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Chapter 10: The Day Men Saw Dinosaurs

[The] co-occurrence of men and dinosaurs […] would dispel an Earth with vast antiquity. The entire history of creation, including the day of rest, could be accommodated in the seven biblical days of the Genesis myth. Evolution would be vanquished.  (Louis Jacobs, 1993: 261, Former President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology)

Challenging the Paradigm

In the country of Peru during the 1960’s, after the collapse of a cave during a flood, some surprisingly strange stones were found.  Carved on the stones are depictions of advanced technology such as men looking through telescopes, some type of brain surgery and what appears to be open-heart surgery.  There are also numerous stones of creatures that have every appearance of dinosaurs. 

There are a few different reactions to these stones.  Dr Javier Cabrera who collected approximately 11,000 stones postulated that the carvings were evidence of an advanced, ancient civilization that lived at the time of dinosaurs (over 65 millions years ago).  Erich von Daniken, in his book Chariots of the Gods, saw the stones as evidence that the earth had been visited in ages past by extraterrestrial beings. 

Most often, however, the stones are routinely dismissed as forgeries[i] because of the advanced technology on them and especially because they have drawings on them of men interacting with creatures that modern science claims lived and died out millions of years ago. 

Needed Skepticism

Dennis Swift is one of the foremost experts today on the stones that have become known as the Ica stones, named after the valley in which they were found.  In his book, Secrets of the Ica Stones and Nazca Lines, he documents the vast collection of stones after making several trips there with geologist Dr. Patton and visiting with Dr. Cabrera.  The current estimate of the number of stones is well over 15,000. 

Obviously, the discovery of the stones has been met with much skepticism – and justifiably so.  People have, in the past, resorted to creating archaeological forgeries and fakes in order to make the latest and greatest discovery.  One such example was performed by renowned archeologist Dr. Fujimura, who was caught in November of 2000 planting stone tools in an archeological dig site (Yamada 2002).  Although the actions of Dr. Fujimura cannot be said to be standard procedure for archeologists and paleontologists, this was not the first time that hoaxes have been performed in order to strengthen the accepted paradigm of evolution.[ii] 

Challenging the evidence is a good thing whenever a new theory is presented.  The Ica Stones and other such discoveries are no exception.  Nevertheless, let’s weigh the evidence and see if these stones merit our attention or not.

Mentioned in Historical Documents

They were first mentioned in the 1500's by Spanish explorers as noted by The Indian chronicler Juan de Santa Cruz Pachachuti Llamgui, who wrote that:

At the time of the Peru-tomb Pachachuti many carved stones were found in the Kingdom of Chperu-tomb […] It is noted that some of these stones were taken back to Spain. The chronicler of the Peru-tombs wrote in about 1570. The OJO, Lima Domingo, a major newspaper in Lima, Peru on October 3, 1993 described a Spanish Priest traveling in the area of Ica in 1525 inquiring about the unusual engraved stones with strange animals on them.  (Patton 2006)

Nazca Graves

The Ica valley, where the stones have been found is the ancient seat of the Nazca people who left thousands of graves filled with numerous artifacts such as textiles, pottery, and these curious stones as well.

The climate of the valley is similar to Egypt in that it is extremely arid and can receive no rain for years on end, which, on the upside, is ideal for preserving ancient artifacts.  The stones range in size from a few ounces up to 1000 pounds.  To date, over 15,000 have been found.  Dr. Swift notes concerning the stones’ depictions that they have “carvings of dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, Pterodactyls, Triceratops and Apatosaurs.  What is absolutely incredible are the carvings showing men riding or fighting dinosaurs” (Swift 2005:16).

 Nazca Tomb: Tombs in the deserts of Peru often preserve amazing artifacts which are very old, including the beautiful, intricate textiles of the Nazca culture (ca. 700 A.D.).  (Courtesy of Dr. Don Patton www.bible.ca)

Sophisticated Drawings

The drawings are neither crude nor unsophisticated in their depiction of dinosaurs.  In fact, some demonstrate specific details about dinosaurs such as the composition of their skin and other features, which have only recently been discovered by paleontologists. 

Peruvian Textiles: These textiles, ceremonial burial stones and pottery depict living dinosaurs.  (Courtesy of Dr. Don Patton www.bible.ca)

Tomb Pottery: This pottery is on display at the Rafael Laredo Herrera Museum in Lima, Peru.  (Courtesy of Dr. Don Patton www.bible.ca)

Dr. Swift made comments after reviewing the photos taken on his 1967 trip to Peru and his visit to Dr. Cabrera who holds the collection of 11,000 stones.  He notes that on one of the stones was the depiction of a brontosaurus with a long skull.  Only in 1979 did two researchers from the Carnegie Museum discover that the brontosaurus in the museum at the time had the wrong head:

Brontosaurus today is known as Apatosaurus because that was the name given to a skeleton found in 1877.  Apatosaurs had a heavy body and heavy legs, a long head, long neck, and long tail.  Apatosaurus means deceptive reptile, but it was O.C. Marsh who was deceptive in not reporting where he got the skull that he put on the dinosaur skeleton.  The fact that the Cabrera Collection has stones dug up in the 1950’s and 60’s from Peruvian tombs dating up to two thousand four hundred years old with Apatosaurus dinosaurs on them lends some credence to their authenticity.  If the stones were a hoax would not the artist have relied upon dinosaur books, movies, or science journals of the 1940’s to 1960’s vintage?  Then why don’t the dinosaurs on the stones have the wrong head? (Swift 2005: 49, emphasis mine)

Possible Hoaxes?

Still, couldn’t they be frauds planted by overzealous devotees seeking to prove that men and dinosaurs lived together?  Or could they not be forgeries made to sell tourists?  Consider the following evidence that rules out the possibility of them being an elaborate hoax.

The sheer number of stones is simply impossible for a few peasants to produce in the past 40 years.  Fifteen thousand (plus) stones (some weighing up to one thousand pounds) represent an astronomical amount of labor which would take more than a lifetime for one person to perform.

One estimate put the total time to carve all the stones at 375,000 working hours.  That would be 12 hours a day, seven days a week for about 85 years!  Only two modern-day Peruvians, Basilio and Irma, claim to have carved any stones.  It seems impossible for them to have had the time to carve all 15,000 stones.  (Bermingham 2006)

 Allosauruses Attacking Man  (Courtesy of Dr. Don Patton www.bible.ca)

There is very little incentive to produce so many since the stones were sold extremely cheaply compared to the necessary labor involved (minimum 12 - 15 hours to produce a small one).  Feeding one’s family from carving these to sell to the tourists would amount to very little. 

Furthermore, the quality of the artwork of the known to be fake stones carved by Basilio was not nearly as sophisticated as that seen on the authentic stones found in graves.  The stones demonstrate an advanced knowledge of medicine such as some type of brain surgery (see Picture 5), which has later been corroborated with the discovery of skulls that showed signs of recovery from surgery.  We know that the patients lived for a fair amount of time after the surgery since the skulls show that the bone (over a shell plate) around the incision had time to grow back – something that doesn’t happen if the patient dies right away!  Additionally, evidence of knowledge of technologies that were once thought to only be common to modern man has been seen on the stones, such as telescopes and even hot air balloons.  Thus the stones do not represent the work of simple peasants.

 Ancient Brain Surgery? (Courtesy of Dr. Don Patton www.bible.ca)

Expert Analysis

Research concerning the Ica Stones has involved various experts who have expressed their opinion and findings that the stones are authentic and genuine; they are not fakes.  One such expert is Colonel Omar Chioino Carraza, who in 1974 was the Director of the Peruvian Aeronautical Museum.  He expressed his belief in the authenticity of the stones after the government conducted official tests.

It seems certain to me […] that they are a message from a very ancient people whose memory has been lost to history. They were engraved several thousand years ago. They’ve been known in Peru for a long time and my museum has more than four hundred of them. (Swift 2004)

Man and Diplodocus (Sauropod): Sauropod frills were discovered in 1992, yet they were being drawn correctly 2000 years ago.  (Courtesy of Dr. Don Patton www.bible.ca)

Swift points out “The National Aeronautical Museum’s collection of engraved stones including dinosaurs was acquired from various locations throughout Peru.”  He also notes the testimony of Pablo Soldi, who found a large collection of stones with his brother, “A thick layer of salt peter covering the main specimens could only be explained by the passage of considerable time” (Swift 2004).  Furthermore, Archaeologist Alejandro Pezzia Asserto from the National Archaeology Department of Peru:

Who was in charge of archaeological investigations in the cultural province of Ica and a trustee of the Ica Museum, conducted official excavations in the ancient Paracas and Ica cemeteries of Max Uhle and Toma Luz. On two separate occasions, engraved stones were excavated from pre-Hispanic Indian tombs dating from 400 B.C. to 700 A.D. The engraved stones were embedded in the side of the mortuary chamber of the tombs and next to mummies. Alejandro Pezzia Asserto published his work with drawings and descriptions of the stones with a five-toed llama that was supposed to be extinct for over forty million years. Other stones were of a fish that allegedly had been extinct for over 100 million years and a bird in flight. These stones became the possession of the Ica Museum as part of the Colca Collection. (Swift 2004 emphasis mine) 

Allosauruses Attacking Man  (Courtesy of Dr. Don Patton www.bible.ca)

The Rocks in the Laboratory

Dr. Swift commissioned a local man, Basilio, who was known to have sold stones occasionally, to carve one in order to test it against one that Dr. Swift found in an actual Nazca grave and one from Dr. Cabrera’s collection.  It was easy to see that Basilio’s was a fake.  Under the microscope, evidence of metal instruments could be seen; there was no patina or film of oxidation, saltpeter or microorganisms. 

On the other hand, the one from Dr. Cabrera’s collection had no evidence of metal tools being used, dirt and sand were in the cracks, and natural oxidization was evident.  There was a heavy coat of patina all over the rocks as well as microorganisms in the grooves.  The conclusion from the Mason Optical Laboratory regarding the Cabrera rock was that the rock was not recent but rather old. (Swift 2005: 69) 

The rock found by Dr. Swift in situ at a cave in Nazca tomb at Rio Grande had a similar analysis: it had a heavy coat of patination, microorganisms in the grooves, salt peter, lichen growth on one section and even an apparent blood stain over dinosaur image.  “The salient conclusion of the laboratory is that the stone is of some age: in fact, of antiquity of hundreds or thousands of years old” (Swift 2005: 71, emphasis mine)

Dr. Swift later took the stones to another laboratory, Palm Abrasive Company in Oregon, suspecting that skeptics might question the analysis of the findings of only one laboratory. They used an ROI optical video that delivers zoom microscopical viewing in the 20x to 500x range.  The coordinate measuring machine attached to it positions resolution to better than 50 millionths of an inch.  Palm Abrasive found the same features as before.  In fact, the apparent blood stain they noted was “characteristic of that found on textiles and ceramics that are interred with mummies” (Swift 2004).  Thus to suggest that the stones are fakes is due to bias, not the evidence from the laboratory.

The Ica Stones Are Not Unique

The evidence of the Ica Stones is not unique.  In fact, there are carvings and figurines from around the world that show that the artists must have seen a living dinosaur from time to time.

Natural Bridges National Park, Utah, The park literature attributes the petroglyphs to the Anasazi who inhabited the area from approximately 400 A.D. to 1300 A.D..  (Courtesy of Dr. Don Patton www.bible.ca)

Acambaro, Mexico Figurines

In 1945, Waldemar Julsrud, discovered a collection of 20,000 or more ceramic figurines in the village of Acambaro (a few hundred miles from Guadalajara), Mexico which, unlike the Ica Stones, can be dated easily and with a fair amount of accuracy since they are made of clay.  The figurines (See Picture 8) most likely originated from the Chupicauro civilization that flourished from approximately 500 B.C. to 500 A.D..  This amazing collection contains at least 23 known types of dinosaurs and others that are still unknown. 

Because thousands of figurines strongly suggest that ancient man actually saw living dinosaurs, the discovery was quickly claimed to be a hoax.  Dr. Swift notes the measures taken to determine conclusively that the figurines were not a hoax as claimed, but are in fact authentic:

In 1955 Charles Hapgood, respected Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Hampshire, conducted an elaborate investigation including extensive radiometric dating. He was accompanied by Earl Stanley Gardner, former District Attorney of the city of Los Angeles, California and the creator of Perry Mason. They falsified the claim that Julsrud manufactured the figurines, by excavating under the house of the Chief of Police, which was built 25 years before Julsrud arrived in Mexico. Forty three more examples of the same type were found. Three radiocarbon tests were performed by Isotopes Incorporated of New Jersey resulting in dates of 1640 B.C., 4530 B.C. and 1110 B.C.. Eighteen samples were subjected to thermo luminescent testing by the University of Pennsylvania, all of which gave dates of approximately 2500 B.C.. These results were subsequently withdrawn when it was learned that some of the samples were from dinosaurs. (Swift 2006, emphasis mine)

Acambaro Dinosaur Figurine  (Courtesy of Dr. Don Patton www.bible.ca)

Carving in Cambodia

In January of 2006, Drs. Patton and Swift journeyed to Cambodia to the temple monastery, Ta Prohm.  The temple was built by Jayavarman VII in honor of his mother and dedicated in 1186 A.D. (See Picture 9 Temple Monastery Ta Prohm).  The walls of the monastery were decorated with hundreds of all kinds of animals, one of which was a creature that closely resembles a stegosaurus.  Drs. Patton and Swift note that the likeness of a stegosaurus has also been observed by two magazines.  One of the magazines states, “Along the vertical strip of roundels in the angle between the south wall of the porch and the east wall of the main body of the gopura there is even a very convincing representation of a stegosaur.” (Ancient Angor 1999)[iii]

Temple Monastery Ta Prohm (Courtesy of Dr. Don Patton www.bible.ca)

Stegosaurus-Looking Creature  (Courtesy of Dr. Don Patton www.bible.ca)

 To See More Pictures click here

Three Possible Answers

Thus, we are left with essentially three possibilities regarding the evidence showing men and dinosaurs together.  The first is that man and dinosaurs actually lived together 65 (plus) million years ago.  This, of course, is unacceptable to the evolutionary model and is obviously contradictory to the belief in a recent, literal, six-day creation.  The second possibility is that dinosaurs did not die out 65 million years ago, but rather continued until the time of early man one million years ago according to the evolutionary time scale.  The third is simply that man and dinosaurs lived together in the relatively near past (less than 10,000 years ago).  None of these options is very acceptable to evolutionists; but the evidence that men and dinosaurs coexisted is ample though it is only visible to those willing to see. 

This selective vision caused by the evolutionary paradigm has prevented many people from reaching the conclusion that dinosaurs (etc.) did not die out millions and millions of years ago – in spite of continual discoveries of living species thought to have died out millions of years ago.  In 1938, a fish, the Coelacanth, which was believed to have died out with the dinosaurs, was discovered as still living.  Keith S. Thomson, Executive Officer, Academy of Natural Sciences states that:

Off the coast of southern Africa, in the winter of 1938, a fishing boat called The Nerine dragged from the Indian Ocean near the Chalumna River a fish thought to be extinct for 70 million years. The fish was a coelacanth, an animal that thrived concurrently with dinosaurs. (Thompson 1991 book cover, emphasis mine)

Thompson also notes concerning the Dawn Redwood that it was “thought to be extinct worldwide until living specimens were found in central China in 1945” (Thompson 1991: 72).

A similar example is in a 1994 article entitled: Newfound Pine Goes Back in Time – It was Believed to be Extinct.  The tree was thought to have been extinct for 100 million years.

David Noble was out on a holiday hike when he stepped off the beaten path and into the prehistoric age. Venturing into an isolated grove in a rain-forest preserve 125 miles from Sydney, the Parks and Wildlife Service officer suddenly found himself in a real-life 'Jurassic Park'-standing amid trees thought to have disappeared 150 million years ago. “The discovery is the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur still alive on Earth,” said Carrick Chambers, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens.  “The biggest tree towers 180 feet with a 10-foot girth, indicating that it is at least 150 years old. The trees are covered in dense, waxy foliage and have a knobby bark that makes them look like they are coated with bubbly chocolate.”

Barbara Briggs, the botanic gardens' scientific director, hailed the find as one of Australia's most outstanding discoveries of the century […] “The closest relatives of the Wollemi Pines died out in the Jurassic Period, 190 million to 135 million years ago, and the Cretaceous Period, 140 million to 65 million years ago.” (Salt Lake City Tribune, December 15, 1994, p. A10, from Associated Press, emphasis mine)

All three examples are surprise discoveries merely because the billions of years of evolution are considered to be an established (and uncontestable) fact.  Fish and trees thought to have coexisted (and died out) with the dinosaurs have been found to still exist.  Perhaps there is so much surprise because the paradigm of when the dinosaurs lived and died out is wrong.  We saw that the Bible plainly talks about dinosaurs under names such as tanninim, behemoth, and Leviathan.  According to the Bible, God created dinosaurs during the first six days along with man.  If we read the first six days in Genesis as literal days, we are not surprised by such discoveries; we anticipate them and are strengthened by them.  Furthermore men and dinosaurs carved on stones are not a problem, but a simple confirmation of what God has already revealed.

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