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Ica Stones - Peru

Do the Ica Stones prove that mankind coexisted with dinosaurs and had advanced technology?

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It is a rare object that stimulates the curiosity of archaeologists, ancient astronaut theorists, and creationists all at the same time, but the Ica stones have done just that.   The Ica stones refer to the momentous collection of more than 15,000 engraved stones which curiously depict clear and detailed dinosaurs, complex medical surgery, and forms of advanced technology such as telescopes. Most believe the stones are nothing more than an elaborate hoax, while others maintain that they are evidence that an ancient race of humans who possessed advanced technology coexisted with dinosaurs.

The stones, which vary in size from pebbles to boulders, are composed of grey andesite with a granite semi-crystalline matrix. It is a hard stone that is difficult to carve, but the images are scratched through the oxidised surfaces. The images carved onto the surface also vary in complexity from simple pictures engraved on one side of the stone to designs of complex scenes.  Some of the designs appear to be in styles which can be recognised as belonging to the Paracas, Nazca, Tiwanaku or Inca cultures, while others are in a style never seen before.

The subject matter includes images of flowers, fish, or living animals, including the more controversial dinosaur depictions, as well as mythological-type beasts or monsters. Other stones depict geometric images and symbols that correspond with known petroglyphs and geoglyphs. For example, one of the Ica stones depicts a monkey, which is almost identical to one of the Nazca geoglyphs.

Ica stone carving on the left and Nazca geoglyph on the right

Ica stone carving on the left and Nazca geoglyph on the right

The stones that have drawn the most attention are those that depict different species of dinosaurs, as well as those that show advanced technology, such as telescopes and flying machines, and medical practices that were unknown at the time they were found, such as a caesarean section with acupuncture used as a form of anaesthesia, and heart transplants.

The depictions of dinosaurs on these Ica stones appear unmistakable

The depictions of dinosaurs on these Ica stones appear unmistakable

The stone on the left depicts a man looking through a telescope, while the stone on the right appears to show heart surgery

The stone on the left depicts a man looking through a telescope, while the stone on the right appears to show heart surgery.

The background story

According to reported accounts of the discovery of the Ica stones, in 1966, Peruvian physician Javier Cabrera Darquea was presented with a stone by a friend for his 42 nd birthday which had a carved picture of what he believed to be an extinct fish. Based on his interest in Peruvian prehistory, Cabrera began collecting more of the stones. He purchased more than 300 from two brothers who also collected pre-Incan artefacts. Cabrera later found another source of the stones, a farmer named Basilio Uschuya, who claimed he found a huge cache of the stones when the Ica River overflowed its banks destroying a nearby mountain and exposing an unknown cave.  Uschuya would not reveal the cave’s location but agreed to sell thousands of the stones to Cabrera, boosting his collection to more than 11,000 stones by the 1970s.

Ica stones from the Cabrera collection

Just some of the thousands of Ica stones that form Cabrera’s collection. Photo source.

News of the find caught the interest of researchers and the eyes of the world turned toward Ica. Subsequently, the BBC produced a documentary on the discovery bringing an extraordinary amount of focus on the Peruvian Government. Under pressure to police the country's antiquities, the Government arrested the farmer for selling the stones. Facing years of incarceration, the farmer recanted his story claiming he'd carved all 15,000 of the stones himself.  He even demonstrated how he engraved the stones using a dental drill. The stones were labelled a hoax and the government considered the embarrassing matter closed. But the story would not go away.

Cabrera published a book, entitled ‘The Message of the Engraved Stones of Ica’, discussing his theories of the origins and meaning of the stones. In it he argued that the stones show that humans originated from another planet and were at least 405 million years old.  Further, he claimed that "Through the transplantation of cognitive codes to highly intelligent primates, the men from outer space created new men on earth."

Cabrera’s book, as well as his opening of a museum featuring several thousand of the stones in 1996, brought widespread attention to the stones. Creationists used the Ica stones to claim that humans lived in proximity with dinosaurs, which contradicts evidence that the extinction of dinosaurs predates mankind by approximately 65 million years and disproves evolutionary theory. Believers in the ancient astronaut theory have also cited the stones as evidence of a lost, advanced civilisation brought to man from other planets.  Neither of these positions is supported in scientific or academic communities.

Fact or Fiction?

Those who maintain that the Ica stones are authentic maintain that Uschuya was forced to announce that he had faked the stones to avoid imprisonment – Peruvian law prohibits the sale of archaeological discoveries. Indeed, Uschuya himself recanted his forging story during an interview with a journalist, saying that he claimed they were a hoax to avoid jail. However, sceptics dismiss this explanation referring to Uschuya’s convincing demonstration of how he produced them.

Proponents also argue that other engraved stones have been found within the Ica region, not just the ones ‘found’ by Uschuya.  Archaeologist Alejandro Pezzia Assereto, a trustee of the Ica Regional Museum, found engraved stones within three different tombs dating from 400 BC to 700 AD. The engraved images on the stones resemble those found on the Ica stones sold by Uschuya. In 1968 Assereto published his findings, including drawings and descriptions.

Nevertheless, it is argued that if ancient humans once possessed advanced technology there would be a lot more evidence than carved stones, including the technology itself. Furthermore, sceptics point out that the dinosaur depictions resemble popular mid-twentieth century reconstructions, which show them as lumbering beasts, dragging their tails along the ground. We now know that this was not how they walked, a clear demonstration that the stones are a twentieth-century product and not the creations of people who saw living dinosaurs.

According to Cabrera, the proof that the stones are not a hoax is in their number. There are too many stones for a single farmer, or even a collective of hoaxers, to have scratched out.  It has been calculated that the farmer would have had to carve one stone every day for over 40 years to produce the total library.

An alternative theory put forward is that some of the stones are authentic, while a smaller subset, perhaps the most controversial, was forged. This could account for virtually all the facts of the case. Uschuya may have found some stones, produced more which were controversial in order to garner interest, and then sell them at a good price.

Many have asked, why don't scientists simply date the stones and settle the matter?  The problem is that stones without organic material trapped in them can only be dated according to the strata layer in which they are found. Since Cabrera's stones come from some mystery cave which has never been identified, much less excavated, there is no way to date them.

Today, most agree that the stones are nothing more than an interesting hoax, however, others maintain that attempts to discredit the stones are merely a way to hide evidence that conflicts with mainstream perspectives. The Ica museum in which the stones are housed remains open to those who would like to interpret the mysteries for themselves.

Featured image: Ica Stone depicting man on top of a dinosaur. Photo source.

By April Holloway

 

Comments

First the petina on original stones have been analyzed and prove that the original stones are not fake.. Of course, there are some fake ones, but petina analyssis can easily detect them.

One of the reasons these stones are real is that these stones have been known for decades and they show dinausaurs with feathers and patterns, which science only very recently has been found that many of these dinosaurs where feathered and had the exact pattern that many of these stone depicted dinosaurs show.  This was not known decades ago, and there is no way that the indigenous people that have been finding these stones for decades will know these fine details and draw them with the exact details.

Second, the amount of stones found are incredible, and the local indians/people that have found, and continue to find, these stones decades ago, did not have the knowledge of these animal details. 

Of course there may be some fake stones, but you can chose to think that somboedy decades ago was a genious and created this increibly elaborated scheme to create this unique stone carvings with this unique knowledge about dinosaurs that were not know in that time..

Same as the megalithyc stones in Cuzco and other parts of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and around the world. There is more than enough evidience that there was a global civilization before 10,000 years ago that knew how to work with gigantic stones and work it without mortar with exact precision as shown in the Cuzco megalithi building and Saccsawaman ruins..

 

 

References and depictions of dragons exist in almost every major culture around the ancient world (there's literally thousands) - they are in the Americas, Babylonian, European, Asian, etc... and even described in the Bible (Job). Exactly how many books, paintings, engravings, narratives, are we going to insist are all a hoax or not depicting what is obviously a dinosaur just so as to support the mainstream scientific hypothesis of evolution? I call it a "hypothesis", because technically a scientific theory is one that is observable, repeatable, and measurable by way of experimentation... and sad to say that none of these qualifications are met as it relates to the imagined ideas that people evolved from microbes that existed billions of years ago. What even prompts articles like these to be written?? Are scientific organizations making the employment decisions and/or providing the funding to support these efforts?

It always fascinates me how quickly folks jump to defend the scientific dogma propagated by mainstream media. As if to say, there have never been a case where the Overlords of Science have never been dishonest with there findings. I'm not talking of instances where data as misinterpretation, oh no. I am speaking of out right lies to support their theories when the evidence says otherwise. Here are a few examples,
Pilt-down Man: a fraudulent fossil composed of a human cranium and an ape jaw, allegedly discovered in England and presented in 1912 as a genuine hominid of the early Pleistocene, but shown to be a hoax in 1953. Yet yet it was knowingly left in text books for years, as one of mans early ancestors.
Java Man: Dubois himself is quoted as having written in 1932: ’Pithecanthropus was not a man, but a gigantic genus allied to the gibbons … I still believe, now more firmly than ever, that the Pithecanthropus of Trinil is the real “missing link”.’1. Sorry believing doesn't make it so.

Nabraska Man: another in the so called evolutionary tree of mankind. Based on the finding of a single tooth. A further search was made at Snake Creek, the site of the original discovery, and by 1927 it was begrudgingly concluded that the tooth was that of a species of Prosthennops, an extinct genus related to the modern peccary or wild pig.

Lets not forget the killing and beheading of Australian Aboriginal people to provide evidence for Darwin's theory of man evolving. Scientist were also involved in grave robbing.

Oh I saved the best for last, Ernst Haeckel, Evangelist for evolution and apostle of deceit. Known as ‘Darwin’s Bulldog on the Continent’ and ‘the Huxley of Germany’, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel is notorious as the scientist who perpetrated fraud upon fraud to promote the theory of evolution. The Imaginary Monera, The Non-Existent Speechless Apeman, The Infamous ‘Fish Stage’ in Human Embryos otherwise know as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, can still be found in some biology textbooks to this day even though its is known to be a lie.

It is fun how those who are so sure the Ica Stones are all fakes, never question the Nazca Lines authenticity. None of them say it was a group of people wanting to create a hoax, like those who make crop circles. The carved stones are hoax. If they are hoax, then explain how some of the drawings have creatures have features on only now know. Example circular spots on their skin or some with leaf like appendages on their backs, structures which up until recent times we didn't know some of these creatures had. Also left out of this whole debate are the artifacts from other countries and ancient cultures that feature dinosaurs in there art work. In Mexico, China, Mesopotamia, Cambodia and the Neva ho all these cultures and people groups are lairs? True science say when you have theory and reality (evidence) does not support your theory. Get a new theory. Instead contemporary scientist who are unwilling to accept they are wrong, try instead to ignore or deny the facts rather that throw out their useless theories.

 

I agree that the patina should be dated. Why haven’t the mainstream archeologists done so? Do they fear the results? Also, the sheer number of stones tell me that most are not fakes. Andesite is extremely hard and I don’t think the locals would have had access to machinery that would be needed to carve the large number of rocks that have been found.

"The stones are covered with a fine patina of natural oxidation which also covers the grooves, by which age should be able to be deduced . . .
Eric Wolf
Lima June 8, 1967"
--- Eric Wolf, geologist

There's also a book by Dennis Swift "Secrets of the Ica Stones and Nazca Lines"

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April

April Holloway is a Co-Owner, Editor and Writer of Ancient Origins. For privacy reasons, she has previously written on Ancient Origins under the pen name April Holloway, but is now choosing to use her real name, Joanna Gillan.

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