John Haigh

It is clear from Antonio de la Calancha’s account that there are, or were, three marked stones close to Calango.

The community had a consistent story of how the marks had been made by a mythical Christian preacher “…a tall bearded white man…” who had travelled through the area.

All three stones  were honoured in the district. “The people greatly valued these three rocks, and built shelters of branches over them, out of respect.”

One stone is imprisoned behind walls which hide the mountains, with an iron door which the mayor may unlock, on request, on Wednesdays or Saturdays. Where are the other two?

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After searching for, but failing to find, the stone marked with St Thomas’ sleeping body described by the seventeenth century sources, I had resolved to return the next day and seek a guide who could get me access across the apple fields to the curious mounds. As it was Saturday I took the chance to ask at the municipal offices if I could look at the stone. The young girl who took the key from her desk drawer and unlocked the iron gate admitted she did not know much about the stone. “But there are explanations on the walls” she said, pointing to six plaques.

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When he woke that morning he looked at his left foot, sticking out from under the quilt. Was that soreness, or just stiffness? It looked the same. The two feet, side by side, they looked identical.

He found himself walking carefully, keeping the weight off the ball of his foot, walking on the outside of his foot. He had to walk down the uneven path or work concrete, where the hedge, overgrown, pushed over to the right, and then down the sloping hill to town, gingerly stepping up onto pavements, and avoiding the cobblestones outside the antique shops. He visited the bank, the newsagents and the estate agents. Then walked back up the hill.

He spent the afternoon in the garden, trimming the plum trees, clearing weeds around the pond. More than once he cried out as a pebble or uneven ground pressured a soft spot on his foot.

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Peru Stories and Lima Tales: healthcare horrors

Key moments in the seventh most corrupt dictatorship in recent history, or as his supporters say, the reign of “the Greatest President Peru has Ever Had”.

Currently less than half way through his 25 year jail term for running death squads and corruption.

Oops!!! 24 December 2017 currently pardoned and freed on medical grounds because of terminal illness, people are discussing whether he will stand for President in 2021.

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Countdown to an uncertain future September 2016 to December 2017

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We know that in the Andean world of the Incas, horizon alignments and sun shadows were an important part of their rituals. Machu Picchu and Cusco, together with many Inca carved stones and huacas around Cusco, are considered to have important alignments.

The Inca’s intahuantanas, “hitching posts of the sun”, are thought to have been the focal point of a ritual, a mass, a religious service where the Inca, the all powerful hereditary leader of the empire who was himself a child of the sun, made the sun stop in its regression northward at the summer solstice and begins its return journey to the centre of the sky.

There was said to be an intihuatana in the main square of every Inca town, which would suggest up to a hundred or more, of which just a handful remain. The Spanish implemented their policy of destroying all the intihuatanas very successfully. 

Garcilaso says “the Governor of Belalcazoar destroyed all of the columns in the Quito region, because they encourage idolatrous practices…and the other Spanish captains did the same in the entire kingdom.”

For a month or two either side of June, when the sun is at its most northern, this shadow on a line of dots provides a potential marker for the sun`s position. This photograph was taken on June 30, at 1.23 pm, a week after the winter solstice in Peru.

A month after solstice on 21 July, and earlier in the day, 10.50 am. The shadow now barely reaches to the dotted line.

Any marker, stone or post, in combination with surrounding mountains, can be used as an astronomical measure in this landscape. In fact you don’t even need a marker, if you have some other way, a seat or a platform, a fixed place to stand, that ensures your eye is in the same place.

But if we are talking of ritual in a public space or a public ceremony, then we want to carry out some performance and then announce a triumphant result to the crowd. For such a ritual site we would want a visual display.

The Calango stone, according to the locals questioned by Francisco de Avila, was the place where the star stopped, Coyllur Sayana. If it was to be used as an accurate marker then you would want a sighting point, a fixed position to observe from.

The most obvious point would be at the lower end of the inclined stone, looking up towards the line of markers.  We could imagine that these would identify points on the horizon that relate to key markers of time and seasons, such as moon, sun or star risings. 

The Cochineros stones are in an open position in a flat area of the river valley, surrounded by mountains and sky. By day, the sun is relentless unless a little cloud comes over in the afternoon. It could provide a theatrical setting for hundreds, even thousands, gathering to celebrate. If they were looking at the sky or the stars, what would they be looking at? 

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There were three important times for the Misminay community in the Andes close to Cusco, according to Gary Urton – harvest in April, planting in June, close to the reappearance of the Pleiades, and the coming of the rains in October.

Urton links these three seasonal events with Inca llama sacrifices: multi-coloured llama at harvest time in late April or early May, brown and brownish red llama sacrificed at the beginning of the planting season from August to September, while black llama were tied to a post and starved, and white llama were sacrificed, to encourage the rains in October. 

Guaman Poma and Gary Urton´s Misminay informants partially agree, as would be expected as they are both considering farming  activities around Cusco at 3400 metres. Both identify the harvest in April or May, and the waiting for the rains in October, as important events. Urton´s farmers commence planting in June, perhaps of the annual potato crop, whilst The Inca in Cusco have a soil turning ritual in August and would appear to plant the maize in September awaiting the October rains.

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Ten million people living on a coastal plain where it never rains – that is the paradox of Lima – the biggest desert city, some say, after Cairo, after Las Vegas. And yet there are green parks in every district.

If Google Earth’s timeline could go back a thousand years, it would show us the lands of present day Lima as a plain dotted with hundreds of temple mounds, Huacas, surrounded by farmland. Six or more major streams, dividing into streamlets, rivulets and irrigation ditches, take water from the River Rimac to fertile fields and villages from La Molina, San Borja and Surco down to Barranco and Chorrillos, San Isidro and Magdalena, Maranga and Callao.

On the surface, much has changed. But underground a vast network of channels makes this desert city green, with hundreds of workers managing and adjusting the direction and speed of the flow to take water to each place at the appointed time.

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It was on my fourth visit across the river that I found the latest figure, low down and dark, almost invisible, on the Pariacaca rock. By viewing the surface rock in the reflection of the sun, only possible close to the winter solstice when it hangs lower in the northern sky, I could make out the figure most clearly.

What all the figures by Mala share is the overall scale – the tube or pipe is one or two times their height, the globe at the end is a third the length of the tube. The Huancor figures have shorter tubes, and an upturned bowl, more like a pipe.

In July I visited Cajamarca, and in the centre of town is a statue of a clarin player, his lips blowing on a three metre long tube ending in a globe. In a former hacienda I found a photograph of a player and heard that there was one music shop in the town which made and sold the instrument.

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My first attempts to derive some quantitative estimate of age from the brightness of the images on the rocks of Rio Mala used the Kublenka Munk theory for a thin layer of material described by its coefficients of absorbance and scattering.

If we postulate that the images are fading not because of erosion of a white layer, but by growth of a dark layer of rock varnish, then we have a scenario that is in a sense reversed.

Looking at the rocks, we can see effects that would be explained by this. There are images which are almost the same colour of the background rock – older even than the old llama.

if five hundred years of varnish reduces the brightness by 20%, then it might seem  that 2500 years will reduce it by 100%. It is of course not so simple. We have an exponential curve. But now we can say, that if the brightness is reduced to zero, then it is older than the 2500 years. We have a minimum age.

There is sufficient evidence that there is varnish formation on the rocks, according to the conditions of the surface and its orientation, and that this varnish changes the appearance of the surface and reduces the brightness of engraved images. If the surface conditions are the same, then we can expect varnish formation to be the same across the surface. For larger surfaces, where the inclination changes, we have to be careful. And in any case, we have yet to justify assuming that the rate of varnish formation, for any surface, is constant.

Nevertheless the hypothesis that older images are less bright would appear to have a theoretical basis, for a surface of the same orientation, inclination, and incident moisture. With care, on the southern faces of at least three rocks, this gives us a potential basis for dating the petroglyphs, on a stronger basis than is usual for petroglyph dating.

Read more at 50 – Kubelka Munk revisited…

Proponents of the Cochineros images as primarily representing Inca aggression point to figures which could suggest ritual sacrifice. There are several human figures on the stones of Chincheros with objects which some have considered tumis, sometimes holding llamas by a cord in the other hand. These have been interpreted as priests preparing for divination, the ritual sacrifice of a llama and the examination of its entrails to predict the future.

A dominant image on the southern, down river face of the Retama rock. First impression suggest a frontal human figure holding objects in either hand. But what is the complex figure in the left hand, and is the right arm actully visible?

The procedure is well known from several sources. Garcilaso de la Vega, the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador, describes the divinations at Inti Raimi, the most important of Cuzco´s four annual festivals, the June Summer Solstice.

“The priests brought in the animals to be sacrificed, which were lambs, rams and sterile ewes. The first animal sacrificed was either a black or dark brown lamb, these being considered…entirely pure and unmixed. They looked for omens by examining the heart and lung of this lamb, as they did in all important circumstances…Three or four men held the animal with its head turned towards the east…they then slit it open on its left flank…and the priest took out the heart, lungs, and all the interior organs, taking sure that they should be in one piece, without being torn…they would blow air into the viscera, then…watch the way the air filled…the lungs even unto the tiniest vessels…the sacrifice of the lamb, if it did not give good omens, was followed by that of the sheep and lastly, that of the sterile ewe. ”

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There is a similar complexity to the positions of tupus, shawl pins, in South American history and pre-history. Long pins are seen on the engravings of Guaman Pomar de Ayala, a native Peruvian born shortly after the Spanish invasion of the Inca Empire, in his manuscript, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, completed in 1615, notably in the portrait of Cuci Chinbo Mama the sixth Coya, or wife, of the Inca Yupanqui.

Woman with a similar single pin placed horizontally with the head to the right are placed in scenes of the Inca hailing the start of the new solar year, planting the first seeds in August, and worshipping at the 400 metre high peak of Wanakari, amongst others. These pins have a variety of designs at the head.

Another Guaman Poma drawing of Coya Mama Huaco shows her wearing two round-headed pins, placed with round heads down, with holes poitioned between the centre of the head, and the start of the pin. This lady was the mother (or sister-wife) of Manco Capac, the first Inca wife, who sowed the first maize, taught women the art of weaving, and made stones and boulders speak. She was the daughter of the sun and the moon, and there are road in Lima named after her.

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See more at The Future is bright in Mexico

The writings on this site are like the beggining of the solution of a jigsaw puzzle. There may be areas where the picture begins to emerge, a branch of the tree or some roots, but it is unlikely that you will perceive the whole tree. The picture is not ready to display, but you are welcome to browse through and see if you can discern any patterns.

Unlike a jigsaw there is no colourful image on the box lid to guide me, and so how the constituent pieces will eventually combine is still unknown. This site is the big scrubbed table where I am laying out the pieces.

Nevertheless for those that wish to poke around here, there are some clues. The numberings suggest how sections may combine, so that an important branch on the presence of llamas, or camelids, on the stones and in the history of the people’s here, is almost complete (08 – 09 – 10 – 11).

As is  Tumis and Tupus (14 – 15 – 16 – 17 – 18)

I describe the different peoples and settlements in Lima, from Maranga (42 – a Trip to the Zoo),  moving across the city to one of the largest temple mounds in the tourist district (43 –  From the Zoo to Miraflores) and then out to Pachacamac (44 – Earth Mover, Earth Shaker) and south of Lima, the lower Lurin Valley (65 – Cardal and Pan)

The central coast history and rock art are described around Cañete (20 The Sword and the Cross – 21 The Hill of Gold – 22 The evolution of Whales)

And the rocks of Huancor (26 – 27)

There is a first introduction to the remarkable sixteenth century origin stories of The Huarochiri Manuscript (28)

Followed by the story of Calango (53 – 54 – 55 – 56)

The attempts to understand the different layers of images on the stones, and work towards interpreting and dating them, is ongoing, and some of the ideas so far are here

4 256 Shades of Grey – 10 Rock Art in Peru – 12 Why are Images Brighter and Darker –  19 – JPEGs –  29-Rock Varnish on the Orinoco

And some bits and pieces about other aspects of Peru which are relevant but not fully tied in to the narrative (35 Keeping it in the Family – 36 Chasing Mobile Phones in Huacho – 38 Negotiating with the Gods – 97 Water Management, Floods and Huaycos  98 Watering the Desert for a Thousand Years)

To experience what the stones actually show, and their presence in the landscape, here might be a good place to start

1 a Exploration 

1a /The stones and their images

Photograph of the river bank and the stones

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17 April 2016 – Paulista, the main business street in the centre of Brazil’s commercial capital Sao Paulo, is packed with thousands wearing green and yellow shirts and facepaint, or draped in Brazilian flags, and gathered at the focal point of this and previous demonstrations, the FIESP building, headquarters of the Industrial Federation of the State of Sao Paulo.
A giant 12 metre tall inflatable yellow duckling looks down on the flag-waving crowds whilst many in the crowd fly yellow duck balloons.
The ducks refer to the campaign by the Industrial Federation to oust the President with the slogan “It’s time to pay for the duck”. This means something like “The party is over”, a call for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.

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