Dighton Rock, located in Massachusetts is proof that Portuguese explorers from the 1100's arrived in America.
If you believe the legend.
The legend must also include a version where they arrived, carved their initials, took a look around America, and went back home.
This is a larger plot point for all you Portuguese descendents out there, who imagine that the "Old Country" actually has a lower quality of life than America. The smartest Portuguese always return to the islands. America doesn't live up to anything. The ones who stay just cannot stand the idea of making the awful trip again.
The stone has long been documented as having strange carvings, possibly graffiti-but from before 1690! Here is a quote, from an admittedly questionable article. But Cotton Mather directly references it:
The legend & rock is referenced in another Portuguese source, this time in the novel by Frank Gaspar, called Leaving Pico. (Even the New York Times took note!) A grandfather tells his grandson all about it. It makes you want to believe.
If you believe the legend.
The legend must also include a version where they arrived, carved their initials, took a look around America, and went back home.
This is a larger plot point for all you Portuguese descendents out there, who imagine that the "Old Country" actually has a lower quality of life than America. The smartest Portuguese always return to the islands. America doesn't live up to anything. The ones who stay just cannot stand the idea of making the awful trip again.
The stone has long been documented as having strange carvings, possibly graffiti-but from before 1690! Here is a quote, from an admittedly questionable article. But Cotton Mather directly references it:
Adding to the list of anomalous places within Freetown State Forest is an immense, 40 ton boulder known as Dighton Rock, which is approximately 5 feet (1.5 m) high, 9.5 feet (2.9 m) wide, and 11 feet (3.4 m) long. The boulder originally lied in the riverbed of the Taunton River at Berkley, Massachusetts but has since been moved. Covering the rock are numerous and various mysterious petroglyphs, drawings of figures, geometric shapes, and alleged cryptic writing, none of which can be comprehensively identified and have unknown origins. There have been many theories as to the origins of the strange carvings upon the rock, ranging from the native peoples of the region, to ancient Norse explorers, to even the Phoenicians and the Chinese. The rock was described in 1690 by Rev. Cotton Mather in his book The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated thus:
Among the other Curiosities of New-England, one is that of a mighty Rock, on a perpendicular side whereof by a River, which at High Tide covers part of it, there are very deeply Engraved, no man alive knows How or When about half a score Lines, near Ten Foot Long, and a foot and half broad, filled with strange Characters: which would suggest as odd Thoughts about them that were here before us, as there are odd Shapes in that Elaborate Monument.…
The legend & rock is referenced in another Portuguese source, this time in the novel by Frank Gaspar, called Leaving Pico. (Even the New York Times took note!) A grandfather tells his grandson all about it. It makes you want to believe.
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