2014, Paracas-Peru
Since we arrived in Chaco, I haven't really chilled out in the literal sense of the word; more likely, I heated up in passion for what lay within my reach of discovery of the rich and enigmatic culture we don't know the name of, but which we have for the time being dubbed Paracas because that was the place that Dr Julio C Tello had found mummies with elongated skulls, who had their religious, ceremonial, and administrative centre at Cahuachi in Nasca province.
Within a few days, I looked for a museum with some of those skulls on display, which I had seen examples of on Brien Foerster's Facebook webpage. Intriguing they were, and more so knowing that they were a highly artistic people who apparently had no minds bent on war, as no actual weapons were discovered or proof, evidence thereof. They had found an arsenal of musical instruments of gigantic sizes, such as ceramic panflutes and drums, some respectively one hundred fifty centimetres tall and one metre.
Archaeologist Alberto Urbano, who I met in 2014 in Nazca at the Municipal Museum where he worked. When I lived there for four months, I went to video-interview him at the museum, and he said that the Paracas culture had a high level of knowledge of music because they already knew how to play a musical symphony. The West could not admit and did not want to believe that a 'primitive' society like the Paracas did not restrict itself to a pentatonic scale.
Living in Chaco and meeting with Juan, a self-taught archaeologist.
El Chaco is a little harbour with a bay from where fishermen leave every day in small boats toward the Islas Ballestas, now declared the reserve of Paracas, with a variety of birds ranging from cormorants, gannets, gulls, and pelicans to animals like sea lions, spider crabs, dolphins and the occasional whale. Rich enough for the daily income of international tourists. El Chaco provides Spain with anchovies from here, and they still collect tons of guano to turn into natural fertiliser for national and global usage. The bay was also known for the Spanish galleons that exported the gold stolen from the Incas to Spain, coveted by the English pirates, the likes of Francis Drake. So, there is much information to ingest on the tourist-crammed speedboats that took me to the islands.
At the Museum of History, run by Juan Navarro Hierro, a self-taught historian and owner of the museum, I learned more about the Paracas culture by looking at the enigmatic skulls and listening to what Alberto and Juan told me. Sure, but one has only to look deeper and wonder how people knew how to operate on the brain by opening skulls or closing skull fractures or holes made in the bone through techniques such as drilling, scraping and sawing them. War victims's skull holes were sealed with gold laminates...
There is the wonder of what a candelabra sand glyph does on a coastal bluff? Juan tells me with ease that, as a child, it was known as the cactus because that is what it was; later, it was known as the trident(e). It became known as the Candelabra after the Spaniards arrived; they called it that. Obviously, Juan says, because, before their arrival, the Candelabra was unknown to the people here. Juan adds that it works more like the Southern Cross or as a lighthouse because the Paracas have always fared the ocean guided by the Southern Cross, which is often present in their textiles and ceramics.
The Paracas people traded with the people from what is now known as Ecuador (known then as Chinsasuyo as part of the Tawantinsuyo of the Incas) because they found necklaces of spondylus, which were only found in Ecuador and were highly valued.
Juan, a charismatic 'teacher' and ex-healer, tells me with a passion and puts his heart into the matter when he describes how the Paracas turned into a passion for him the minute he inherited cardboard boxes from his dad and mum. Passed on by his grandfather to his dad, he had no idea what those boxes contained and had never known of their existence as a youth.
The boxes contained the valuable skull yet to be studied or analysed. So, Juan started his own research, read books on archaeology and history, and invited experts from Lima to look at the skulls and give their opinions. Recently, Brien Foerster became involved and had a geneticist from the USA take one of the skulls for a DNA scan. This revealed that that particular skull was not from Paracas. Brien Foerster is a Canadian artist/sculptor who started working with and for Juan some 10 years ago and is now based in Cusco doing research on the megalithic stones and elongated skulls found in what once was Tawantinsuyo. Juan, who showed me several weird skulls such as a pre-Andean, an Inca, many from Paracas, and others with unnatural seams, dividing the skulls in more than the usual lobes, pointed out one that was said not to be a skull from a man that lived here (Paracas) and one whose DNA they haven't been able to identify.
But Juan is a simple and humble man, a gentleman with his heart on his sleeve; people and TV stations seem to find him now and want him to lead them to mysterious places like he did when he took me and my friend Valerie ten days ago to Tambo, Colorado. This is a remarkably coloured garrison built by the Inca Pachacutec Yupanqui around 1474. It was about an hour's ride by taxi, driving over side roads, left and right of the Panamericana, alongside the Pisco river, past the town of Humay, where in 1553, the Pisco drink was born and cultivated by the Spaniards from seeds of the Canary Islands grapes.
The Tambo is extensive and quite a labyrinth in which Juan twice lost the direction toward the exit. The then-ruling Inca had their own bath and one for their coyas (Inca princesses, his wives-consorts), and they were well preserved. The Tambo was so well built that it survived several earthquakes and is comparable to 20th-century buildings in Pisco town, which were erased to the ground with the last one. The Incas had already developed quake-proof architecture, which still withstands it today.
The Tambo drew many treasure seekers as soon as it was known that the Inca once had given orders to melt down all the golden idols they had to hide them from the gold crazy Spaniards on their way to the Tambo Colorado.
Juan tells me on film that not so long ago, a gang of looters arrived at the Tambo to find the gold but were found by the INC (Instituto Nacional de Cultura) guards and told to leave the place. They had found something but could not take it with them in time.
When a group of tourists arrived sometime after that, they found boys playing football in the square where Inga Pachahcutec (the architect Inca) had had his troops lined up. The goal consisted of some rocks. One of the rocks in the shape of a ball seemed highly interesting, so they took it. Juan concludes that the ball, which was no more than a mud ball at first sight, was molten gold covered in dried mud, probably made by the looters who left it behind.
Each room we visited in the Tambo had at least a dozen niches in which a golden idol stood. So, imagine how much gold is still hidden from the Spanish?
I video recorded this interview with Juan and is available in Spanish spoken, subtitled in English at