What are the Ica stones?
The Ica stones are dark stones collected from the 1960s by Javier Cabrera, a local doctor in Ica, a town in southern Peru. Pictures are engraved in lines on their surfaces, and they are said to number more than 10,000. They are also called “Cabrera stones.”
Astonishing engravings
The stones show scenes of humans together with dinosaurs like Triceratops and Stegosaurus, humans riding or fighting dinosaurs, people observing stars through telescopes, and even scenes resembling heart transplants and brain surgery. Cabrera claimed they were records of a super-ancient civilization from a time when dinosaurs and humans coexisted, and opened a museum to display them.
Made by a local farmer
However, a local farmer who sold stones to Cabrera was interviewed in the 1970s and confessed that he had carved them himself. He explained that he copied pictures of dinosaurs and other subjects from comics, magazines and books, then baked the stones in cow dung to make them look old, and he demonstrated by carving one, it is said.
It has also been pointed out that the dinosaurs depicted closely resemble outdated reconstructions in the picture books of the time, such as dinosaurs dragging their tails on the ground, which later research revised. Other OOPArts said to show dinosaurs and humans coexisting include the Acambaro figures and the Paluxy “man tracks”. Famous OOPArts are listed on the OOPArts page.
