Indícios de uma civilização antiquíssima

Abstract

The book Evidence of an Ancient Civilization, by José Azevedo Dantas, was printed from the author's only manuscript, donated to the Paraíba Historical and Geographical Institute by his family in the 1930s, after his death in 1928, and has not been published to date. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the best records of more than two hundred rock inscriptions or Itaquatiaras located in the states of Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte, covering in our state, municipalities in the Seridó region, areas of Campina Grande and the mountains surrounding Princesa Isabel. The most surprising characteristic of the work is that it was undertaken by a simple and humble man from the backlands, who demonstrated, from a young age, an unusual interest in faithfully drawing such inscriptions, in places of difficult access, in the mountains, slabs and blocks of stone, proposing, much better than that done by visionary visitors, his point of view on this theme, saving for posterity the prehistoric art of these primitive peoples and recording their passage through the region.