Discovery of Brazil

The first arrival of European explorers to the territory of present-day Brazil is often credited to Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral, who sighted the land later named Island of Vera Cruz, near Monte Pascoal, on 22 April 1500 while leading an expedition to India.

He assumed they were on the coast of Asia and hoped by heading south they would, according to the Greek geographer Ptolemy, round the unidentified "Cape of Cattigara" and reach the Indian Ocean.

[9] Many scholars assert that the real discoverer of Brazil was the Spanish navigator Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, who on 26 January 1500 landed at the Cape of Santo Agostinho [pt], on the southern coast of Pernambuco.

The mentioned port was the cove of Suape, located on the southern slope of the promontory, which the Spanish expedition named Cape of Santa María de la Consolación.

Spain did not claim the discovery, although it was meticulously recorded by Pinzón and documented by important chroniclers of the time such as Peter Martyr d'Anghiera and Bartolomé de las Casas.

On the beach, along the riverbanks, their crew had a violent encounter with the local indigenous people (now known to have belonged to the Potiguara tribe), an event recorded by the Spanish chronicler.

Heading north, Pinzón rounded the Cape of São Roque and reached the Amazon River in February, which he named Santa María de la Mar Dulce.

The accompanying text reads, "Este cavo se descubrio en año de mily IIII X C IX por Castilla syendo descubridor vicentians" (lit.

[12] On 30 October 1500, king Manuel I of Portugal married Maria of Aragon and Castile, daughter of the Catholic Monarchs and sister of his first wife Isabella (who died during a difficult childbirth).

On 17 August 1501, the fleet sighted the Cape of São Roque in present-day Rio Grande do Norte, already discovered by Pinzón (latitude calculations were relatively accurate at the time, although longitude was quite faulty).

[13] Later the Spanish Crown sent navigator Juan Díaz de Solís on an expedition to explore the lands allocated to Spain according to the Treaty of Tordesillas – whose imaginary line passed along the coast of the present-day state of São Paulo, near Cananéia.

[17] In order to seal the success of Vasco da Gama's voyage in discovering the sea route to India – which allowed bypassing the Mediterranean, then under the control of the Moors and Italian nations – King Manuel I hastened to outfit a new fleet for the Indies.

This ship belonged to Álvaro de Bragança, son of the Duke of Braganza, and was equipped with resources from Bartolomeo Marchionni and Girolamo Sernigi, Florentine bankers residing in Lisbon who invested in the spice trade.

Based on an incomplete document found in the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon, Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen identified five of the ten ships that made up Cabral's fleet.

Some 19th-century historians declared that Cabral's flagship was the legendary São Gabriel, the same ship commanded by Vasco da Gama three years earlier, when he discovered the sea route to India.

Vasco da Gama reportedly made recommendations for the impending long journey: stressing coordination among the ships in order to prevent their losing sight of each other.

He recommended to the captain-general to fire the cannons twice and wait for the same response from all other ships before changing course or speed (a counting method still used in terrestrial battlefields), among other similar communication codes.

[citation needed] The peoples who inhabited Brazil at the time of Cabral's arrival are classified as living in the Stone Age in terms of technology, transitioning from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic.

But they had developed extensive knowledge of fermented alcoholic beverage production (more than 80 types), using roots, tubers, barks, and fruits, among other material, as raw ingredients.

The best-known one revolves around a possible secret expedition by the Portuguese navigator Duarte Pacheco Pereira in 1498, aimed at identifying territories belonging to Portugal or Castile according to the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494.

Furthermore, the possibility of a policy of secrecy by Portuguese monarchs, proposed in the first half of the 20th century by historian Damião Peres [pt], is not sustainable, as it was common practice, in the absence of a treaty, to claim sovereignty over a land by publicizing its discovery.

As suggested by Pacheco Pereira in Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, Portuguese navigators in 1498 were instructed by King Manuel I to explore the Atlantic in search of lands.

The representation of the then-called Island of Vera Cruz on Juan de la Cosa's map, made the same year, refutes another theory that Portuguese discoveries were secrets not shared with the Spanish.

The first Brazilian historian to question the landing of the Spanish navigator at the Cape of Santo Agostinho [pt] was the Viscount of Porto Seguro, Francisco Varnhagen, in the mid-19th century.

[25] Although Varnhagen acknowledged that Pinzón had been in Brazil before Cabral, he believed the Cape of Santa María de la Consolación to be the tip of Mucuripe in the city of Fortaleza.

However, according to the Cantino planisphere (1502), made the year following the exploratory expedition that rescued the two convicts left in Brazil by Cabral, the landing place of the Portuguese navigator is situated south of the Bay of All Saints.

During his so-called "second" voyage in 1499, he supposedly temporarily separated from the leader of the expedition, Alonso de Ojeda, and explored the northern coast of Brazil, believing that he was sailing along the eastern edge of Asia.