On a recent trip up to the northern region of Peru I visited the spectacular ruins of Kuélap in the mountainous Chachapoyas region. Known as the home of the “Cloud Warriors” or the Chachapoyan civilization, this beautiful site is located approximately about 450km from the pacific coast, and sits 3,000 meters above sea level at the edge of a rain forest. Its ruins are made up of more than 500+ round stone buildings (and a few rectilinear ones) of various sizes, surrounded by, in some places, a 30m wall.
According to archaeologists, the citadel of Kuélap was built 600 to 900 years before Machu Picchu and is larger and higher than the Inca fortress. At one time approximately 3,000 to 5,000 elite members of society lived in the high-ridge city during the height of its civilization. The civilization collapsed upon the arrival of the Spanish who told the citizens of the citadel that they must abandon it and live in valley.
Today, there is a concerted effort to make this beautiful site into a second Machu Picchu by attracting tourists to the area, however, from what I can see, they still have a long way to go with the infrastructure as there are a lack of hotels and restaurants that could cater to visitors. Also, it still remains a fairly hard place to get to, although the new telecabina (cable car airlift) helps in ferrying people to the site in a fraction of the time it used to take.
As part of the plan to make it into a first-class tourist destination, archaeologists also are doing considerable work to repair the damage done to the outer parameter wall which has seen a number of sections collapse over the years ago due to heavy rains, so much of wall is obscured by scaffolding. Unfortunately, it was not the best time for picture taking.
However, even with the extensive scaffolding and archaeology work being done on the site there is still magic there. Today you can walk around many of the Chachapoyan structures with see their beautiful geometric zigzag and rhomboid patterns integrated within the circular stone houses and temples. With the stunning views, exotic orchids and jungle mists around you, the enchantment that this site is known for is still palpable.
As beautiful as the Chachapoyan structures and scenery are, I was more happy and surprised to find evidence of Hanan Pacha work lying around the pathways leading up to the buildings as well as under the foundations themselves. (If you don’t know what is Hanan Pacha work, please see this article.) Walking up the path to the main Chachapoya’s structures I see the familiar limestone rocks formed in the most unusual shapes, including the telltale fingerprints pressed in the rock! This wasn’t something I expected as on the websites I have visited no one mentions them!
Peru SIM’s website had a promising, however, misleading headline: “Know Everything about Kuélap: The Pre-Incan Fortress in Peru” so I scan the copy looking for any mention of the Hanan Pacha formations, even if it was cloaked in a different description, but there is no mention of them! So much for knowing everything about Kuélap! Here we go again! More evidence of recent civilizations building their vestiges on top of older first world or Hanan Pacha foundations, which is a topic I cover extensively in my book “Sorcerers of Stone: Architects of the Three Ages,” but, yet again, they are ignored.
Since we see evidence that more recent civilizations, like the Incans or the Chachapoyans, recognize these foundation stones as important, and, most likely sacred, why it is that so few archaeologists and historians discuss the implications of what these ancient vestiges mean? Often they are just ignored, or when they do acknowledge them, they say it was a different style of that same civilization that built on top of them. But, just how can this be so when there are so many examples of this same style seen all around the world?
Colina Santo Apolonia (Huaca “Rumitiana”), Cajamarca
I saw this same overbuilding by the Incan and Cajamarcan civilizations over First World monoliths in the ancient Andean city of Cajamarca, the next city I visited on my trip. Cajamarca is known as the city where the last Sapa Inca, Atahualpa, met his untimely end when the duplicitous Spanish killed him after receiving his ransom money. Not only is the Cuarto del Rescate, the Temple room that the Inca king had filled with gold and silver, built on top of Hanan Pacha (First World) formations, but it is connected to the ancient huaca “Rumitiana” now known by its Christian moniker “Santo Apolonia”, which overlooks Cajamarca’s Plaza de Armas. This beautiful hauca (sacred site) is now mainly covered with concrete mixed with what looks like broken remnants of the huaca itself.
It turns out that the city politicians decided sometime back in the 1980s (according to an engraving carved within a recess of a niche at the site) that his huaca needed a modern makeover so they constructed walking trails and a road (I actually saw a car driving atop of the huaca!), making it a convenient spot for the cuidadanos to gather, have picnics and fly their kites. According to the facebook page, “Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológica de la Colina Santa Apolonia“, the city actually blew off the top of the huaca with dynamite so that it could have a flat top so people could have a nice viewing and congregation platform!
I try to wrap my head around how this could have been done because this destruction was not during the time of the conquistadors and church inquisitors, who were destroying these vestiges in the 16th an 17th centuries, but done during relatively recent history. How could the city’s politicians be so arrogant and unthinking as to destroy Peru’s patrimony?
Unfortunately, I found many articles about Colina Santo Apolonia, which described how church and political leaders were still in the mindset that they had to conquer these heathen structures by putting crosses and shrines on them even in the 20th century. Santo Apolonia “Rumitiana” was just one such conquest that had to be marked and destroyed for God’s, or some politician’s, greater glory. At least they didn’t cover everything with concrete and we can still see what they call the “Throne of the Inca” and other artifacts. A saving grace, I guess.
Fortunately, a lot has changed in the 40+ years since this desecration was allowed to happen, and today archaeologists are trying to bring to the public’s awareness how important “Rumitiana” and the Cuarto del Rescate is to Peru’s cultural inheritance and are inviting school children and university students to study and appreciate the old Hanan Pacha foundations, and not just the more recent Incan or Cajamarcan work on top of it.
Also, according to the group I quoted above, today Colina Santo Apolonia is deemed a legitimate archaeology site, and as such, there should be no more building or destruction on it in the future. We can only hope that is so!
Cumbemayo, Cajamarca
My next stop in Cajamarca was to visit Cumbemayo, an incredible pre-Inca site with signs of this First World work all over the vast archaeology park. The park is covered with these mysterious rock pillars that look as if they were once part of some ancient Lemurian city… and perhaps it was. Here one also sees incredible canals and an aqueduct cut into the volcanic rock. Many of the canals are in a zig-zagged shapes and there are smooth walls on the sides of the canals, all made with great precision.
Also, one sees the typical Hanan Pacha monoliths here with their signature chakana-like steps and rectilinear and curved seats. There looks as to have been some major seismic event having taking place sometime in the ancient past as many of the monoliths are haphazardly strewn about, like Jenga pieces after the fall.
There are also many petroglyphs with symbols carved into many of the stones. Some looked shaped into stone, but others seem like they were chipped into them, possible by some later culture. What do they mean? No one to my knowledge has deciphered them and it seems as if they are from a culture with a very different mind than us moderns. They look to me as if these were beings very connected to the energy of the natural world.
In conclusion
Like with so many of the trips I take around Peru, I find so much evidence that there was another ancient mother civilization, not just in my part of the woods—the Cusco area—but everywhere around this country. They are all monoliths, usually made of limestone, but not always, and have that similarity in look and function that I call the Hanan Pacha (a term first used by Alfredo Gamarra from Cusco) or First World style. I have also discovered that similar vestiges are found around the world which I highlight in my book. So, it leads one to wonder, why aren’t archaeologists recognizing this reality?
It makes no sense to say that the Incans, the Chachapoyans, the Persians, the Mayans, the Etruscans, the Ching Dynasty or the Middle Kingdom Egyptians, which had distinctive civilizations in the various parts of the world where these vestiges are found, built these Hanan Pacha styles. Those civilizations had their own iconic style that we instantly recognize and they weren’t from the first world period. The fact is that these First World constructions are built on all continents can only lead us to the conclusion that there must have been a worldwide civilization in the past.
It is time for the archaeology world to expand their horizons and dig deeper for the truth.