Cochineros is a petroglyph site on the banks of the Rio Mala, at an elevation of 570 metres above sea level. It is 30 kilometres inland from the coast and 45 kilometres downstream from Huarochiri. Calango, a town known as the site of a petroglyph investigated by Antonio de La Calancha and written about in 1622, lies 12 kilometres downstream.
The petroglyphs were visited and recorded by Antonio Nuñez Jimenez in 1976 , partially studied by Henry Tantalean in 2010, and included in a photographic record of petroglyph sites by Guffroy in Imágenes y Paisajes Rupestres del Perú, 2009.
The site is difficult to access and the images are very well preserved. Nuñez numbered his drawings in reference to stones 1 to twelve, though no drawings are recorded for stones 7 and 9. Tantalean believed there were 15 stones. He began to count and categorize the images on eight of the stones, including the five most important, and recorded over three hundred images. The apple growing farmer who owns the land and works amongst the stones says there are thirteen. I have recorded twenty and there are probably more. However, the majority of the individual images as well as the largest panels, are found on just five stones.
The plain words “stones” or “boulders” do not do justice to these magnificent rock outcrops. Piedra 11 (following Nuñez’ numbering system) was measured by Henry Tantalean as 3.75 x 10.35 metres (maximum length x maximum width) and the five most important stones have a combined surface area with drawings of one hundred and fifty square metres. The number of stones does not compare with sites such as Checta, Toros Muertos or Miculla, where hundreds of small rocks are spread over an area. But the number of images (700 to one thousand) is comparable, and there are several large panels that appear to have some conceptual unity. On two panels, this is indicated by a border drawn around the panel, enclosing a space of several square metres.
An indication of the significance of Cocineros is that Nuñez dedicates forty pages to it, in the top six of his 72 sites, a good deal less than the pages for Toros Muertos (190), but comparable with Huancor, Alto de la Guitarra, Cerro Mulato, Yonán, and Palamenco. He recorded about 70% of the drawings.
The less abstract images on the boulders at Cocineros frequently appear to be positioned in a mystic world where the rock represents a landscape. Images of living creatures respect the horizontals and the verticals. Human figures stand upright on vertical or steeply sloping rock faces. Birds fly upwards on steep faces, or over the shoulder of the rock. Groups of llamas are drawn in a horizontal line, walking at ground level, or traversing on natural ridges or planes of the rock surface as if on mountain paths.. Serpent rivers – wavy lines with four or more successive bends – run downhill on sloping or vertical rock faces.
The position of an image on the rock often relates to the outside landscape. Rayed circles, which might represent suns or stars, are mostly drawn on the peaks of stones or on horizontal surfaces facing the sky. There are four fish images, drawn on a horizontal panel of rock onto which you can walk from the orchard. The serpent rivers not only run down sloping rock faces, but are mostly found on the river facing side of the rocks.
The mountains of the Andes are the source of life-giving waters, as well as terrifying huaicos and floods, and they are the home of the gods. The Moche sacrificed girls on the top of a five-fingered mountain, and recreated the ceremony in in their ceramics. The Inca sacrificed children on the mountain tops; Juanita, the “Ice Princess”. was one of eight dessicated and frozen bodies that were buried with offerings in the snows of of El Misti, the iconic volcano above Arequipa. The people of the Huarochiri Manuscript raced their llamas to the tops of the mountains at the annual festival time. And today, the people of Cusco and Puno climb Ausungate in late June, dressed as bears and playing drums and flutes.
As seen from the river, it is easy enough to see some of the Cochineros rocks as mountains, since the largest are four metres high. But the land is sloping or terraced away from the river, so that the ground on the far side can be level with the top of the rock. Only two large rocks stand above the ground from whichever side they are approached.
One of these, which I will call Piedra 11 in reference to Antonio Nuñez’ numbering system, rises steeply to a peak from whichever side it is viewed (Figure 1). The peak is two metres above ground level from the west and four or five metres above the banks of the river on the east. It naturally appears as a metaphorical mountain.
The mountain range of Paria Caca, the central deity of the Huarochiri Manuscript, has a prominent twin peak when seen from the south on the approach from Tanta (Figure 2). This double peak is an important aspect of the mountain as an idol; small cairns, or apachetas, set up by pilgrims and travellers besides the historic pathway towards the mountains are double cairns.
I am using Paria Caca to refer to the deity who rules and roams from the mountain peaks down towards the coast, but whose main location is in or around the mountain peaks above the glaciers, lakes and streams that become the rivers Rimac, Mala, and Guarco or Cañete (to use their modern coastal names) running to the sea. He appears to have been particularly associated with the twin peak. But his major shrine was probably below the peak on the coastal side and his existence is beyond time and space. Consequently, I will refer to the peaks, range, pathways and other locations as the peaks, the mountains, the staircase of Paria Caca without implying any narrow locality for the deity.
The representation of the mountain labelled “Paria Caca Ydolo Yaro” on a 1586 map drawn for the first Corregidor of the Province of Yauyos clearly shows two peaks (Figure 3).
An adobe frieze with a repeated image that might represent the double peak of Paria Caca (Figure 4) runs along the top of a high wall surrounding an open square on three sides at the archaeological site of Huaycan de Cieneguilla. The remains of this Ichsma and later Inca town are in the Cieneguilla valley besides the route from Pachacamac to Paria Caca. Circles which may represent the full moon, and a feline or puma are also shown.
Seen from the river, Piedra 11 has two prominent peaks (Figure 5). From this view, the peak on the right has a large anthropomorph close to the top, a dominant figure. There are several figures drawn close to the left hand peak, facing the river and another large anthropomorph drawn on the reverse south facing panel , to the right hand side, with legs and arms, and streaming hair, of which two long strands, three times the length of the body, reach up towards the fringe (Figure 6).
This rock, on the southern face, is topped by a fringe of short vertical lines like icicles (Figure 7). This fringe is held up aloft at one end by a creature with a broad body and round head, outstretched arms, a fox head belt and curving tail. A similar creature is drawn at the opposite end of the fringe (Figure 8). Faintly visible in the centre of the panel, close to the spiral, is a third such creature with two arms and a tail, and a belt.
The mountain heights associated with Paria Caca are snow capped, with a line of peaks, and around the peaks are several lakes fed by the melt water of the glaciers that depend from the peak. On the southern side are Mullococha and Paucarcocha, in the centre is a chain of lakes called Chuspicocha, and on the north are Suyoc and Tototral. There are also many small tarns.
The fringe of white lines drawn on Piedra 11’s southern panel could be considered to represent the snow cap and descending glaciers, and the three anthropomorphs below could be seen as personified lakes. They are linked to the snowy peak of the mountain by their arms which are streams of water. Their tails too are the outlets of the lakes, the source of water flowing down the valley. In the real world, the lakes below the peaks have a similar form, wide below the glaciers and then narrowing and curving (Figure 9).
Figure 9. The snow capped peaks of Paria Caca, the white peaks surrounded by lakes, as seen in a Google Earth image. The ice melts into lakes whose outlets are the sources of the rivers Rimac, Mala and Guarco. Mullococha marked on the upper right, is smaller than other lakes but is by far the largest on the 1586 map.
The position of the Cocineros site midway between the coast and the highlands, and with a clear view up the valley, makes it easy to envisage these rocks as symbolic mountains. On a clear day an observer can stand before the rocks and look beyond to see distant peaks and at times, white clouds over the peaks that appear as snowy summits (Figure 10). Similar views, up an open valley to see the life-giving mountains, and also towards Pleiades rising, are provided at Checta and Miculla.
Whilst many of the drawings on the rocks of Cochineros appear to be small individual contributions without an overall theme, the peak of Piedra 11 offers a unifying concept which is more than a metre wide (Figure 11). Its core is the fringe of 21 vertical lines each 5 to 12 cm long, held up or touched at each end by similar anthropomorphs. A third central figure has a similar form, and the larger figure on the right is also reaching up – arms or hair – towards the peak.
There are similarities to the map prepared in 1586 for Davila Briceño, the Spanish Corregidor of Yauyos (Figure 12). Here the mountains are represented by a series of white peaks in a line at the top of the page. They parallel the sea, a line of blue at the bottom of the map. Rivers are shown as if reaching out arms to the mountains, with the three major rivers being the Rimac descending to Lima, the Rio Mala coming down past the stones of Huancani, in the centre of the map, and the river to present day Cañete on the right hand side. The largest rivers begin from lakes close to the mountains.
The map divides the region in to Hanan Yauyos and Lurin Yauyos, upper and lower, or brother and sister, regions, and it is likely that these followed or approximated to the historic divisions, or more appropriately, in terms of the andean cosmovision, two-sided unities.
The map was prepared in response to a request from King Phillip of Spain for a record of his colonies in 1577 and sent to Spain in Europe 1586. The peak of the mountain is labelled Idolo Yaro and drawn as a double peak. It was then still considered appropriate to mark the Inca Idol on a map. Little more than twenty years later, Francisco de Avila would climb up the mountains with a team of Jesuits to destroy these shrines.
It is not a realistic map. The size of the rivers and the lakes is exaggerated. The largest lake is that shown at the foot of the Idol. The Escaleras, the Stairs, of Paria Caca pass right by it (Figure 13). But this lake, Mullococha, is just two kilometres long and half a kilometre wide. Nearby there is a chain of four lakes, eight kilometres long, Chuspicocha, that is barely shown on the map.
Perhaps the difference is that Mullococha, small in size, looms large in the myth of the area. It was here that the battle between Paria Caca and the old god, Huallallo Caruincho, was fought. The lake itself was created during the battle and played a decisive role in the defeat of the cannibal Huallallo Caruincho.
According to the Huarochiri Manuscript, “From early in the morning to the setting of the sun, Huallallo Caruincho flamed up in the form of a giant fire reaching almost to the heavens, never letting himself be extinguished. And the waters, the rains of Paria Caca, rushed down towards Ura Cocha, the lower lake. Since it wouldn’t have fit in, one of Paria Caca`s five selves (or brothers) knocked down a mountain and dammed the waters from below…nowadays this lake is called Mullococha. As the water filled the lake they almost suhmerged that burning fire…finally Huallallo Caruincho fled toward the low country.”
These aspects of the map – the drawn and labelled idol, the lake, and the staircase – suggest that the map represents the vision of the world of the indigenous people. Barely fifty years after the Spanish arrived in Peru, they used someone with local knowledge to create the map. The similarity between the imagery on the rock and that on the map may be because both represent important realities for the authors, not of geography, but of the position of Paria Caca and Mullococha in their world.
The map shows two roads leading up to the mountains of Paria Caca. The road from Lima heads up the Lurin valley and then crosses the Rio Mala headwaters and is seen skirting Paria Caca on the stone steps of Escalerayoc. This is labelled “Road from Cusco via the Sierra” and corresponds to the road from Pachacamac to Xauxa via Paria Caca, which passes the town of Huaycan de Cieneguilla with its adobe fresco of the twin peak. The second heads up from Mala past Calango, and then crosses to the adjacent river valley passing through Omas. A third road is shown along the coast, at the foot of the map.
The panel of the Paria Caca rock has a vertical trail of dots, which rises from close to the foot of the rock towards, but not reaching, the fringe across the peak (Figure 14). If the fringe of white lines and its lake-like creatures represent the mountains and the water sources, it would be consistent to see such a line as being a path towards the mountains. At the foot of the rock, parallel to the ground, is another line of dots which runs to left and right. Again, in comparison with the Davila map, this line of dots represents a coastal road, and the ground itself represents the sea.
Other drawings on the panel are consistent with its conception as a mythical mountain. A condor soars high up on the shoulder of the mountain at 4000 msl. Swifts fly upwards from the lowlands. A fox or cat climbs up a tree at 3000 msl.
We are told in the Huarochiri Manuscript, that people from throughout the region used to walk or run to Paria Caca, the twin peaked mountain from where the Rio Mala descends. These people included the Yunca, who had been driven down from the mountains to the coast by the newcomers. The manuscript lists the communities valley by valley heading south.
“But, in the old times, they say that all these people used to go to Paria Caca mountain itself. All the Yunca people from Colli, Carhuayllo, Ruri Cancho, Latim, Huancho Huaylla, Pariacha, Yañac, Chichima, Mama, and all the other Yunca from that river valley (the Rimac); also the Saci Cayo, who together with the Pacha Camac come from another valley (Lurin), and the Caringa and Chilca, and those people who live along the river that flows down from Huaro Cheri, namely the Caranco (Rio Mala), and other Yunca groups who inhabit that river region, used to arrive at Mount Paria Caca itself, coming with their ticti, their coca, and other ritual gear.”
So the people of the Mala valley would have travelled up to Paria Caca at the annual festival in June. They would presumably have travelled along the the narrow trackway which rises and falls along the hillsides of the valley, and can be clearly seen rising from from the present day town of La Capilla.
It may be that they passed the stones, or even camped and fed their llamas on this broad plateau by the river.
The sloping face of Paria Caca rock might then have been seen as a metaphor for the mountain for passing pilgrims, and the line of dots ascending from close to ground level, to a height of two metres, would represent a path towards the mountain, perhaps the pilgrimage route to Paria Caca. Or it could have represented the mountain, at other times when people gathered by the stones, as a proxy for rituals nearer home. We are told in the Huarochiri Manuscript that after the Spanish came, many people no longer travelled to Paria Caca itself, but to other closer mountains or hilltops.
Two figures appear beside the vertical line of dots or path. The upper figure appears to hold a tumi knife and a llama. The lower figure holds aloft something which could also be a llama.
These could be depicting the pilgrimage described in the Huarochiri Manuscript, where “people run a race on their way to this mountain, …driving their llama bucks. The strongest ones even shoulder small llamas. They scramble upwards, each thinking “I mean to get to the summit first!”
And when they reach Paria Caca, “they worship with the sacrifice of a small llama”.
The rock panel has two lines of dots close to the present day soil level. Both continue towards the river to the right of the panel, and one continues to the left. These could represent a coastal road or links to other shrines – at Pachacamac to the north, and Chincha to the south.
Conclusion
The rock panel taken as a whole has elements that reproduce the topography of the region in the same way as Davila Briceños 1586 map. There is a line of mountains at the top, represented by a fringe of short white lines, and there is the sea at the bottom, represented by the ground. There are several lakes close to the mountains, a road from the coast up to the mountains, and a road along the coast.
The scene on the map resembles the imagery of the map of Huarochiri prepared by an unknown artist for the Corregidor, with a coastal plain and a road ascending to a range of snow capped mountains. Even more, it resembles a modern map or Google Earth, where the mountain tops stand over lakes shaped like long teardrops, which end in curving rivers.
In addition, there are elements on the panel that match the mythical vision of the region in the Huarochiri Manuscript. Anthropomorphic lake-creatures reach up and touch the mountains, and draw their water from them. There is a pathway to the mountain top followed by people with sacrificial llamas.
This interpretation of some of the images on this particular boulder, as representing an identification of the rock with the twin peaked mountain above the shrine to Paria Caca, and by extension with the god Paria Caca himself, would fit with an account of Francisco de Avila’s visit to Yampilla, a league’s distance from Huarochiri, by Polo de Ondegardo (1611) in a letter to the Jesuits describing the work they were doing in Peru.
De aqui fueron 10s Pes a S. Lorenqo de Quinti donde por el mismo orden predicaron y
cathequizaron 10s deel, y hizieron noueqientas confessiones g.neraies las sesenta por ynterprete por ser la lengua q. solo sabian muy distincta de la g.neral de este Reyno. y por q. deestos dos pueblos estauan qerca tres famosos adoratorios el uno llamado yampilla, y el otro llamado Xamuiia, y el tercero llamado Pariacaca q. es el mas famoso, y qelebre de todo este Reyno les pareqio alos P.es de grande ynportancia yr con vna general y grande demonstraqion, y publiqidad con 10s mismos yndios a destmir, y eqhar por el suelo estos adoratorios, y Huacas, y poniendo enello al Doctor Fran.co de Auila para q. como cabeqa y juez hiziesse este sollemne acto, yN (fol 4v.; p.103v.) exortando y exqitando para ello 10s animos de 10s yndios para q. hiziesen gran numero de Cmzes, y otros aperqibimientos, y fuessen todos a quemar 10s cuerpos desenterrar las Huacas destruir 10s ydolos, y plantar en su lugar muqhas Cruzes se pus0 esta tan ymportante hazaiia en execugion en la manera siguiente. El primer dia que fue a seis de abril se juntaron mas de dozientos yndios cone1 Doctor Fran.co de Auila, y 10s P.es fueron a
vn pueblo q. dista vna legua de Guarochiri llamado Yampilla, y alli en vna cangha o patio hecho de casas de yndios destmyeron vn adoratorio enel qua1 entre otros auia tres ydolos prin-ipales, alos quales ofreqian coca, maiz, plumas, tigte6 , y sangre de animales por vnos hoyos o canales q. estauan debaxo de tierra tan occultos7 ellos y 10s ydolos q. 10s tenian delante de 10s ojos 10s P.es y no 10s vian, ni les pareqia q. auia rastro de tal. Subieron luego aun qerro qercano donde auia vn adoratorio muy qelebre q. eran siete piedras bien grandes dispuestas en orden, las quales representauan diuersos ydolos, vna 10s q. estauan deesta banda del no, y otra 10s de la otra. La 3″ al Pachacama, la 4′ al punqhaus, la 5″ a Pariacaca, la 6″ a Chaupinamoca9 , y la 7″ a otro ydolo. auia su sacerdote seiialado para este adoratorio q. sabia muy bien las qerimonias, y sacrifiqios q. se auian de hazer en cada vna de aquellas fiestas, y el saqerdogio yua por sucqession de P.es a Hijos, y estaua esto tan en su punto q. aun niiio de hasta ocho aiios le tenian ya seiialado p.a este offi~ioy, tan ynstmydo en las cosas del q. preguntandole
“Later we climbed a hill nearby where there was a very famous shrine. There were seven very large rocks placed around, which represented several idols, some of them on this bank of the river and some on the other side. The third was to Pachacama, the fourth to Punchau, the fifth to Paria Caca, the sixth to Chaupinamoca, the seventh another idol. There was a priest assigned to the shrine who knew very well the ceremonies and sacrifices that would be carried out at each of the several festivals… “
If this one rock represents Paria Caca, then other rocks at the Cochineros site may similarly have represented at some time in their history other deities in the Huarochiri or coastal pantheon.
If elements on the Paria Caca Rock represent a conceptual map of the Apu Paria Caca, they do not have to have been made as the same time – rather, the whole map has been created over a period, with different people adding new elements.
The trail of dots and its associated llama carriers appears one of the more recent additions to the panel. The lake figures holding up the snow cap and the glaciers would appear to be older, and the spiral and serpent on the centre of the panel, older still. The upper portion of the line of dots may have been redrawn. The several horizontal lines low down across the foot of the rock are much less visible, and may be older. The two figures, besides the trail of dots, together with the tree and the condor, have a similar brightness as the latest dot trail. This suggests they and the trail are one of the last additions to the rock panel, together with the knives or tumis, probably between 1520 and 1580.
An estimated dating of the different images by their colour change from white to grey suggests the upper anthropomorphs or lake deities date to 1000 years BP and the trail of dots with its associated human and llama figures at top and bottom dates to around 500 years BP. There are older darker images on the panel, but they do not form part of this Paria Caca tableau.
