The Mount Imbabura in the northern
province of Imbabura, close to the Colombia border. Note the populated area
around this southern side of the mountain
Even today Imbabura is considered a very special place and highly sacred, called by the people around it taita Imbabura, meaning “Papa Imbabura,” a watchful protector that is said to oversee the villages and cities around the region. And not only that, an adjacent mount, Cotacachi, is a companion mountain of prominence that is also considered sacred, and called Mama Cotacachi.
Mt. Imbabura and Mt. Cotacachi in the
far north of Ecuador, within the Imbabura Province, poking their summits out of
the clouds
The fog and cloud-shrouded mounts of
(top) Imbabura, and the rounded too of (bottom) Cotacachi
Filled with ravines, streams, rivers, and numerous lakes, it should also be noted that the land around Imbabura is highly fertile, more so than any other area in the region. Here, the potato is grown predominantly, Imbabura being the highest producing area for the potato and Cotacachi being the second highest in production.
Mount Imbabura, though having a peak just over 15,000 feet, is basically a mountain rising between 7200 and 9800-feet, and is surrounded by water, with Lake San Pablo, the largest lake in the district, to the south, and Lake Mojanda beyond the south side of the mountain as well as the Peguche and Cascades of Peguche waterfalls north of Otavalo also south of Imbabura. There is Lake Yahuarcocha on the north, Lake Pesillo to the east and Lake Cuicocha to the west; in fact, the entire area is called “the lake district,” or “Province of Lakes,” a combined watershed, and according to Dr. Mercy J. Borbor-Cordova, Fulbright alumna, and chief of Department of Environmental Control in Guayaquil, the watershed spans about 20,000 miles.
Six miles to the northeast of Mount Imbabura Lake Yahuarcocha, also called Yawarkucha, that covers 640 acres with a maximum depth of 26 feet. The lake acquired the name of Yawarkucha (meaning “blood lake”) as the result of a battle and massacre which took place there in antiquity. Credited to the Inca period, as most legends that have been anglicized are, it is based on a local chiefdom called the Caranqui, a Cara people, that fiercely resisted an invasion of their territory. It is estimated that the number of Caranqui or Cara people at the time were between 100,000 and 150,000. Victory was finally achieved near the present-day city of Ibarra, along the north face of Mount Imbabura, where the male population of these people, who were located between Ibarra and Mt. Imbabura, were massacred in retribution for their resistance.
Lake Yahuarcocha just north of Mount Imbabura where tens of thousands
of ancient warriors were massacred, turning the lake red from the blood
In addition, another bloody battle is recorded in legend occurring on the north slope of Mt. Imbabura where evidence of huge earth tolas, or burial sites have been found. Though again attributed to the Inca, this site was constructed of the same incredible cut stone found in Cuzco, Peru, which far antecedes the Inca and pre-Inca period. In fact, Cieza de León, who visited this area, referred to these ruins and ancient pool as “hecho de piedra muy prima,” all made of “tight-fitting, exquisitely raw cut stone.”
In fact, archeological studies around Imbabura show that there are other buried architectural features in the area with a burial pit also found on the site. In fact, about twenty miles to the west of Mt. Imbabura is the remote ancient 1500 BC site called Intag, just south of Apuela, and along a plateau, the village named after the nearby river is located where the Andes are not so high and rugged. Atop this narrow plateau resembling a long and empty trough, a rare geological formation with steep drops on all sides, are located, containing numerous pyramids, the largest situated between two rivers and extending fifty-feet in height, as well as tombs, and houses, some sitting on platforms cut into the hard rock in an area filled with gold, silver and copper as evidenced by the numerous artifacts found in the area.
In fact, burial sites on the north of Imbabura had large “quantities of gold, silver, Tumbaga, a ternary alloy of gold, silver and copper” (Isumi Shimada, The Inka Empire: A Multidisciplinary Approach, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 2015, p332). Here is a land of rivers and streams in the mountains, containing large hydrologic reserves (Barbara Rose Johnston, et al, Water, Cultural Diversity, and Global Environmental Change, Springer Science and Business Media, 2011).
Over 70 grass-covered pyramids with long ramps fill the area around the
Zuleta Valley in Ecuador
It seems like wherever one goes in this Imbabura region, one finds ancient pyramids, artifacts, weapons of war, projectile and spear points.
The remains of a hilltop pucara fort
in northern Ecuador not far from Imbabura
These forts and their accompanying artifacts of war indicate that this area had seen numerous battles and wars over the centuries. Perhaps none as big as those fought long before the Inca came to power, as seen by the dating of many artifacts, especially projectile points, slings and their rocks, and other instruments of war.
(See the next post, “Have They Found Where Battles Were Fought Around Cumorah? – Part XIII “The Artifacts and Weapons of Mount Imbabura”)
"...the land around Imbabura is highly fertile," That is what you get with millions of corpses that deteriorate into fertilizer millennia later!
ReplyDeleteExactly. In fact, this is highly sought-after farmland with several, highly productive farms in the area around Mt. Imbabura
ReplyDelete