Trip to Crystal Cave in Ecuador

Trip to Crystal Cave Completed

We are back from the cave.  Very hard journey.  Took three hours or a more walking up and down mud road into mountains.  Got there as muddy as could be.  I would suggest that you take mule as roads are knee deep in mud.  Very hard to walk in.

We finally got to cave site late in evening.  Our guide is Jorge Zambrano who speaks English very well. He is friends with the people who own the land the cave is on.  The owners have turned other people away from viewing the cave, but since they know Jorge they allowed us in and treated us very nicely. 

We had to spend the night at the cave site as we arrived too late to make the trip back before dark. I suggest starting no later than eight in the morning if you wish to make it out by dark.  Bring food and lots of water as you will not want to drink out of the creek.  

One must be prepared to be wet and dirty as it rained all day we were there and again all night long when we were there.  You on the other-hand, could wait to the dry season begins in April or so.  Try to make it out from the site on the same day you arrive as there is no water, electricity, or bathrooms at the site.

Now, the people that own the land are very poor, so we gave them gifts as they treated us well.  I asked the mother what she would like for her very very poor kitchen.  She replied and asked for twelve bowels to eat out of.  Then she said they would get electricity in March of this year and she would like to have a blender to juice fruit with.

I must say that they were very good people and treated us kindly.  They prepared two meals of rice and peanuts for us and other things like platanna, which they do grow themselves.  They use wood for a fire and cook on an open box stove with a rack to place pots on.  We must all treat them with the same kindness they showed us.  When I was wet, cold, thirsty, hungry, and without a place to sleep, they gave up a room for the three in our party for us to sleep in, as well they did all they could to assist us.

God Bless them.

As to the cave.  It is amazing!  There are two caves side by side and they go back into the hill some distance.  You will need lots of light.  At times you must crawl on the ground as the cave has now filled in with several feet of sediment.  There are bats, but they do not bother you, however, you will lay in and craw on the ground below them...

This cave is in need of full study as it is not natural in my opinion but has been built with much labour and work over many years.  There are seams in the walls which appears at first glance to be construction of some sort.  There is more to explore if you have rope to go further into the cave.

Oh yes, bring at least one change of clothes as you will be wet and cold when you are ready to leave. Extra socks and water shoes will be good to have.  Do your best to make the trip in one day so you do not have to spend the night.

Here is a link to some of the pictures I took on the expedition to the cave

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8Vn5BTBJdeYbndnYmh5QkExdlk&usp=sharing

Chirije: A Bridge To Another Time

Chirije: A Water Bridge To The Past

There is a place in Ecuador that can only be reached when the tide goes out. It is the ancient costal complex at Chirije. When the tide runs low one can take a sturdy vehicle between the water and cliffs over sand and rocks into this vast archaeology complex. Separated from the world by water, jungle, and time this little know site is vastly rich in artifacts from a nearly unknown and unstudied ancient civilization. But this was not always so. For hundreds of years in the remote past, indeed perhaps for over a thousand, Chirije was known by its trade goods over an expanse reaching at least as far north as Mexico and as far South as Chile. A distance that exceeds that of the Inca Empire at its height.

Yet this archaeological treasure trove remains mostly unstudied since a brief period in the 1950’s when Ecuadorian archaeologist Emilio Estrada discovered the site and declared it to be one of the most important sites on the Ecuadorian coast. The Louvre Museum of Paris and the Smithsonian Institution would come again in the mid 90’s to reaffirm the importance of the site. But water, sand, rugged terrain, and time have all served to isolate Chirije from investigation.

Few places in the New World offer such a rich deposit of artifacts. Tiahuanaco, in Bolivia, along the shores of Lake Titicaca comes to mind---but no other. Pottery shards at Chirije lie almost everywhere one steps. Other remains of this ancient culture lie underfoot and buried in the rich loose soil. Erosion along the water’s edge only serves to add to the rich cultural deposits as artifacts literally drop down from the cliffs edges onto the rocks below smashing into pieces are lost in the sand.

Yet there is more to this site than meets the eye. There is a great mystery that may make the city and its surroundings of even more value to the historian and those who value the past like they do the present. Chirije was once a thriving Pacific seaport and trading center with great balsa ships coming and going loaded with trade goods. Yet what one views today is only a part of what once was. Underwater and offshore there appears to be unexplored ruins that local fishermen say consists in part of great arches and walls. If this is so then the complex could be far older than a few thousand years. For the last time this undersea costal area was exposed and dry was during the last ice age over ten thousand years ago. Could proof of man’s early beginning on the American continent be lying just offshore from Chirije? This question of necessity remains to be settled by Marine archaeologists. The site awaits investigators. Indeed the owner of this large private estate, Senior Patricio Tamariz, is now issuing a public call for archaeologist, historians, marine investigators and others who may be able to assist in the search for facts to come and begin investigations. His desire is to know the truth of Chirije and those who can aid should contact him. tamarizp@gmail.com

Yet there is more. Additional secrets lie on a nearby side of a mountain where a collapsed cave remains unexcavated yet tantalizingly inviting to those who’s quest for answers are never satisfied.

If all of this were not enough to spur investigations many locals insist that the area is continually visited by strange flying objects that hover out over the ocean and the ruins lying just beneath the water surface. Whether this be so or not, the real unidentified objects are lying just beneath the ground and deserve immediate investigation.

Ecuadorian Cave Of Petroglyphs

Ecuadorian petroglyphs
Click this link to view article and previous photos. http://firstamericans.blogspot.com/2011/03/mysterious-cave-found-in-ecuador.html

Cave of Petroglyphs Found In Ecuador

New photos of Ecuadorian petroglyphs
Click this link to view article and previous photos. http://firstamericans.blogspot.com/2011/03/mysterious-cave-found-in-ecuador.html

New photos of Ecuadorian petroglyphs
Click this link to view article and previous photos.
http://firstamericans.blogspot.com/2011/03/mysterious-cave-found-in-ecuador.html

Mysterious cave found in Ecuador megalithic structure with many fine petroglyphs

Greetings all,

We have here a few of the very first photos of this newly discovered cave.  The cave appears to be extremely old. The builders of this cave (which maybe was not a cave when built) have finely worked the stone.  The cave is filled in with debris but the rock work does appears to go down beneath the top soil. This cave is unstudied, undocumented.  There are found in the cave artifacts of stone and other material.  (Sorry no pictures yet of them.)  There are reportedly  two other caves nearby with additional petroglyphs and artifacts in them.

What is needed at once is knowledgeable opinions of what we have here and interpation of the petroglyphs or at least to establish some relation or context to other such pre-historic works.

I ask that anyone you know who may have expertise in petroglyps and megalithic building please examine these photos and share your information.
The cave location is Ecuador and that is all that can be given at this point. Those with expertise in this area can make arrangements at some point in the future to view the cave in person.
This is a link to ALL of the cave photos:
https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=52F0505D00870E9D!221

Craniometric evidence for Palaeoamerican survival in Baja California

From nature

Nature 425, 62 - 65 (04 September 2003); doi:10.1038/nature01816

ROLANDO GONZÁLEZ-JOSÉ1, ANTONIO GONZÁLEZ-MARTÍN2, MIQUEL HERNÁNDEZ1, HÉCTOR M. PUCCIARELLI3, MARINA SARDI3, ALFONSO ROSALES4 & SILVINA VAN DER MOLEN5

1 Universitat de Barcelona, Facultat de Biologia, Secció d'Antropologia, Diagonal 645, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
2 Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo, Área Académica de Historia y Antropología, 42000 Pachuca, México
3 Departamento Científico de Antropología del Museo de La Plata, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 1900 La Plata, Argentina
4 Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Centro INAH Baja California Sur, 23000 La Paz, México
5 Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Facultat de Ciències, BAVE, Unitat de Zoologia 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to R.G.J. (rolandogonzalez@ub.edu).

A current issue on the settlement of the Americas refers to the lack of morphological affinities between early Holocene human remains (Palaeoamericans) and modern Amerindian groups, as well as the degree of contribution of the former to the gene pool of the latter. A different origin for Palaeoamericans and Amerindians is invoked to explain such a phenomenon. Under this hypothesis, the origin of Palaeoamericans must be traced back to a common ancestor for Palaeoamericans and Australians, which departed from somewhere in southern Asia and arrived in the Australian continent and the Americas around 40,000 and 12,000 years before present, respectively. Most modern Amerindians are believed to be part of a second, morphologically differentiated migration. Here we present evidence of a modern Amerindian group from the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico, showing clearer affinities with Palaeoamerican remains than with modern Amerindians. Climatic changes during the Middle Holocene probably generated the conditions for isolation from the continent, restricting the gene flow of the original group with northern populations, which resulted in the temporal continuity of the Palaeoamerican morphological pattern to the present.

© 2003 Nature Publishing Group
Pri

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