The Ica Stones of Peru

Description: In the 1960's a local farmer was selling rocks he had found in caves and gorges near the city of Ica Peru. These stones are composed of andesite and vary in size from pebbles to boulders. They are shallowly engraved with a variety of images including carvings of humans, advanced medical procedures, advance technological instruments such as telescopes and flying machines, animals, dinosaurs and even humans riding dinosaurs.

Over the years he had acquired thousands of these stones. Eventually the archeological community heard of these rocks and began to investigate. The farmer was arrested and confined by the government of Peru for selling national treasures and upon his release he recanted his testimony and confessed that he had carved them himself.

In 1966, Peruvian physician Javier Cabrera Darquea was presented with a stone that had a carved picture of what Cabrera believed to be an extinct fish by a friend for his 42nd birthday. Cabrera's father had begun a collection of similar stones in the 1930s, and based on his interest in Peruvian prehistory, Cabrera began collecting more. He initially purchased more than 300 from two brothers who also collected pre-Incan artifacts, who claimed they had unsuccessfully attempted to interest archaeologists in them. Cabrera later found another source of the stones, a farmer named Basilio Uschuya, who sold him thousands more.

Dr. Cabrera had asked the farmer where he found the stones. The farmer was evasive and maintained his story that he made them himself for fear of being put in jail for the rest of his life. It has been determined by some that he was cohered into his confession. A total of about 15,000 of these stones have been recovered. The bulk of these are stored in the Ica Stones Museum in Peru.

Mainstream Theory: The scientific community holds to the farmer's confession of forging the stones himself.

Alternative Theory: These ancient stones have a varnish over them that is formed over hundreds or thousands of years. When the varnish is removed the lighter colored lines appear. When the carvings on the stone were examined it was found the carvings themselves have some varnish on them as well indicating that the carvings are also of ancient origin.

Because of the vast number of these stones, it would be very difficult for one individual to fabricate all of them in a short time span. But the most convincing evidence that these stones are genuine is the discovery of more stones under a house that was built in the 1920's.

Engraved stones were first recorded in the region by a Jesuit missionary Padre Simón, who accompanied Pizarro to Perú in 1525 and examples were sent to Spain in 1562. Additionally, stones dug up in the 50's and 60's have images of Apatosaurus with the correct head, but it was only in 1979 that it was revealed to the scientific community that paleontologists had been using the wrong skull for the Brontosaurus dinosaur.