The stone pillar Portuguese explorers placed to mark land claims was a padrão.
Portuguese mariners used padrões during the 15th and 16th centuries to record important landfalls and assert Portugal’s priority and possession. They were commonly erected on capes, promontories, and river mouths. Early markers could be wooden posts or crosses, but tropical weather quickly damaged them, so later examples were carved from stone and topped with a cross and royal arms.
Diogo Cão is credited with first placing stone padrões during his voyages along the African coast in 1482–1484. Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama also erected notable examples, including Dias’s markers near the Cape of Good Hope and da Gama’s surviving pillar at Malindi in 1498.
A padrão was not simply an obelisk, cairn, or prehistoric menhir. Its distinctive purpose was maritime imperial marking, often accompanied by inscriptions identifying the Portuguese crown. The word’s plural is padrões, and the term is related to Portuguese cartographic and claiming traditions, not to a generic pile of stones.