Popularization By Cabrera
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. Cabrera's collection burgeoned, reaching more than 11,000 stones in the 1970s. Cabrera published a book, The Message of the Engraved Stones of Ica on the subject, discussing his theories of the origins and meaning of the stones. In this he argued that the stones show "that man is at least 405 million years old" and that what he calls gliptolithic man, humans from another planet, and that "Through the transplantation of cognitive codes to highly intelligent primates, the men from outer space created new men on earth." The Ica stones achieved greater popular interest when Cabrera abandoned his medical career and opened a museum to feature several thousand of the stones in 1996.
In 1973 during an interview with Erich von Däniken, Uschuya stated he had faked the stones. In 1975 Uschuya and another farmer named Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana confirmed that they had forged the stones they gave to Cabrera by copying the images from comic books, text books and magazines. Later Uschuya recanted the forging story during an interview with a German journalist, saying that he had claimed they were a hoax to avoid imprisonment for selling archaeological artifacts. In 1977, during the BBC documentary Pathway to the Gods, Uschuya produced an Ica stone with a dentist's drill and claimed to have produced the patina by baking the stone in cow dung. That same year, another BBC documentary was released with a skeptical analysis of Cabrera's stones, and the newfound attention to the phenomenon prompted Peruvian authorities to arrest Uschuya, as Peruvian law prohibits the sale of archaeological discoveries. Uschuya recanted his claim that he had found them and instead admitted they were hoaxes, saying "Making these stones is easier than farming the land." He engraved the stones using images in books and magazines as examples and knives, chisels and a dental drill. He also said that he had not made all the stones. He was not punished, and continued to sell similar stones to tourists as trinkets. The stones continued to be made and carved by other artists as forgeries of the original forgeries.
Read more about this topic: Ica Stones