The Ica Stones
Out Of Place Artifacts: Ica Stones
Created 1/18/2002 – Last updated 11/15/2021
In this Article
What are Ica Stones? | Where are they found? | How many are there? | Keeper of the stones | Rock Facts: Hardness | Very Difficult to Carve | First Recorded by Father Simon | Dinosaurs | Skeptic: Not Dinosaurs | First Dinosaur Skeleton | Scientific Dogma | Age of the stones | Corroborating Evidence: Ancient Footprints | Ancient Astronomy | Ancient Lenses | Ancient Medicine | Ancient Continents | Comets are coming | Ancient Library | Conclusion | Links
What are Ica Stones?
The Ica Stones are real carved gray andesite rocks decorated with interesting carvings. These rocks originally formed from molten magma. The carved stones come in a variety of sizes. Some can easily fit your palm others are as large as a dog. 2
Where are they found?
Andesite rock is a gray to black volcanic rock typically found in lava flows. The name “andesite” comes from the fact that they are found in great number in the Andes mountain ranges, but they are found as well, according to ScienceStruck, in other mountain ranges and volvanoes around the world, including Popocatépetl (Mexico), Mount Ngauruhoe (New Zealand), Mount Shasta (U.S.), Mount Adams (U.S.), Soufrière Saint Vincent (Caribbean), Krakatoa (Indonesia), Mount Fuji (Japan), and others.
Furthermore, this rock was also found in two space meteorites in the year 2009 in the Graves Nunatak Icefield during a meteorite search. Other examples can be peperino volcanic tuff located at Rome (Italy), or the trass volcanic tuff located at Eifel district (Germany).
Stones of the type matching the Ica Stones are found in a white rocky desert near the villages of Ocucaje and Ica, Peru near the Nasca Lines.
As to the location of the Ica Stones, they are found in Ica, Peru, but more specifically, the source is unknown. A man named Bacilleo Achua once claimed to have excavated many of the stones from tombs in the area of the village of Ocucaje – 1 | 8
How many Ica Stones are there?
The number of these carved stones is relevant to answer the claim that they are a hoax. The Fortean Times in 2001 put the number at about 11,000 by the late 1970s.
Cabrera’s private museum includes a collection of stones belonging to his father – Bolivia Cabrera, a Spanish aristocrat – gathered from the fields of the family plantation in the late 1930s. They resembled his new acquisitions and soon he found another supplier – a farmer named Basilo Uschuya – and bought many thousands more from him. By the late 1970s, Cabrera estimates, he had over 11,000 of these anomalous engraved stones. (Source)
If one person could carve 20 of these per day, it would take over 1.5 years. That number of stones could be hoaxed by one very industrious individual. If they are hard to carve and the person could only do 5 per day on average, working every day, it would take over 6 years. As someone who single-highhandedly created over 15,000 (probably closer to 25,000) blog posts over several decades, I do think a dedicated artist could have accomplished this. Also, much of what I have written has been copied and pasted into other people’s web sites. I found this ( https://www.freewebs.com/crusader37/theicastones.htm ) for example, the top of which is this very article as I had updated it in 2006.
Note: Out of gratitude to the Internet and all the fun I’ve had researching and learning with it, I license my work (like this article) under a Creative Commons license (CC) – See note at the bottom of this article) but please link back or provide a note like “by TrueStrangeNews” when you copy my stuff, yo.
The point here about copying is that some hoax Ica Stones could certainly be copies in the style of some real much older Ica Stones.
Getting back to the question of how many stones there are: other sources say there are between 15,000 to 40,000 carved rocks. 3, 5, 6 If a person carved 5 stones per day on average, every day of the year, year after year, 40,000 carved rocks would take over 21 years to create. Not impossible, but a huge amount of work.
The artist would have to create more than one per day if there are more than 30,000 of them. If one person started at age 10 carving one stone per day and continued doing so for the next 80 years retiring at age 90, he/she would produce only 29,200 stones.
We counted over 170 in this photo but the resolution prevents us from saying if these are all carved versus ordinary or even painted stones. If there really are tens of thousands the possibility that they are all a hoax is more remote due to the tremendous amount of work involved.
According to one translation of “The Message of the Stones”, by Dr. Javier Cabrera there were “only” 6,000 of them.
“After a systematic review of the 6,000 samples that made up my collection, I realized that in many stones the designs seemed to repeat themselves.”
An author writing in Spanish says the Dr. stated there were a “million stones, buried in the desert” but he would not reveal the location because his life (and the lives of his family?) were in danger if he did. If threats were made, one might guess a culprit to be the Peruvian authorities who do not want an influx of new grave robbers tearing up the country. Someone reliable should count every Ica Stone available.
Authenticity
One time NASA scientist, Josef F. Blumrich (1913 – 2002) is cited by Kathy Doore (who sells pictures of the stones) as a man “who developed and designed the Saturn V rocket and participated in the design of Skylab” and who once remarked, ” I am deeply impressed by what I have seen here, and I am happy to have found so much direct evidence of what I began to feel and understand before. There is not doubt in my mind about the authenticity of these stones.” – April 29, 1974
Statements by experts are interesting, but they are of most value when experts give compelling reasons for their views. What are some reasons for considering or believing the Ica Stones to be authentic?
Age of the Stones
Each stone is carved with continuous lines etched into the rock surface and this gives a clue as to the age. According to an article on Ellie Crystal’s web site:
“The etching reveals a lighter color than the original dark varnish of age, yet the etched grooves also bear traces of this varnish, indicating that the carving was done in ancient times. They are a form of Andesite, a gray to black volcanic rock, and a very hard mineral that would make etching quite difficult with primitive tools, a local river rock, covered with a patina of natural oxidation. Laboratories in Germany have authenticated the incisions that make up the carvings as extremely ancient. Nearby fossil finds indicate the area to be replete in bone fragments millions of years old.Unlike clay figurines that have organic material (i.e. straw) in their composition, there are no organic materials in plain old rock that will tell anything of its age. Traditional radiocarbon dating techniques rely upon organic material (that was once alive) to determine age. The surface of these rocks, however, has a varnish that is the result of bacteria and minute organisms which have adhered to them. A good black varnish or patina will take thousands of years to discolor and coat each stone. Etching these rocks would have removed the existing varnish, revealing the bare rock. Since these rocks have developed additional varnish in the grooves, it seems likely that they have were carved a long time ago.”
Keeper of the Stones
The one time owner of the largest collection of stones was a local physician, amateur archeologist and geologist named Dr. Javier Cabrera Darquea. The Dr. had died of cancer by December 30, 2001, however. His last interview was conducted by Kathy Doore of labyrinthina.com. A relative of the doctor is the new owner of the stones. The Dr. claimed to know the secret location of the cave where the stones were found, but he apparently took this secret to his grave. An archaeologist agreed to be blindfolded and taken to the cave to verify his claim, but the Dr. refused.
A trained physician and founder of the San Luis Gonzaga Ica National University, Cabrera was highly regarded in his mainstream professional career but generally ridiculed for his involvement and extensive theorizing of the Ica Stones. (Source – Ross, Sara. 2007. The Ica Stones and Dr. Javier Cabrera. PARA Web Bibliography B-03. )
Rock Facts: Hardness
The MOHS Scale measures hardness. It ranges from 1 to 10 degrees, in which the softest material is talc with 1° and the hardest is diamond with 10°. The harder the stone, the more resistant it is to abrasion. Marble is recrystallized limestone formed by the effects of heat and pressure. It ranges in hardness from 3 to 4 on the MOH scale. It is fairly easy to carve.
Very Difficult to Carve
The MOHS scale applies to individual minerals. Andesite is a rock type, not a single mineral. As a mixture of minerals, typically dominated by plagioclase ( feldspar minerals 6 to 6.5 hardness) plus pyroxene (chain silicates average about 6 hardness) or hornblende (5 to 6 hardness) and other common minerals found in andesite are Magnetite (5.5 to 6.5), zircon (7.5 hardness), apatite (5 hardness), ilmenite (5 to 6), biotite (2.5 to 3), and garnet (6.5-7.5).
You can see that andesite is on average, due to its composition, about 6° on the MOHS hardness scale, giving it about 1200 Kg/cm² of compression resistance. This means that carving andesite is very difficult, similar to carving Feldspar (granite also 6°).
This seems like a problem. It would take days and thousands of blows to carve each of the Ica stones, even with steel tools. In fact ‘carving’ might not be the right word, since you are not pushing the chisel through the material like you would with the limestone or marble, but you are instead pulverizing the stone, trying to break off chips of crystals (which can be as sharp as glass).
Modern carving tools must be carbide-tipped to stand up to the wear and tear of working granite. Fine detailed carving is better left to other types of stone.
If the stones are pure andesite they would be most remarkable creations!
Here’s is an example of someone using chisels made of a very strong metal, tungsten, to carve marble by hand, just to give you an idea of the forces needed.
If you look at all the lines on the Ica Stones, the situation becomes quite difficult to reconcile.
Okay, but not so fast. If an artist had electricity in Peru and had obtained a dremel with a diamond tip, carving andesite (similar to granite) would have been easy. Here’s what carving small stuff on granite by hand looks like with the right tool.
Dr. Cabrera said he first came upon the infamous stones when he was given one for his birthday in the early 1960s. Was there electricity in Peru in the 1960s?
Yes, some places in Peru had electricity by 1955.
From its inception, the Peruvian electricity system started to be developed by private initiative. In 1955, Law No. 12378 regulated the mechanisms of private participation (Source)
The dremel company was founded in 1932 so the tool has been around a long time. It might sound like this case is solved, but not so fast. AC electrical power systems were developed and rapidly adopted after 1886 due to AC’s ability to distribute electricity efficiently over long distances, but here’s the thing… the Ica Stones seem to pre-date electricity.
First Recorded by Father Simon
The stones were, according to Joseph Robert Jochmans, “first seen and recorded by Jesuit missionary Father Simon, who accompanied Pizarro in 1525. Samples were shipped to Spain in 1562.” Father Simon traveled in the area of Ica in 1525 and inquired about the unusual engraved stones with strange animals on them. 3
One Christian source says that in the 1570’s Indian historian “Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Llamgui,” (I believe they mean Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua) reporting on the Incas in “Relacion de antique dades d’este reyno del Peru” noted that the Conquistetories took some stones back to Spain and that at the time of the Inca Pachacuti, many stones were found in the kingdom of Chinca, “Chinchayunga” the low country of the central coast of Peru, where Ica is located today.
I did find the title and it exists, as does the historian.
The Relationship of antiquities of the King of Piru, written in the early seventeenth century, signed by the chronicler Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua, a native of the province of Canas and Canchis, is one of the three ethnohistoric and ethnolinguistic monuments of the Andean culture , together with the chronicle of Guaman Poma de Ayala and the Quechua relationship of Huarochirí. (Google Translation of text here.)
In what I’ve translated so far, I could not verify the claim that Conquistetories took some interesting carved stones from the area back to Spain with them.
If either of these claims is true, Jochmans or Pachacuti Yamqui‘s, it would be amazing evidence that some Ica Stones are not contemporary hoaxes. That is, Bacilleo Achua, the peasant attributed to hoaxing all of the stones for profit, is probably not 400 years old. Without seeing them, however, there is no way to know, even if there are references to them that are this old, if the ones seen then and taken to Spain were the same dinosaur-like images that now exist. They may have been something quite different, we just don’t know.
K-T Dinosaur Extinction an illusion?
Our standard geologic timetable informs us the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago between the Cretaceous period (K) and the Tertiary period (T). The K-T extinction is theorized because dinosaur fossils are 
found throughout the Mesozoic era, but are not located in the rock layers (strata) of the Cenozoic era. The die out happened over the course of 10 million years.
Do all dinosaurs become fossils? No.
“Taphonomy is the study of the conditions under which plants, animals, and other organisms become altered after death and sometimes preserved as fossils. Research into these matters has shown that fossilization is a rare phenomenon. In order for a fossil to form, the body must not be eaten or destroyed by erosion and other natural forces.”
The climate change around the K-T event did not entirely kill off the dinosaurs, but it did make the continued creation of dino fossils impossible due to an explosion of new low oxygen tolerant microbes which more completely and quickly devoured the bodies of the dead animals! ( Email me if you know evidence to refute my theory. )
The exact methods and duration of the dino extinction are hotly debated, but was there actually a gap of over sixty million years between dinosaurs and mankind? Many think the legends of dragons portray dinosaurs that coexisted with men.
The stones and figurines depict human figures hunting or struggling with a variety of monsters that clearly resemble living BRONTOSAURS, TRICERATOPS, STEGOSAURS, IGUANODONTES, AND PTERODACTYLS. The photo here is a figurine “from secret tunnels” which are part of the Ica Stone collection of the late Dr. C. This was in the background of another photo taken by Peter Schneider. It appears to be a human figure riding or attacking a small Triceatops.
Skeptic: Not Dinosaurs
Here’s another experiment. This pagehas some monsters drawn from people’s imaginations. Would any of those same 1000 people think that the creations resemble dinosaurs? I think not.
First Dinosaur Skeleton
There many earlier finds of dinosaur bones, “in 1676, a huge thigh bone (femur) was found in England by Reverend Plot. It was thought that the bone belonged to a ‘giant,’ but was probably from a dinosaur.” 8 Other finds may have lead to tales of dragons in China and to Greek and Roman ogre and griffin legends, but “modern paleontology — the science of studying dinosaur fossils — began in earnest in 1858 with the discovery of the first nearly-complete skeleton of a dinosaur in Haddonfield, New Jersey. … This was the find that included enough bones of the same animal to scientifically prove dinosaurs had really existed.” 6 | 7 Modern man’s conception of dinosaurs did not begin until the 1800’s when the word “dinosaur” was coined (1841). 3
Some possibilities
1. Dinosaurs and humans co-existed because dinosaurs did not die out when claimed.
2. Dinosaurs and humans co-existed because humans existed much earlier in earth’s history than claimed.
3. The humans depicted are not native to this planet. They were visiting aliens.
4. The stones are a hoax and facts have been invented or distorted to keep the legend alive.
Really Big Birds
This interesting photo was found on the odd omniology web site. The site claims that these Pterodactyl photos are from the book, “The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs” by Dr. David Norman & Dr. Peter Wellnhofer and states that they may be staged.
Interestingly, on Oct 18, 2002, CNN ran a story about a giant bird seen in Alaska.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) — A bird the size of a small airplane was recently said to be seen flying over southwest Alaska, puzzling scientists, the Anchorage Daily News reported this week. Residents in the villages of Togiak and Manokotak said the creature was like something out of the movie “Jurassic Park,” and had a wingspan of 14 feet (4.6 meters) –making it the size of a small airplane. An eagle can have an 8 foot wingspan, but eyewitnesses say it was much bigger than that. The wandering albatross can have a wingspan of 13 feet. There is also the recently declassified Bat Winged Boeing “Bird of Prey” in use from 1992 to 1999 to demonstrate stealth technology. The craft is 47 feet long, but witnesses, one as close as 1000 feet from the creature say what they saw was a bird, not a jet. “The people in the plane saw him,” John Bouker was quoted as saying. “He’s huge, he’s huge, he’s really, really big. You wouldn’t want to have your children out.”
If you do a search for the Boeing Bird of Prey you will see that it could not be mistaken for a giant bird, it is a small silver jet with a unique shape, but not at all bird-like.
Corroborating Evidence: Ancient Footprints
Robert Todd Carroll of the skeptic’s dictionary states, “In light of the lack of corroborating evidence, areasonable person must conclude that the stones are a hoax.”
Some (mostly those supporting the creationist view) 
point to human tracks “now being assigned by mainstream geologists to the lower Cretaceous period, some 113 million years ago,” as evidence.
On June 1, 1968, William J. Meister found a human sandal print (above right) in an area which includes the Swasey Mountains and the Cambrian Wheeler shale formation, an area famous for its many fossils.
The prehistoric mud with the prints is now Cambrian shale and is an astonishing 600 million years old. Fossils in the prints are trilobites – supposed to be among the earliest forms of life on earth. This time, we have literally hit “rock bottom” in the fossil record – and yet here we find the presence of man, and an intelligent, shoe-wearing man at that. x
Extraordinary claims such as this demand extraordinary proof. Can anyone confirm or refute this story?
We must be careful not to do what is all too commonly done by people trying to prove a position they like, that is, we must not stretch available facts to make evidence where there is none. Until there is confirmation of 600 million year old sandals, this claim is just a curiosity that may one day be soundly refuted or verified.
Ancient Astronomy
One source says of the stones “People are shown using telescopes, looking at the stars …” 1 Indeed, two people can be seen on the same stone looking though telescopes at stars. Actually these telescopes are interesting. They seem to be crystal spheres at the end of tubes. One writer wrote that “it could also be a depiction of a person trying to play a type of whistle musical instrument (flute, pennywhistle, nose flute, etc.)” Uh, yeah. I guess you could stick a flute in your eye and point it at the stars. Sure, why not.
On the other hand, the first telescopes could have certainly been clear curved stones that bent light, inserted into tubes. Such “magic looking stones” would probably be exceedingly rare, but could occur naturally and they would be highly prized, the reasonable subject of an ancient art.
Ancient Lenses
There exists an ancient lens called the Layard lens or the Nimrud lens that was dug from the earth by Dir John Layard in the year 1850 in what is modern day Iraq at the Assyrian palace of Nimrud. Although debated, a prominent Italian professor claimed the lens was used by ancient Assyrians as part of a telescope, explaining these people’s knowledge of astronomy.
The Nimrud lens (also called the Layard lens), which has been dated to between 750 and 710 BC, is made from natural rock crystal and is a slightly oval in shape. It was roughly ground, perhaps on a lapidary wheel. It has a focal point about 11 centimetres from the flat side, and a focal length of about 12 cm. This would make it equivalent to a 3× magnifying glass (combined with another lens, it could achieve much greater magnification). – AncientOrigins
More to the point for this story, there are reading stones which occur naturally, which bend and magnify light.
Ancient Advanced Medicine
On the Ica Stones are scenes apparently depicting fairly modern medical procedures. Harder to believe is the claim by the late Dr. Cabrera that the stones show a brain transplant, something we do not have the ability to do in the year 2021, as far as I know.
There are scenes of Caesarean sections, blood transfusions, the use of acupuncture needles as an anesthetic (which only gained use in the West since the late 1970s), delicate operations on the lungs and kidneys, and removal of cancerous tumors. There are likewise detailed images of open heart and open brain surgery, as well as 20 stones showing a step-by-step heart transplant procedure.
As Dr. Cabrera noted, and as has been verified by other medical physicians, there are stone etchings which show a brain transplant. The prehistoric surgeons, it is evident, possessed knowledge several steps beyond modern-day surgery. 4
There have been successful brain cell transplants, or more accurately, stem cell transplants that become new brain cells, so we may get to the skill level of being able to transplant larger areas or even an entire living brain one day. That, of course, opens up huge ethical as well as science fiction questions. Can we remove memories, skills or preferences? Add new ones? I don’t see why not, eventually.
In a new paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of doctors and researchers including Dr. Michael Kaplitt describe the first-ever implantation of a patient’s own progenitor cells into the putamen region of the brain. The patient, who suffered from idiopathic Parkinson’s disease, was treated on both left and right sides of his brain, six months apart. At 18 month and 24 months post-treatment, he shows improvement or stabilization of his symptoms; since the progenitor cells were his own there is no need for immunosuppression. – Cornell
It remains highly doubtful that any such technology has existed on ancient earth if we use the standard history of human evolution taught today, but if we gave humanity an extra billion years by having it have developed on Mars when Mars had water, there could certainly have been human looking arrivals to Earth with such technology.
Around 4 billions of years ago when the planet was young, it appears to have had a thick atmosphere that was warm enough to support oceans of liquid water. – SciNews
The fact that there was once supposedly liquid water on Mars is a mystery in itself.
… there’s a problem. Mars is located 50 percent further away from the sun than Earth is, so the amount of solar energy it receives is far too low to keep any water on its surface in a liquid state. To add to the puzzling nature of Mars’ wet past, the young sun was radiating even less energy in the past. As a consequence, according to Kite, Mars would have needed to have far higher atmospheric pressures to make liquid water exist on the surface – a pressure of around 5 bar, or 5 times the Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level. – Seeker
The Seeker article above goes on to say that you can judge atmospheric pressure by meteor impact analysis and that it appears Mars did at once time have “a pressure of 0.9 bar – 150 times higher that Mars’ current atmospheric pressure and approximately equivalent to Earth’s current sea level pressure of 1 bar.” This would allow for liquid water. If we stretch, we can imagine that Mars had intelligent human life that developed space travel and visited Earth. Until evidence exists to support this idea, such as a giant megalithic structure in the shape of a human face on the red planet, or an ancient library from this vanished civilization, we will just have to wonder.
Ancient Continents, Maps
According to J. J. Benitez, Plaza & Janes’ ‘Existio Otra Humanidad’
“There were a series of tablets dedicated to the ancient continents of our world, and two matched circular stones showing the eastern and the western hemispheres of this planet at that time; hemispheres that showed the earth’s geography millions of years ago. These hemispheric maps showed continents that no longer exist today, such as the mythical Atantis and Mu, and even others.”
“Meanwhile, the doctor continued his research with geologists to interpret the maps on several stones showing a weird configuration of the world. Some angles and land masses looked vaguely familiar, but the majority were badly skewered into strange shapes. Geologists have confirmed that based on current computer projections, the shapes indicated on the rocks are indeed accurate for the planet earth, as it was, about 13,000,000 (13 million) years ago, and as seen from above!!!! – article by Robert Prickett“
I’m not a Geologist but 13 million years ago our contients were pretty much like they are today. Here are some freeze frames from the 3D movable Paleoglobe, our modern guess as to what we think our planet looked like 20, 65, 80 and 100 million of years ago as seen from the south pole. Just spit balling here, but if the land mass in the Ica Stone above is Africa, I’d say we are talking about 100 million years ago. That also fits the supposed age of the oldest human footprints mentioned above.
Comets are coming
According to some, among the tablets is also a story of a great evacuation from Earth. On stones of great weight the civilization engraved the story of the departure from Earth of the elite scientists and professionals, to a physical planet that today would be considered a part of the Pleiades. It is not impossible that our space ship Earth recurrently passes through an area of space in our Milky Way Galaxy with a higher number of comets or that one day we ourselves may need to consider moving.
Ancient Library
“There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes. … Just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with … requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times … ” (- Plato, 347 B.C. )
Conclusion
The Ica Stones of Peru are quite interesting. You don’t have to be a Young-Earth creationist to claim that humans lived in proximity with dinosaurs, there are some other options still in keeping with scientific evidence. On the other hand, any theory that allows humans to ride on and otherwise interact with dinosaurs will require a huge departure from currently accepted historical timelines and such a major historical paradigm shift would require extraordinary proof.
Links, References & More Research
1. Links to search search engines for the key words “Ica Stones”: G | Y | A
2. http://www.labyrinthina.com/ica.htm
3. http://www.mm2000.nu/sphinxff.html4. http://www.crystalinks.com/icastones.html
5. http://www.viewzone.com/dinostone.ica.html
6. http://skepdic.com` /icastones.html
7. http://www.weirdvideos.com/ancient2.html
8. http://www.alanmatthew.com/show6.htm
9. http://www.bcvideo.com/mom10.html (video Mysterious Origins of Man)10. http://members.cox.net/icastones/
11. http://reptile.users2.50megs.com/research/r110799b.html
12. http://www.wyke37.freeserve.co.uk/ica_stones.htm
13. http://www.rense.com/general19/inca.htm
14. http://www.bearfabrique.org/sauropods/dinosaurs.html
15. http://www.nii.net/~obie3/000illum/history.htm
16. http://www.magdalena.net/Glyptolithic%20Stones/ (Great pics)17. http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa111599.htm
18. http://www.omniology.com/IcaPeruDinoCeramicArt.html19. http://www.omniology.com/IcaPeruDinoArt.html
20. http://www.omniology.com/3-Ceramic-Dinos.html
21. http://www.omniology.com/NovemberAcambaroTrip.html
22. http://www.violations.dabsol.co.uk/weird/weirdpart1.htm
