page_title: Nazario Collection
section_title: Independent authentication
hierarchical_section_title: Nazario Collection / Recent research / Independent authentication
caption_attribution_description: Archeologist Reniel Rodríguez Ramos discussing the characters that he has been able to extract from the Nazario Collection.
context_page_description: The Nazario Collection, also known as Agüeybaná's Library, Father Nazario's Rocks, and the Phoenician Rocks, are a cache of carved stones that originated at Guayanilla, Puerto Rico. According to contemporary accounts, the statuettes made of local serpentine rocks were first discovered by Catholic priest José María Nazario y Cancel during the 19th century, and feature unidentified petroglyphs that have been speculated to be connected to the Old World for over 130 years. Their original site was not far from Yauco and was underground, where it was hidden under a slate that concealed a tunnel. Overwhelmed with the quantity and difficulty of transporting a trove that totaled more than a ton, he opted to abandon his individual approach and recruited locals to aid in the moving of the rocks to his house, where he conducted the first research on them by comparing them to similar objects from other countries. Nazario would combine his research with his religious background, leading to the hypothesis that there might be some connection between them and the Ten Lost Tribes.
context_section_description: In Summer 2019, the results of two independent examinations of the pieces were published. The first, carried by Rollston, concludes that the glyphs in the pieces believed by Rodríguez to be ancient were not falsified by Nazario and that they likely represent a form of writing, which was organized within register lines. However, the specialist distanced from the transatlantic hypothesis and stated that it most likely represents an autochthonous system. In a subsequent interview, Rollston also argued that "these [symbols] are not Mesoamerican writing — they’re not Aztec or Mayan — they’re definitely not that". “Generic symbols”, with analogues in other languages, were observed.
  Another, held on twenty pieces by a team led by Iris Groman-Yaroslavsky and carried at the Use-Wear Analysis Laboratory of the University of Haifa’s Zinman Institute of Archeology, reaffirmed the presence of long-term weather degradation and determined that stone tools were used in the carving of the characters. Traces of gold and red pigment were also found.
caption: Some of the characters found in the pieces during a presentation by Reniel Rodríguez in 2019.
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