Before long the farmer had become something of a local celebrity and word of his find began
to circle in the Archeological community and many experts began to descend on the area to
investigate the validity of the stones, Naturally the sudden attention quickly aroused the interest
of the Peruvian Government who, fearing Peru would become another Egypt and soon be overrun
with diggers and robbers, promptly arrested the farmer to investigate his claims for themselves.
It is unclear what was said to the farmer during his confinement but upon his release he
suddenly stated in writing that the entire collection of stones was a hoax and that he had carved
the stones himself in order to trick the tourists and make some easy money. He had just never
realized it would get so out of hand.
But there’s much more to the story than that.
In 1966 the towns’ local physician Dr. Javier Cabrera received one of the stones from a native
as a birthday present. The Doctor, who had heard of the farmers novelties, noticed that the stone
certainly looked ancient but what had really intrigued him was the fact that it appeared to
accurately depict a type of prehistoric fish (fig.14). The actual farmer in question was wholly
uneducated, unable even to read. So how then, puzzled the Doctor, could such a man possibly
possess enough knowledge of paleontology to be able to produce an accurate and anatomically
correct carving of an extinct sea creature?
Fig.14 Fig.15
Now, somewhat interested, Dr. Cabrera began to visit the farmer and soon became the main
recipient of the carved stones, of which it appeared the farmer had a virtually endless supply. The
Doctor then began to create a kind of stone library which he organized by subject matter; the
subjects including the races of man, ancient animals, lost continents and global catastrophes. He
questioned the farmer many times about the source of the stones but the farmer, still in fear of
being arrested again and jailed for life, remained evasive and persisted with his story that he had
carved the stones himself. (It must also be understood here that removing or selling ancient
artifacts carries a heavy penalty under international law, a fact which could help to explain the
farmers’ sudden change of attitude when he was arrested).
The farmer produced more of the stones for sale every week and after purchasing a few
thousand of them Dr. Cabrera became to feel as though he had indeed fallen prey to the farmer
and that the man had actually created the thousands of carved stones himself. So he then began
pressing the man on the method he had used to carve them but again the man continued to remain
evasive and kept refusing to discuss even the method he had used to carve them with the doctor.
Eventually Dr. Cabrera reasoned that logically, because of the enormous volume of stones in
the collection, if the farmer had indeed carved all the stones himself he would have to have
carved the first stone when he was 2 years old and then carved one stone every day for over 40
years in order to produce the total library! It didn’t take much to reason that quite obviously such
a thing was not possible so Dr. Cabrera then set out to find out the answers about the Ica Stones
based on a study of the many designs depicted on them.