: M, I and V and also C, O and R and part of T, and also the Portuguese Coat of Arms “V” shaped. But up to this date no investigator in America or Europe related these symbols to the Portuguese theory.
Delabarre in 1918.
It was only on December 2nd, 1918, that Professor Edmund Burke Delabarre, Psychologist and Head of the Department at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, when he was developing photography in his laboratory, that he detected, for the first time, the date 1511 engraved on the face of the rock! With this discovery of the date 1511, he started searching in the European History, to find out who might have come to North America around that date. He searched first in the Scandinavians countries and finally got to Portugal where he learned that based on Royal Charts two navigators, Gaspar Corte Real, and Migvel Corte Real had left Lisbon in 1501 and 1502 respectively and neither ever return to Lisbon, Portugal.
Delabarre resolved then to review all the TWENTY SEVEN drawings made BEFORE photography and verified that the date 1511 appeared in twenty one drawings and because of that he wrote the following:
“I saw it clearly and undoubtedly the date 1511. No one had ever seen if before, on the rock or photograph: yet once seen, its genuine presence on the rock cannot be doubted”.
We should note that the ancestors of Delabarre were from Belgium, and therefore he had not a drop of Portuguese blood in his veins. We can conclude that Delabarre’s investigations were totally impartial.
Delabarre discovered engraved on the face of the rock: (1) the date 1511; (2) the name Migvel Corte Real, (3) the Portuguese Coat of Arms V” shaped.
Even though Delabarre was decorated by the Portuguese Government with the Cross of the Order of Christ, and even wearing such a cross on his chest, he was not able to discovered that such a cross was engraved on the face of Dighton Rock!
Delabarre hypnotized by the Dighton Rock
In despite Delabarre being a psychologist he let himself be hypnotized by the Dighton Rock. He was persuaded to present an hypothetical message in Latin abbreviated in this form: “V. Dei hic Dux Ind” which stood for “Voluntate Dei hic Indorum” meaning “Chief of the Indians, by the will of God, in the region”.
This message in Latin has been Delabarre’s Achilles tendon for his Portuguese theory. Unfortunately this message ahs been repeated many times by Portuguese and American writers usually in foot notes, which I prefer to call stinky notes…
Dighton Rock and Cordeiro de Sousa
The greatest epigraphist in the world
was Jean Champollion, French, who discovered the Historical Cartouches of
Ptolomeu and Cleopatra engraved on the Rosetta Stone,
and revealed for all mankind the secrets of the old Egyptian
civilization.
In Portugal, the first epigraphist of the XV and XVI centuries was Luciano Cordeiro, the founder of the Portuguese Geographic Society of Lisbon and discoverer of the Yelala Rock in the Zaire, in Africa.
Luciano Cordeiro had a son, named Jose Maria Cordeiro de Sousa, who followed his fathers historical steps, and became a good epigraphist of the XV and XVI centuries according to some Portuguese scholars.
Because I have been living for 57 years in U. S. A., unfortunately, I have not had the opportunity to read the various article written by Mr. Cordeiro de Sousa. I only found out about his name because of the negative articles he wrote concerning the Dighton Rock inscriptions. Cordeiro de Sousa based his criticism of Delabarre’s finding, exclusively on the Latin message. If this is so I cannot have much consideration for Cordeiro de Sousa.
I do not agree with Delabarre’s message in Latin, but I have given the reasons why I do not agree.
In 1960, almost 43 years ago, I refuted the Latin message, at the First International Congress of the History of the Discoveries, in Lisbon, Portugal, when I made my presentation about History of Dighton Rock Inscriptions.
The Latin message does not exist on the face of Dighton Rock because of the following reasons:
(1) the abbreviated forms of the letters are too hypothetical
(2) the size of the letters are not the same and inconsistent
(3) the Portuguese navigators NEVER used Latin on the discovery markers
(4) the lines attributed to X and N are parts of the angles of the Cross of the Order of Christ which Professor Delabarre was not able to discover on the face of the rock.
For me it is very easily to conclude that Cordeiro de Sousa NEVER review the TWENTY SEVEN drawings of the inscriptions of Dighton Rock made BEFORE the invention of photography. In epigraphy this behavior is ABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY!
Any one who wishes to make the
diagnosis of the original inscriptions on Dighton Rock, basing himself ONLY on what can be SEEN NOW on
Dighton Rock, is an incomplete individual and does no know what he is doing,
really. He is fooling himself and others. If he is a writer or
a professor, it is even
worse: he is being malign, specially if he is teaching the youth of Portugal or
America.
Monopolizer Historians
The fact that today, we do not have, in Portugal, epigraphists of the XV and XVI centuries can be explained by the attitude of the so called professor -historians who monopolize, who are robbers of the spaces and the materials that in reality belong to the Portuguese epigraphists! These historians are afraid of loosing their “bread and butter”, and are scarred of loosing their hegemony of teaching and research. They are like dogs fighting for the same bone! And because of this selfish attitude they continue to use the material that truthfully belongs to the epigraphists. That is robbery!
The study of Epigraphy is a science much more exact than History itself! The Epigraphy is the Pathology of the Archaeology! The archeological finding is the truthful proof! Anything else is just non-sense talk.
I
have based all my investigations about Dighton Rock inscriptions by using the
same scientific methods that I always
used on the practice of Internal
Medicine for more than 40 years. During
my professional life I examined more than 300 patients! My profession has been
one of a DIAGNOSTICIAN! I
made more than one million diagnosis, and many between life and death!
The greatest original discoveries in archeology and epigraphy were made by amateurs.Strange as it may seem the greatest discoveries of archaeology and epigraphy were not made by professional professors of history that taught in high schools and universities, but by individual researchers that NEVER taught any classes! Examples in Portugal of true investigators who never taught in any schools and made great discoveries: Oliveira Martins, Almeida Garret, Alexandre Herculano, Gago Coutinho, etc. In the United States we can find a similar list.
The summit of knavery
On September 8th, 1960, as a legalized congressist , with all my credential approved, I made my presentation about the Dighton Rock inscriptions, using slides and a color film, to the First International Congress of the History of the Discoveries, in the main amphitheater of the University of Lisbon, Portugal. There were more than two thousand congressists in attendance. The “Diário de Notícias” (Daily News) from Lisbon, on September 9th, wrote that my communication to the International Congress received the “loudest applause of the Congress”.
Despite this great success the directors of the same congress decided to ELIMINATE my name and my communication from the SEVEN volumes of the proceedings of the same Congress. Undoubtly this behavior is the highest degree of knavery that can be applied to any legalize participant of an international scientific gathering
Let us see one contrast. In America two years after I published in English my book “Portuguese Pilgrims and Dighton Rock” (1971), I was given a degree of “ “Doctor of Humanities”, (1973), from an American University (Rhode Island College, Providence, RI), because of my epigraphic researches of Dighton Rock!
From Portugal I continue to receive backward kicks from the so called historians! Fortunately almost all the directors organizers of the First International Congress of the Discoveries are already dead, and they are already burning in hell! They are not missed at all! They did not leave any positive and permanent mark among the Portuguese people.
It is very truthful what the great Portuguese Poet Luis Vaz de Camões said in his famous poem “Os Lusíadas” (Canto IV, 33): “ Please tell them, that among the Portuguese there were, sometimes some traitors”.
Conclusion of the Portuguese inscriptions engraved on Dighton rock according to the investigations of Delabarre, Fragoso and Da Silva, as presented to the First International Congress of the History of Discoveries, in 1960:
Flag # 1 – Portuguese Coat of Arms, U-shaped
Flag #2 – Portuguese Cross of the Order of Christ
Flag #3 – Portuguese coat of Arms , V–shaped Captain’s name: Migvel Corte Real Date: 1511 (numeral 5 like a capital S)
Delabarre discovered:
1) Date 1511;
(2) Captain’s name: Miguel Corte Real
(3) Portuguese Coat of Arms V- shaped
