Underwater Exploring Is Banned in Brazil (1985) | Hacker News Reader

Underwater Exploring Is Banned in Brazil (1985)

nytimes.com

122 pointsnonbel100 comments

Governments at odds with archeology to protect the origin story of the country is common across the world.

In India, as recent as latter part of this decade archeologists found gold mine of evidence for >2100 year old Tamil civilization at Keezhadi including Roman artifacts[0].

There was no evidence of Hinduism found, for the matter of fact no religious artifacts of known organised religions was found there.

The archeologist who made the discovery was transferred and the excavations was halted. Fortunately, Tamil civilization is still very much in existence in the state of Tamilnadu,India; so the matter was taken to court and the court has now ordered continuation of excavation at Keezhadi & ordered the original archeologist back to the site[1].

But there has been numerous hurdles since, a blatant obstruction by the central government.

India is a culmination of several such civilizations, but the ruling party wants to project India as a 'Hindu Nation' which magically originated before any other civilization in the world. Unfortunately, they have the popular support for obvious reasons (You'll likely witness in the comments ).

Wiki[2].

[0]: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/keezhadi-hittin...

[1]: https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/keezhadi-excavations-h...

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeladi

Now that the BJP has found an ally in the AIDMK and Nitish kumar, I am hoping that they will take their foot off the Hindutva pedal.

It is ironic, that in its efforts to serve as opposition to Islam, Hindu ideologues are reforming Hinduism to fit a more abrahmic/western definition of religion.

If Hinduism is to be thought as the culture and beliefs of people living in the Indian subcontinent around 1000AD (the earliest origins of the Sindhu -> Hindu name). Then it completely separates itself from any scripture based religious belief system.

If the original scriptures of the Sanathan Dharma are to be used as guide books to define Hinduism, then the modern cultural beliefs of each region in India have diverged enough that they bear no resemblance to the original scriptures. The most egregious would be that beef, was seen as purely a food item. In addition, these scriptures were studied and followed mostly by the upper class. So, it is hard to make it apply to the whole country.

I don't see light at the end of the the tunnel, but the hypocrisy of the reformists is certainly hilarious.

It went from hilarious to dangerous,when democracy in the country itself is under threat.

There are a few fascinating notable exceptions. Israel and Egypt in particular support and sponsor archeology - probably for some similar and some diverging reasons.

Egypt surely deserves an applause for keeping archeology separate from prominent religious sentiments & capitalising it in the tourism Industry.

India had all the potential to do the same, considering it is home to at-least half dozen civilizaltions; but extremist ideologies is a vote winner.

When the current ruling party came into power, they tried to undermine Taj mahal by removing its name from the tourism list[0]!

[0]: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/taj-mah...

This really makes me wonder why controlling the understanding of anything older than 3000 years ago is such a big deal. Isn't there a statute of limitations on this kind of thing?

It might be tied to the ancient notions of lineage that have somehow persisted into the modern era and for bettet or fot worse link the ancient with the modern.

It's to manufacture legitimization for all kinds of claims.

One of the most notorious examples for this is probably Israel [0].

[0] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/the-twisted-logic-of-the...

For an interesting take on the ancient history of conflict among Semitic tribes, I recommend Matthew Woodring Stover's Jericho Moon. The ancient Hebrews come across a lot like marauding Bedouin tribes.

Do you have sources or evidence for any of those claims?

> Governments at odds with archeology to protect the origin story of the country is common across the world.

Couldn't agree more. Just look at Auschwitz and the other concentration camps. Only government-approved scientists are allowed onto those sites.

I'm Brazilian so take my opinion with a bit o salt and pepper. I have no doubts our government circa 1985 was totally capable of such things. It was a military government, with lots of censorship (but 85 was they last days). So anything that could raise any question about our national identity was a threat for them. About the feasibility of atlantic crossings from west to east, mainly by odd, it's perfectly possible. The travel back otherwise is another history. Probably they mixed with our native inhabitants and they genes disappeared with the time (and with the arrival of portuguese in 1500). Even today, to question Brazilians national identity is tabu here.

I can see the 85 government willing to do that (I'm brazillian as well).

I doubt the Romans would arrive here though. They were not navy focused at all. There are detailed accounts of all sorts of trouble they went just to cross to Britain.

At the same time, we had plenty of pre-culumbian tribes here who were masters at pottery (like the Marajoara culture). These are probably pottery jars from one of these cultures.

I found funny what you said about this being a tabu. I don't feel that at all here in Brazil. On the contrary. Brazillians I know acknowledge the Pedra Furada site, for example, but most other countries ignore it, specially the US with their Clover first narrative.

Even if they did, they'd probably have arrived in the North-East, like Cabral did. But it's highly unlikely. I think the claim that the pots were reproductions, dumped in the bay to age, to be a lot more likely.

> "I think the claim that the pots were reproductions, dumped in the bay to age, to be a lot more likely."

That guy said there were only 16 of them, the archeologist said he found hundreds.

>>specially the US with their Clover first narrative.

You lost me here. What are you referencing?

"Clovis first" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture#Clovis_First/...

> I found funny what you said about this being a tabu. I don't feel that at all here in Brazil. On the contrary. Brazillians I know acknowledge [...]

do not mix up the current Brazil with the Brazil from a few years ago.

under the worker's party Brazil had great recognition of native cultures and new museums. under the current, elected under a parliament coup (the preferred left candidate just left political prison last week, after a year without trial), all that is gone, and the biggest two museums with Indian artifacts burned to the ground in under three months, one barely showing in the midia.... so go figure.

> I can see the 85 government willing to do that

the current government has a general as vice president (and the president is a failed military career turned professional politician), and everyone in the education ministry are career military, just like the 60s. I find it odd that you can see the problem clearly on the previous coup but not on this one.

> the preferred left candidate just left political prison last week, after a year without trial

He was found guilty by no less than 20 different judges (in 3 different courts) half of which were appointed by the criminal (Lula) himself. And he’s still in prison, by the way.

was not saying he was let go, after he made a year in practical solitary confiment (with visits from UN and the pope denied), he was allowed to have the law manbdated leaves and visits, which was already a victory.

I'd rather not mix archaeology with politics. The museum fire was heartbreaking but to call it a conspiracy against our own history is too far fetched.

Don't get me wrong. I despise the current government. I just don't think there's any conspiracy here.

maybe the museums fire were just a coincidence, but read the news if you want more concrete conspiracies. there are thousands on native Brazilians protesting in brasilia today, and the biggest complaint is that their political representation is being systematically undermined:

https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2019/04/governo-bolsonar...

This has nothing to do with whether the Romans arrived here in ancient times or not.

We're in a deep polarized state right now and there's a popular urge to infuse any discussion with these political overtones. This might be needed for current themes like education and economy, but it has no stake whatsoever in ancient human expeditions across the atlantic.

Please keep obvious political propaganda out of this side. You may not like the current government and neither do I but the previous one was not healthy at all for our country.

you could practice what you preach :) I didn't vote for either, even on the last election, and would not have voted for him even if he was running. I'm further left.

> but the previous one was not healthy at all for our country

if enacting the very laws that allowed to go after the politic corrupt class in power since forever (even if backfired when it started to work), started a minimum income program in the entire country, paid off the international debt, kept oil reserves for national companies, etc. is a bad goverment... I guess you are right.

Maybe not your intention but thats basically what I would expect from a worker's party political propaganda.

It was bad because we got hit like a truck as soon as commodities prices and China's economy decelerated and government spending did not adjusted at all. Specially bad when lots of public money went to few conglomerates that were part of billionaire corruption schemes, bribe and money laundering. Also sending billions to other African and Central and South American dictatorships - infrastructure projects handled by the same companies involved in domestic corruption scandals. The Brazilian Worker's Party and companies like Odebrecht have a big finger in everything that's happening in Venezuela right now.

And let me say this about Bolsa Família: the minimum income program was created by Ruth Cardoso, the First Lady before Lula's presidency. Lula's original plan was called "Fome Zero" (Zero Hunger) and revolved about government supplying food to poor people much like Chavez did. He ended following mrs Cardosos' plan which is way better than his original idea but also bad because it had no escape mechanism like tying it to educational programs and was used over and over again to coerce the poor population into voting to the workers party.

Please. I may not know about what a bad government is but apparently further left means cherry picking facts to tell your own ideological charged version of history. Even PSOL (Freedom and Socialism Party) member Luciana Genro agrees that Lula and Dilma were criminals that looted the country and should be in jail.

I'm really sorry but every time you tell some rose tinted story about how things were good, names and terms like Odebrecht, Mensalão, JBS, Mariel's Port, Pasadena's Refinery, OAS and Camargo Correa will pop up. So as a brazilian it is a bit hard to swallow and borderline offensive okay?

This is all fascinating and I can read both sides repeating these arguments over and over all day. It is highly misplaced though.

When talking about history, it is always better to keep current politics OUT of the game.

So much bullshit

And thanks for the guy who thanks me for my nice argument in the immediate future

Can you please review the site guidelines and stick to them when commenting here, no matter how strongly you feel about an issue or how wrong someone else is? That's the only way this community can continue without destroying itself.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

June 1985 was already several months after the end of the military government.

I'm Portuguese so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Did the Romans really have the tech to cross the Atlantic? I mean... it's though job!

We know Roman history very very well and no where in their records is this mentioned? Sounds very weird to me.

That's the exact opposite of what my history professor said. He said we only have a tiny fraction of roman documents and most of roman history has been "lost to history". Almost all the writings of romans has been lost and "roman history" is the surviving writings of caesar and a handful of other writers. Granted those writings are great works of art, but still, it's an extremely biased and unreliable account of history.

Now that doesn't mean that the romans crossed the atlantic. It just means we know so little of the past that it is embarrassing.

A good example is we don't even know the details of how Roman concrete was made (apparently much stronger than modern concrete), and it was used to build everything.

Not trying to just jump in an correct you, but there has actually been progress recently made in this area and we're starting to get a scientific understanding of what the Romans learned to do presumably through trial and error. Here's an article I found on the subject, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/04/why-roman-co...

We know how to make Roman concrete. Way may not know the exact historical techniques but we know chemical and material science behind it and can produce it using different methods.

My understanding is that modern concrete is stronger (rebar), ancient concrete was more durable (Pantheon, 126 AD).

It is the rebar that makes it stronger but unfortunately it is also what gives modern concrete such a tiny lifespan. If you want something to last millennia it is better to build it the Roman way, without rebar.

I respectfully disagree - the design goals are vastly different between ancient Rome and today. There is no reason one couldn't build something that would last milennia, it is simply not economically feasible (and you would have a hard time securing investors).

> it is simply not economically feasible (and you would have a hard time securing investors).

So are Romans really behind us, or are we behind them? We seem bound by the forces of compound interest to never make something durable. But somehow they were capable of it.

According to Aristotle the Carthagineans had a secret island they treated as a military secret. It fits a description of the Americas:

> "In the sea outside the Pillars of Hercules they say that an island was discovered by the Carthaginians, desolate, having wood of every kind, and navigable rivers, and admirable for its fruits besides, but distant several days' voyage from them. But when the Carthaginians often came to this island because of its fertility, and some even dwelt there, the magistrates of the Carthaginians gave notice that they would punish with death those who should sail to it, and destroyed all the inhabitants. lest they should spread the report about it, or a large number might gather together to the island in their time, get possession of the authority, and destroy the prosperity of the Carthaginians."

http://www.archive.org/stream/demirabilibusaus00arisrich#pag...

It fits a description of the Americas in that it lies in the Atlantic (beyond "the Pillars of Hercules", the Gibraltar Strait). I think anything beyond that is a massive stretch.

It says navigable rivers. Most islands don't have that.

I think the Americas are more than several days travel from Carthage.

I don't know the original term used, but in greek the same word translates to "several" and "some": https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=el&t...

So could have been "some days' voyage".

Correct. Sailing the Atlantic back then took over a month.

12 days was only achieved in 1905, and the official route is far shorter than a sail from Carthage.

Are there any other places that fit the description ?

Azores, Canary Islands, Madeira

Those have navigable rivers?

British Isles ?

Perhaps. Weren't they already known at that time though?

>"Britain was known to the Classical world; the Greeks, Phoenicians and Carthaginians traded for Cornish tin in the 4th century BC." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Britain

That desn't fit with the idea that you don't go past the Pillars of Hercules though.

Whose idea is that?

Its not that hard to cross over to brasil from iberia/morocco.

I wouldn't be too surprised if a handful of roman ships were blown vastly off course and wound up in south america.

Coming back is a different story though, you'll be fighting winds most of the way unless you go the long way around, and i doubt whatever roman ships made the crossing would be able to come back.

I'm guessing if they wrecked off of Brazil, they never made it back to Roman territory.

There are stories of Japanese and Chinese fishing boats washing up in what is now Washington and California, so I definitely think it's possible.

I'm not sure how much tech you need. More like planning and luck.

Think about the vast ocean distances the Polynesian people covered, and it's my understanding that their level of technology was less than the Romans. Though I'm not really knowledgeable in that area.

They were damn good navigators though. The level of technology of their boats were in some ways vastly superior to the Europeans who traveled to the South Pacific.

Remember that "technology" isn't a generic "I'm better at it than you are" kind of thing. Different societies have different levels of technology depending on what their needs are. Polynesians needed to cross enormous distances, so they were well developed in that area.

If you have navigation technology and knowledge it switches from being luck to routine. Accurate clocks and maps of ocean currents make vast ocean distances much smaller.

So, your point is that the Romans could've easily crossed to the Americas because they had maps of the Atlantic's currents?

The Polynesians probably even made it to South America; they had sweet potatoes, native to the Americas, before European contact, and their word for it is very similar to the Quechua.

Polynesian sailing and navigation technology probably beats Roman on the open ocean.

The Mediterranean is warm, pleasant and calm (boats did and do get wrecked by storms, but it's a much smaller risk). Distances between landing sites are short. If the wind dies, then it's feasible to row. You can stay in sight of land for travel to most destinations.

The Atlantic and Pacific are wild and dangerous.

Polynesians never crossed large open oceans. They island hopped.

The distance between New Zealand and Tahiti (the approximate origin of the founding population of NZ) is around 2600 miles, longer than the minimum distance between Africa and South America.

You’re not wrong about island hopping but the last hops in the Polynesian expansion - Hawai’i, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and New Zealand were incredibly remote.

The longest distance between islands is longer than the shortest distance between Africa and South America. So it’s at least possible with relatively primitive technology.

Polynesians had and still have extremely sophisticated stellar and solar navigation techniques (as well as deep observational knowledge of oceans and marine life) that far exceeded recorded European techniques until the advent of tools like astrolabes and sextants in the 1700s, as far as the extent of travel distances. There has been growing evidence of Polynesian contact with South America, including the presence of sweet potatoes (South American origin) which may have just dispersed somehow westward over the Pacific as seeds. But chicken bones (a South Asian origin) have been radio carbon dated to the 1300s in Chile. And a Polynesian settlement in the Auckland islands in the sub-antarctic dating to the 13th century has been found.

> Did the Romans really have the tech to cross the Atlantic?

In galleys designed for costal waters, with no maps and no means of navigation? Not by choice.

The Romans at their height were the dominant Mediterranean naval power, but they barely had the technology to cross the English Chanel. When Caligula tried to invade Britain, his troops refused to go.

An empty boat, or one full of inept or deceased sailors, could cross the Atlantic in that direction just by drifting with ocean currents.

The Romans still were unsure even about northern europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule#Classical_antiquity_and_...

> I'm Portuguese so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I know you didn't mean it like this, but this sentence is such a lovely depiction of (my impression of) the Portuguese psyche that I almost want to print it out and frame it.

what do you mean?

It's hard to believe that a stern mounted oar-rudder would be a viable steering mechanism to make a 5,700 nautical mile trip from Rome to Rio de Janeiro especially since the "New World" is 1,000 miles closer. Europe had to wait until the Renaissance to get its rudder technology more robust.

The Brazillian law was probably a forward-thinking act to protect antiquities from leaving the country in the event there were underwater artifacts.

https://www2.rgzm.de/Navis/Ships/Ship118/Image/118F3005.jpg

Photo of a reconstructed Roman rudder. Doesn't look so bad?

Thank you for the photo; this is the best one I have seen. I suspect the ropes could not secure each of those rudders in place for a transatlantic crossing even in moderate seas.

Has anyone been able to find if there is any further progress on this site in the decades that have since passed after this article was published?

Someone on quora said they recently began trying to look again:

>"Sir Robert Marx and I are now in the process of reinitiating the research we began in 1983 on this location where we found 3rd century Roman amphora. A sub-bottom profile scan by Doc Harold Edgerton identified a large non-natural object deep in the sediment, below the place we found the amphora. We believe that this is in fact a Roman wreck and are out to scientifically prove it.

#jameslynchexplorer"

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-a-Roman-galley-was-fou...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_co...

If you take the "barca" from praca 15 to the Island of Paqueta, where I grew up, learn to swim, and at age 6 read my first books, I remember Jonnathan Livingstone Seagull , The crime genius, Tistu the green finger boy, Mamae nao pode saber, E proibido chorar, The little prince...

So when you take the barca and cross the Guanabara Bay, its like when you take the ferry train to cross from Hamburg to Copenhagen, and see the light generating crazy windmills, but is Dolphins who swimm and jump together with the barca going the same way to the Island of Paqueta

I remember when I was in Denmark, I stay at the home of a friend family in a farm, so beautiful, they are very nice and very knowledgeable, and the old father takes me to the woods to look for deers, and we were there in silence in the woods and I hear a sound in the leaves, and say something, and the old man says "there" and we see

Then we walk back to the wooden house, and on the way I say

You have good eyes

And the father says

You have good years

I love denmark and my family of friends

The Romans were not good ship builders. I'm skeptic.

You don't need to be a good ship builder to cross the Atlantic. Thanks to the North Equatorial Current, you can launch almost any buoyant object off the West African coast and it'll wash up somewhere on the east coast of the American continent. You don't need sails, you don't need oars, you don't even need a tiller; you just need buoyancy, enough fresh water to survive the trip and the knowledge that the current exists. The Atlantic has been crossed on an array of utterly unsuitable craft including rafts, survival capsules and inflatable dinghies; an elderly French man is currently attempting to cross in a large wine barrel.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/frenchman-jean-jacques-sa...

To end up in the Americas you'd first have to catch the Canary current. It's not certain that the Romans went that far south, although the Periplus Hannonis attests that a Carthaginian expedition sailed as far as Mount Cameroon.

From the Periplus Maris Erythraei we know that the India trade was well established in Roman times, but crossing the Arabian Sea and crossing the Atlantic are two different things. One you can do in a dhow, the other not so much.

This news story absolutely made my day. What a legend.

They seemed to have made some ok ones

> Roman merchant ships are depicted in multiple frescoes and friezes. They look surprisingly similar to ships used by the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th century. https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-a-Roman-galley-was-fou...

And maintained a presence on the Canary Islands, same general direction.

Presumably some ship heading for the Canarys could have blown off course towards Brazil?

Also

>In the modern day, it is not especially unusual for fishermen from the coast of Africa to be caught in storms and carried across the Atlantic to Brazil. https://www.quora.com/Have-they-proved-that-Ancient-Romans-r...

That’s quite an assertion about a culture. As counterpoints: 1. The Romans were clearly quite mobile around the Med; 2. The Nemi ships

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemi_ships

The mediterranean is very calm, there's no way to compare that with crossing an ocean. Romans had trouble even to get into Britain (Ceasar almost died there in two failed expeditions).

I should have phrased in another way as you said, though. It was not a fair assertion.

I'm not sure comparing those two is really that useful.

Wouldn't a large scale military invasion have vastly higher logistical requirements than sending out a purely exploratory party?

Afaik many Roman soldiers were also quite wary of going to Britain, a land they considered even more foreign and savage than Germania, which probably added to the Roman struggle of gaining any foothold.

> Nemi ships

A large flat bottomed oared “ship” (more of a barge really) is the last thing you’d want to try crossing the Atlantic in.

> The Brazilian Navy has (...) in turn charged Mr. Marx with ''contraband'' of objects recovered from other wrecks in this country. (...) the Brazilian officials showed a catalogue of an auction held in Amsterdam in 1983 in which, they said, gold coins, instruments and artifacts removed from shipwrecks in Brazil were offered for sale on behalf of Mr. Marx and his associates.

> Several attempts to give Mr. Marx the opportunity to respond to these charges were unsuccessful. One phone call ended abruptly when Mr Marx said, ''Don't bother me,'' and then hung up.

I have to side with the Brazilian government here, not because I think they're right (I don't know) but because their action will lead to the least harm.

If Marx is right, and Brazil has its say, then the worst that can happen is that an archeological site will be buried in a known location for several decades until someone else will give another try.

If Brazil is right, and Marx has his say, then the worst that can happen is that an irreplaceable archeological site will be plundered in haste with 20th century technology (which is, let's admit, not that great in digging up underwater ruins without destroying them), forever losing an opportunity to learn more about ancient Romans who made it to Brazil.

Not all wonders have to be excavated in our own generation.

Does anyone have an more sources that mention Romans in other parts of the world?

Wikipedia has pretty good overviews:

Americas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_...

Asia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations

The Romans visited the Canary Islands. This is well known and acknowledged by mainstream History.

The Canary Islands are a great stop en route to America. In fact, that's the one Columbus used.

>The Canary Islands are a great stop en route to America. In fact, that's the one Columbus used.

If you're implying that should be used as evidence supporting romans having explored north america, that's really a stretch. Looking at a map, the canary islands are close to the roman empire's territory and the romans could have been there for plenty of reasons besides going to north america.

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Islas_Canarias_(real_loca... and https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Roman_Em...

I have not implied it can be used as evidence.

I’d think most countries would be happy to claim a connection to Rome.

Why?

If the theories about Norsemen crossing to North America are true, then I don't see it being too farfetched that the Romans could have done it too.

Romans didn't possess longboats which were capable of sea travel as well as riverine navigation. Romans stuck to coastal waters.

This is beyond ridiculous. I was already 14 in 1985, and coming from a quite politicised family I already read newspapers, both for our momentous point in History at the time, and for the Cold War (glad we won that).

Even if the military government did try to boost our national pride with History that, given what we still know, does necessarily begin with Cabral — previous landings were inconsequential — there is no way they would not be happy to claim a Roman connection.

If there is anything to Marx’s claims, it would be because he was (seen as) a plunderer.

Anyway, the military government finished in March, and then we had a populist, centre-right government who could not care less for History.

whats is more likely? one diver selling gold coins, or a huge conspiracy of >500 years

> a huge conspiracy of >500 years

From the diver’s account, the wreck wasn’t noticed until the modern era. No need for multi-century conspiracies. That said, yes, it seems more likely he made this up, given his looting of the antiquities.

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