Studies on composition and characteristics In 2012, research on the pieces returned to the mainstream academia with the involvement of Reniel Rodríguez Ramos from the
University of Puerto Rico at Utuado, who was concerned that up to that point most of the local research had been carried by historians. Efforts were made by the research team to retrieve as much firsthand information on the origin and history of the pieces as possible. 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. 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.
Potential hypotheses Based on his research, Rodríguez has formulated a number of hypotheses that are being currently examined without taking an a priori position about their authenticity or the possibility of fraud, with his initial position taking under consideration that some pieces where likely created after the initial discovery. If the entire Collection was proven to be fraudulent, he argued that the age of the pieces made them archeological artifacts in their right. He also formulated a preliminary hypothesis if several of the pieces were certified as authentic, for which he tried to identify similar geodesic characters. Rodríguez also noted that religious idols found in the
Canary Islands exhibit similar posture and facial features, which were not discovered until after the pieces were reportedly unearthed and he argues that Nazario could not have known. The preliminary character analysis, found that some were similar to the
Libyco-Berber alphabet found in the archipelago. After the initial studies, a set of cave paintings was uncovered near Playa Los Tubos, which Rodríguez decided to capture and send to Renata Springer Bunk (a philologist who has authored several books about the Libyco-Berber characters at the Canary Islands) who responded in the affirmative about their nature but lost interest after being told that they were found at Puerto Rico. Ultimately, he combined these with the seafaring nature of Caribbean natives and studies like one in which archeologist Richard Thomas Callahan of the
University of Calgary studied how far the
Canary Current could have dragged a drifting vessel, to formulate a hypothesis that he wanted to falsify. Following the 2019 studies, Rodríguez distanced from previous stances and considered Nazario's "Ten Lost Tribes" hypothesis as falsified, since the similarities that were previously noted were insufficient to account for the fundamental differences found in the way that the languages were written (supporting Rollston's conclusions). However, he noted that the way they were kept under the custody of a select group was rare (seen in cases such as the
Dead Sea Scrolls) and was quoted as saying that "[t]he hands that made these are different from the hands that made [other] artifacts in Puerto Rico." Rodríguez did not completely dismiss the possibility of inter-continental travel, stating that "[...] these stones could potentially be the first robust evidence to begin having a discussion about the possibility of pre-nautas (pre-Columbian mariners) [and that they] question the meta-narrative that Columbus brought writing and history with him", effectively pushing the definition of Puerto Rican history back thousands of years. In regards to other hypotheses, he is skeptical of Fell's conclusion and notes that some of the words that the
zoologist translated as phonetic Quechan such as
yuca,
ungey,
chayote or
papaya are in fact Arawak in origin. ==Notes==