Strange and mysterious artefacts have been found on our planet for hundreds of years according to historical records, which is why archaeologists, historians and scientists take such an interest in finding and preserving them.

Some have opened up our minds to many aspects of human civilisation in ancient times, while some are marvels which still leave us puzzled as to how such expertise was achieved in times when modern tools and technology were not supposed to have been available. They could be remains of lost civilisations or corpses, or even texts older than when we think people were able to read and write. But so little is known about human race as the more we discover, the more questions we are left with than answers.

The Ica stones are one such mystery. It defies everything we know about human evolution and the timeline of the development of intelligent and modern tools. These stones, which by the way are in all sizes from pebbles to boulders, have intricate patterns and designs that are quite conflicting and contradictory to accepted thinking. For example, there are pictures of dinosaurs being hunted by humans, and then there are drawings of advanced medical procedures like surgeries and operations that can only be related to modern times.

What are these engravings? Native ancient wisdom of tens of thousands of years or the drawings of a creative artist to attract attention and to establish tourists’ interest?

To get to the bottom of the story, which by the way is not really easy, we shall go back as far as we can. A physician from Peru, Javier Cabrera Darquea was presented with a stone for his 42nd birthday in 1966. A local farmer gave the stone to him. What caught his interest was that the carving on the stone had the picture of a fish, which is supposed to be extinct. Cabrera’s father in the 1930s, who was interested in the history of the land, had started the collection of such stones. Thus Cabrera continued to collect these stones. It was his thinking that these were from the Inca period and were ancient artefacts.

Soon the collection rose to 11,000, which by the way are exhibited in his private museum, which is open to the public. He also wrote a book titled, The Message of the Engraved Stones of Ica. Now the bafflement here is that Cabrera argues in his book “man is at least 405 million years old” — astonishing the very threshold of all scientific and archaeological beliefs!

Now we come to the farmer who had an unending supply of these stones. Popular researcher and author Erich von Daniken interviewed Uschuya who told him that he had faked the stones with the help of another farmer by copying pictures from comics, storybooks, magazines and textbooks. Then later he told a German journalist that he had told the story about faking the stones to avoid being sent to prison for selling archaeological artefacts by the Peruvian government. But then later on he still stated to the media that he had made the engravings himself by using a dentist’s drill, knives and chisels. Thus he no longer faced the threat of being jailed and started selling them to tourists as souvenirs.

Now here are the objections by sceptics, which by the way seem quite logical, there is no evidence that has yet been found to show that humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs. By present theories, humans walked the Earth 65 million years later. Then, if by any chance, some native legend insists on associating mankind to the large predators, then what about the complex scientific stuff going on in the engravings? Was man walking with the “dinos” and performing heart surgeries with modern equipment? It does not make any sense to most! In fact even for a comic book this would be too far-fetched a tale.

But then there is a mystery here otherwise there would have been no story. And the story is alive because of two main reasons. One that the stones cannot be carbon dated as they are said to come from some cave that no one knows. The other is that on examination by experts, they are said to be ancient. Well not all of them, as a lot of the stones were made as forgeries by people and there were many fakes — the belief that the stones tell a very, very old story of ancient man. Man when he was Neolithic and savage. But from somewhere above came intelligent beings from a society well advanced; taught them the arts, medicine and technology. Some stones have flying machines too.

Now the fact is that this particular stone is not easy to carve. Then there are thousands of stones. It would take an immense amount of labour to carve them with such precision and artistry, which seems unlikely an art for a farmer. Furthermore, to go to the trouble of burying them only to later on state that they were just fakes. And one of the engravings is a view of planet Earth from space 13 million years ago! Incredible to say the least!

But how do we know that it is Earth from space at that time? And all this is supposed to be a product of a couple of local farmers?

Also there is an Inca mythology about a race of giants that made the stones to preserve history. A race of giants that roamed the Earth at the same time as the dinosaurs did. Since the stones are made from minerals, carbon dating cannot be performed. They are in an area of the world which is the region of another mystery, The Nazca Lines.

So, who took the trouble of engraving these beautiful stones? The original ones, of course? Two farmers, experts in precision carvings on mineral stones or a civilisation that is old beyond belief?