Is Ingrejil verified as a lost city or is it just a natural formation? - Historum

cachibatches · April 30th, 2012, 12:50 AM

Dear Friends,

Kind regards.

I got reading about lost cities in South America tonight, especially the legend of Paititi, and stumbled onto Ingrejil. There are dozens upon dozens of sights about this in Spanish, and not one in English, so, since I speak little Spanish, I can't tell if this is verified real or something speculative like the Yonaguni monument.

Help a man out:

La citt perduta di Ingrejil, eredit della cultura megalitica americana- Yuri Leveratto personal web site

boreas · April 30th, 2012, 01:07 AM

heard about this in passing, as far as im aware it's a formation of rocks, know to be inhabited by a unknown culture on a plateau in brazil.
sorry that is all i know on such matters.

cachibatches · April 30th, 2012, 01:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boreas

heard about this in passing, as far as im aware it's a formation of rocks, know to be inhabited by a unknown culture on a plateau in brazil.
sorry that is all i know on such matters.

Thanks for trying.

At some point I can have my girlfriend read over a couple of the articles and see what they say. It will do me limited good, however, as I have no idea if the sources are credible.

**Zarin** · April 30th, 2012, 09:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cachibatches

Dear Friends,

Kind regards.

I got reading about lost cities in South America tonight, especially the legend of Paititi, and stumbled onto Ingrejil. There are dozens upon dozens of sights about this in Spanish, and not one in English, so, since I speak little Spanish, I can't tell if this is verified real or something speculative like the Yonaguni monument.

Help a man out:

La citt perduta di Ingrejil, eredit della cultura megalitica americana- Yuri Leveratto personal web site

Hi Catchibatches. I went onto your link and pressed translate and an English version appeared. I looked at every image and almost all look like natural rock separations. There were two that were intriguing. One had a direct linear lineup in a straight line between three very rugged pointed stone structures. They could have been lined up by mere co-incidence. They did not appear human worked, however.
There was one that had a flattened trapezoidal surface like a pedestal supporting an egg shaped spheroid. It was the most unusual, if totally natural, shape of the bunch. It does have the appearance of being human worked, but only a closer look at the surfaces might tell for sure. All in all this looks like nature at work from the limited perspective of what I could actually see. However there is a "henge" at Carahunge, Armenia where the rocks look very similar, but they are purposely arranged by humans in the shape of a circle.

Lokayata · April 30th, 2012, 11:25 PM

It's speculative. The first part talks about the author's trip to get to Ingrejil from Feira de Santana, Bahia. I'll translate the part where he talks about Ingrejil (from the Spanish version):

Quote:

Immediately I had the sensation of encountering a sacred and magical place, where megalithic people lived in archaic epochs. Ingrejil reminded me of Marcahuasi, but smaller.

This archeological site was discovered in 1984 by the Italian-Brazilian scholar Gabriele D'Annunzio Baraldi, in cooperation with archeologists Aurelio Abreu and Luis G. Moreira Junior. The work of the three investigators was recognized by famous specialist in ancient civilizations David Childress.

Walking in the plaza in Ingrejil one sees many alignments of rock, as if they defined/separated zones (perhaps for spiritual or astronomical reasons), and various menhirs (standing stones), along with areas where the terrain was flattened.

In antiquity, various ethnic groups of South America preferred to live high in the mountains instead of in the hot plains for various reasons. Foremost because near the mountains are the sources of water, along with defensive reasons, as you can easily control access to the plateau given that the path to reach there is narrow and steep (as in Marcahuasi, Peru—the geomorphology is similar, save for the altitude). Another reason was spiritual, for the majority of ancient South American people venerated the Sun like a god and so loved to be close to it, giving them a greater ability to celebrate daily ceremonies.

The people who lived in Ingrejil probably lived off of agriculture, but also hunted in the valley where today stands Itaguassu, which, at one time, had an abundance of animals.

According to Baraldi, who in some excavations discovered the foundations of a wall (which was documented by the Globo television network), the ancient megalithic people lived in Ingrejil in around 2000 BC.

However, a complete excavation using stratigraphic methods has not yet been done, through which could be discovered pottery and polished stones.

In my opinion, the Ingrejil site is much older than the date given by Baraldi. It could have been inhabited during the last years of the ice age, when the climate was colder and drier in the whole continent. In that distant period (approximately 10,000 years before Christ), megafauna animals such as the megatherium, the gliptodont, and the mastodon grazed unmolested in the meadows surrounding the Serra das Almas. It could have been the climate change at the end of the ice age which led the megalithics to abandon Ingrejil and go perhaps west, uniting with other groups of humans and starting the Andean culture.

And now that I did that, I see that Google Translate has gotten really good. It looks like you could throw any other websites into Google Translate and get good translations if you find others on the subject.

Anyway, I didn't spend too long looking around the website, but as for credibility, it seems like the author is an Italian currently living in Colombia with a degree in Economics and a passion for history (particularly South American) and travel. Looks like he's written around 7 books, with 3 being history-related. He lists a lot of expeditions in his past and looks to have studied South American history pretty well.

Personally, I think the rocks look like a natural formation, but it's certainly possible that the area was inhabited at some point.

cachibatches · May 1st, 2012, 02:02 AM

Thanks Zarin and Lokayata!

It seemed too good to be true.