Case file · High strangeness
The Ica stones
Thousands of carved andesite stones from Ica, Peru, showing dinosaurs, heart surgery and telescopes were promoted as relics of a lost advanced civilisation.
1966 CE · -14.07, -75.73 · status: hoax
The account
Physician Javier Cabrera collected the stones from the 1960s and opened a museum, claiming they proved humans and dinosaurs lived together. The farmer who supplied many of them, Basilio Uschuya, admitted carving them, copying images from comics and magazines, and showed reporters how he did it.
The sceptical view
The carvings show no ancient weathering, and their maker confessed. Peruvian law on selling antiquities gave him a reason to call them fakes, but he kept making them for tourists.