Ecuadorian Expedition Seeks Atahualpa… Or Giants?

A recently discovered megalithic site lay deep in the jungles of Ecuador. Original reports¹ made extraordinary claims of a lost city of giants found in Llanganates National Park. I can’t fault them for the exuberantly, breathless reporting surrounding this 80 meter pyramid. There are plenty of stories about how giants once ruled the region. According to Don Cieza de Leon.

“These giants from the sea were so great in stature that from the knee down, they were as tall as a tall man. It was amazing to see how their hair hung from their great heads to their shoulders. Yet were they beardless. They ate more than fifty ordinary men. Their eyes were bigs as plates. Their arms and legs were proportionately huge.”

Doubling down on the weird, scattered around the site are oddly shaped stones dubbed ‘hammers’. Men of this stature could easily wield these alleged tools. Physical evidence of their existence remains sketchy. In 1560 C.E. a tomb containing gigantic human bones was uncovered near Cuzco. More recently, bones of men standing more than two and a half meters were found in Manta, Peru. Where are they? Lost in the Smithsonian along with other evidence of precolumbian titans²?

Some explorers began a modest $1,000 Indiegogo campaign³ to play Indiana Jones in the name of Charles Fort, but it was cancelled on November 6th because the Ecuadorian government decided to take a look for themselves⁴. The growing consensus is the site could be the final resting place of Atahualpa, or at least his treasure.

Jumping into the Wayback Machine, one finds Atahualpa being held hostage by Pizarro and his banditos. Being a resourceful fellow, Atahualpa hoped to bribe his way to freedom by promising a room full of gold. General Rumiñahui was sent far and wide to make good on the bribe. Before returning, word spread of Francisco’s treachery by strangling his emperor. As a fuck-you to the Spanish, Rumiñahui stashed that bling somewhere in the Llanganatis mountains.

Joining the multinational effort is Bruce Fenton, known for his books on sketchy subjects like 2012 and Pleiadians. It’s good to see the Ecuadorians aren’t shying away from unconventional theories, but here’s hoping Bruce and company don’t turn the expedition into a laughingstock.

Whether the expedition finds gold or giants, history is bound to be made.

MORE GREAT STORIES FROM WEEK IN WEIRD:

1. http://earth4all.net/lost-ancient-city-of-giants-discovered-in-ecuadorian-jungle/ ↩

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-Rdhwy2Hmo ↩

3. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lost-city-expedition-video ↩

4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/ecuador/10517904/Explorers-hot-on-the-trail-of-Atahualpa-and-the-Treasure-of-the-Llanganates.html ↩