Please don’t anyone try and visit the Amazon’s ‘mysterious sacred pyramid’!
Media reports fail to mention that "El Cono" is in a strictly protected part of remote Peru
Earlier this month the popular science website Live Science published an article about “El Cono”, a truly extraordinary hill or peak rising dramatically out of the forest in the central Peruvian Amazon, close to the border with Brazil. One of the latest in its “Incredible Places” series, this appears to have been a well-intentioned effort to draw attention to a genuinely bizarre geological formation - albeit with a little bit of fanciful speculation about its origins and spiritual significance thrown in, which unfortunately was echoed by other media.
“A fourth explanation - one for which there is no evidence - is that Cerro El Cono sits on the ruins of a pyramid built by ancient Indigenous tribes, according to [Peruvian newspaper] La República,” reported the Live Science article, which as of last week had about 30,000 page views.
These claims appear to have captured the imagination - literally - of someone at The Sun because four days later, citing “new research”, that newspaper published its own article on El Cono. Describing it as a “towering “pyramid-shaped” mountain” of “spirits” that “locals believe was “built for the Gods””, The Sun claimed “locals insist the mountain was created by ancient humans” and that “legend tells that El Cono sits atop the ruins of an ancient pyramid built by a forgotten Amazon civilisation.”
“Research into local folklore has found that some of the indigenous tribes believe the mountain is man-made, just like the Giza pyramids,” The Sun continued. “If this were proven true, then El Cono would be the tallest ancient structure on Earth - towering over Giza by 481ft.”
Irrespective of any of this nonsense, though, what is much more important to highlight is the fact that both Live Science and The Sun - together with other media that published follow-on articles, including a Spanish off-shoot of National Geographic - totally failed to acknowledge that El Cono is located in an off-limits, out-of-bounds area of the Amazon. Yes, it is in the Sierra del Divisor National Park (SDNP), as those publications all mentioned, but what they didn’t say is that it is in a part of the park designated as a “Strict Protection Zone.”
Even more important, particularly from a human rights perspective, is that El Cono - confusing as this may sound - is also located inside the Isconahua Reserve, which was established in 1998 to protect the land, lives and livelihoods of indigenous people living in “isolation.” That reserve was subsequently included within the SDNP when the latter was created in 2015, and it is precisely for that reason that that part of the park is classified as “strictly protected.”
What this means in practice is that almost no one - certainly not scientists or anyone else conducting research - is permitted to enter the area around El Cono. The indigenous people living in the reserve are highly vulnerable to contact with other people because of their lack of immunological defences, therefore making any kind of encounter potentially catastrophic. That was why it was decided to establish the reserve in the first place, and it is why indigenous federations have been working so hard over the years to ensure it is protected on-the-ground and that oil and gas companies, loggers, gold-miners and narco-traffickers - not to mention researchers, tourists etc - aren’t permitted to go in there.
In other words, access to El Cono is not just “difficult”, as Historia National Geographic described it, but absolutely prohibited.
Drawing attention to this might seem trivial, but the publication of these articles could encourage people to try and discover more about El Cono, including paying it a visit. Live Science even provided GPS coordinates, and stranger things would have happened than someone reading one of these pieces, getting the wrong idea and setting off for remote Peru.
“Is there a pyramid underneath it?” Historia National Geographic asked.
Unlikely, but no one should attempt to check.