Recent Evidence for a Pre-Portuguese Human Presence on the Azores Islands

Abstract

Conventional history has it that the volcanic mid-North Atlantic Azores islands, some 800 miles to the West of mainland Europe, lay undiscovered until encountered by Portuguese sailors during the A.D. 1400s. Still, fourteenth-century maps do show islands in the region, and other indicators of even-earlier human presences are mentioned in the older literature, including for Carthaginians. The present note reviews literature that reports some surprising recently recognized genetic and archaeological evidence. These varied data have inspired fresh claims to the effect that there had been human occupance in the archipelago long prior to the purported fifteenth-century first discovery on the part of Portuguese mariners, the discovery that was followed by permanent settlement from Portugal. The focus here is on the work of António Félix Rodrigues of the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and of Science Resources, University of the Azores, Portugal, and his colleagues and their quite unexpected but plausible findings (