The enigma of the Pusharo petroglyphs, the most important in the Amazon
My trip to the Pusharo petroglyphs took place in 2008. The main objective was to closely analyze one of the most important petroglyphs in the world, both for complexity and grandeur, and thus deepen the study of Amazonian ethnic groups that traveled through the area in times dating back to the Mesolithic, when the climate in the Amazon was different from today.
The trip began in the small town of Atalaya, on the banks of the Alto Madre de Dios River, from where, in the company of my friend Fernando Rivera Huanca, I embarked on a motor boat bound for Lactapampa (department of Madre de Dios). The next day we went up the Palotoa and slept in the indigenous village of Palotoa-Teparo.
In the village of the Matsiguenkas (natives of the Arawak ethnic group), I met Guillermo, who the next day accompanied us to the masterful engraving, along with my friend Saúl Robles Condori. In approximately 4 hours of walking we arrive at the Shinkibeni River, where the petroglyphs are located, one of the most important archaeological sites in America, although it is little known.
The site was discovered in 1921 by Father Vicente de Cenitagoya, who interpreted it as a set of Gothic letters. In my opinion, most of the signs incised on the main wall of Pusharo, about 25 meters long and 4 meters high (in total, there are three walls of petroglyphs separated from each other), is of Amazonian origin and made using hard stones, perhaps under the influence of hallucinogens such as ayahuasca. There are some symbols of Inca origin, but I believe that they were made in more recent times, by the ancestors of the Matsinguenkas, influenced by some Incas who passed through the valley (perhaps the mythical expedition of the Inca Pachacutec).
Some symbols deserve specific analysis. The so-called “Pusharo face” or figure with a “mask” type head shape (repeated at least 6 times) is the most enigmatic of the entire wall, which I consider simply represents the tribe to which the authors of the work belonged, masterful engraving, almost as if it were a territorial demarcation. (There is a “rougher” face also on the second wall).
In my opinion, the petroglyphs of Quiaca, which I studied and cataloged on my recent trip to the department of Puno, must be related to those of Pusharo, since they also present very similar, although more stylized, “faces” (two in total).
In Pusharo there are also many abstract signs, often concentric circles or spirals, which could have been made under the effect of ayahuasca. There are simple, double or concentric circles. There is also a semicircular structure subdivided into dotted rhombuses, which could symbolize a calendar. Then, there are some astronomical symbols such as the sun, with rectilinear or triangular rays.
There are not many zoomorphic symbols: there is a set of points that makes one think of the footprint of a feline, some lines in the shape of a snake and several tridigital signs, as if they were bird footprints. The fact that the zoomorphic symbols are not very numerous could suggest that the authors of the petroglyphs were only at the beginning of a long process that would later lead them to develop true totemic cults (cult of the feline, snake and condor, typical of civilizations Andean).
Although I visited Pusharo more than a year ago, I wanted to wait to draw conclusions about it, especially because I wanted to first analyze and interpret the Quiaca petroglyphs, which in my opinion, are the work of the same Amazonian ethnic group that was on the way to the jungle to the mountains around the sixth millennium BC. The Amazon rainforest, during the Mesolithic, was not as thick and intricate as it is today and the people who lived there could move with fewer difficulties than today.
They probably traveled to the mountains, traveling through the valleys of the Alto Madre de Dios and the Inabari River (later Huari Huari and Quiaca), to exchange typical products of the jungle (coca, gold, bird feathers, hallucinogenic and medicinal plants) for Andean products. (cereals such as quinoa or quiwicha, maca and camelids such as llamas, alpacas, guanacos and vicuñas).
Even the name Pusharo, which in the Quiaca valley became Poquera, and therefore, in the Pukara Andean civilization (predecessor of Tiwanaku), which perhaps means "fortress", could mean that the Amazonian ethnic group that traveled through the valleys of the jungle to the mountains “exported” this term.
According to some linguists, the Uros indigenous people, who live in Lake Titicaca, have a distant Arawak origin, therefore, Amazonian. Are they the descendants of the Pusharo ethnic group that crossed the valleys of the current Madre de Dios in the direction of the mountains some millennia ago?
The genetic analysis of the DNA of the Uros, compared for example with that of the Matsiguenkas, could give us surprising results. For now, only research in the field, trying to analyze the various elements at our disposal, can bring us closer to the truth, revealing the mysteries of the prehistory of the Amazon, which is still little known and studied from an archaeological perspective.
YURI LEVERATTO
