Large Inca wooden idol that escaped destruction by Pizarro is not Incan at all, new study shows

Aug 29, 2024

By Laura Geggel



A basketball-player-size, two-faced wooden idol that allegedly escaped destruction by the Spanish conquistadors is real — but it may not be quite what people suspected. The statue is even older than thought, and was probably worshipped by the people who came before the Inca.

And belying the grisly lore that surrounds it, the so-called Pachacamac idol was painted with cinnabar, not drenched in blood, the researchers found.

Together, these findings helped verify the idol’s authenticity. In other words, “We have a new argument to demonstrate that this wooden statue is the original Pachacamac idol,” and not another Incan artifact or even a forgery, study lead researcher Marcela Sepúlveda, a research associate at Sorbonne Université in Paris, told Live Science.

The Western world became aware of the Pachacamac idol when conquistador Hernando Pizarro ordered his followers to destroy it in 1533, asking them to “undo the vault where the idol was and break him in front of everyone,” according to historical sources, the researchers wrote in the study.

The Inca revered the idol, which was thought to possess the powers of an oracle. The Inca housed it in what is now known as the Painted Temple, located in the Pachacamac archaeological complex near Lima, Peru. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Pachacamac was an Inca sanctuary and a pilgrimage destination.



Stone idol at Tiwanaku predates the Inca by a thousand years.

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