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5,200 holes carved into a Peruvian mountain left by an ancient economy
- yomismoaqui 8mo agoThe first thing that came to my mind: https://imgur.com/gallery/lni-enigma-of-amigara-fault-junji-ito-nuSwv https://imgur.com/gallery/lni-enigma-of-amigara-fault-junji-...
- riskable 8mo agoYes but these holes are holier. Hence the religious explanation.
- krunck 8mo agoThe holes were created without concern for slope angle or whether there was a drainage arroyo. To me this does not indicate something of secular practical usage. I'd lean toward a ritualistic behavior that had to happen in a certain place, tied with previous performances of the ritual, and performed many times. Question: can they date the holes at either end?
- dvh 8mo ago"And here on this mountainside, we store roman dodecahedrons..."
- nomdep 8mo agoI think this comment is substantially more informative than the article itself: https://newatlas.com/environment/5-200-holes-peruvian-mountain/#0000019b-4830-d63b-a9bf-ef35ffa50000 https://newatlas.com/environment/5-200-holes-peruvian-mounta... Each hole is constructed- dug out and lined with rock. These are not mining holes, nor used to store things. If you want to store stuff, you would put these pits along the bottom of the hill, not running a long distance up the hill. They tried to keep the lines somewhat straight, crossing gullies. I can't guess what valid use they might have had, other than religious. They seem pointless.
- throaskjdsakn 8mo agoChromeXX January 1, 2026 10:38 AM It's safe to say, since it's been proven these holes exist all over the Amazon, that they were created to catch or divert animals, to keep them from reaching their village. After finding the normal route of the animals and their crossings, the holes were possibly dug to confuse the animals and funnel them into the small foot traffic areas to be caught and killed - whether for food or to control their travel. If it would stop humans from wanting to traverse the land, animals wouldn't want to either. Also, I see "scientists" make this mistake over and over; the lay of the land now is not what it was back then, and large ravines that are there now may have been lush with greenery and completely flat. Earthquakes and landslides could have completely changed the overall landscape by now too.
- pinkmuffinere 8mo ago> It's safe to say, since it's been proven these holes exist all over the Amazon, that they were created to catch or divert animals, to keep them from reaching their village Are you serious? There's an absolutely massive logical leap from [these holes exist all over the Amazon] -> [they were created to catch or divert animals]. Do you have some other evidence to argue in favor of this?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- throaskjdsakn 8mo agoits another comment from the link lol
- pinkmuffinere 8mo agooh lol I missed that
- idiotsecant 8mo agoGreentext name, bold unfounded claims, 'scientists' in smug quotes. Troll, arrow down and move on.
- opengrass 8mo agoMaybe they were looking for a chest containing jewels, deeds, and promissory notes.
- FrameworkFred 8mo agoIt would make sense that the holes were a convenient way of thinking and speaking about large quantities of goods such that tribes of people might want to exchange. It would be a very visual way of comparing dissimilar goods, like "1 hole has 50 alpaca skins and I need 200 for the shelter I'm planning to build, so I need 4" and "1 hole has 8 baskets of dried fish which can last 3 families thru the winter, so I need 3 for the nine families on the farm", etc. And I bet they paid a bit of rent for the privilege. Pretty cool.
- verisimi 8mo ago"200 for the shelter"! and they paid rent? Is property on your mind? I think you are in error to assume that the financialisation of property we have in our culture is a natural state everywhere at all times, and that it would have inevitably also applied to historical cultures.
- brudgers 8mo agoSo is that 1.04 Albert Hall holes?
- readthenotes1 8mo ago1.3x if I did the math right "Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire And though the holes were rather small They had to count them all Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall"
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- neves 8mo agoPeru is a marvelous country, and one of the greatest trip destinations in the world. A travel guide described Peru as the Egypt of the Americas. I went there just knowing about the Incas, but they one just one among dozens of civilizations. It blows your mind. The greatest sadness is to see the amount of wonders destroyed by the Spanish invaders.
- dyauspitr 8mo agoSomewhat tangentially related, it always pains me to think of the fact that 1000s of ancient temples in India were destroyed by the Mughals. If the ones left behind are anything to go by, it’s a tremendous loss.
- dev_l1x_be 8mo agoBased on the current state of things, we have probably discovered only 50% of the wonders there. Nobody is digging deeper, figuratively and literally.
- beeandapenguin 8mo agoAgreed. I just traveled to Peru for the first time a few months ago and visited Cusco for 7 days. For me, it was not enough, since all I wanted to do was go back immediately upon leaving. I'm normally the kinda person that wants to travel to as many new places as possible, but Peru was different. I can easily say I want to go back there at least 5 more times in my life. Reflecting on it when I got home, I couldn't understand what made me not decide to go earlier in my life. I had Machu Picchu at the top of my bucket list since childhood as I'm sure many do, but it was never at the top for some reason. That was such a big mistake and I wish I went to Peru a long time ago, there's no other place like it, and it only gets harder to travel there the older you get since the altitude is rough. The number of elderly and retired people I saw struggling in Cusco from altitude sickness was too high. I heard a horror story of someone needing to spend a week in the hospital and unable to see a single site.
- mekdoonggi 8mo agoIf they are similar to khipus (used for accounting) perhaps we're looking at the invention of a central bank. Think about it, the village has a hard year, so they collectively borrow grain from another village. How do you settle disputes about exactly how much was borrowed? You build a big thing on the edge of town that everyone can see and can't destroy without a bunch of effort.
- nilslindemann 8mo agoHas the "Gargantua Wasps" theory already been ruled out?
- giwook 8mo agoI wonder what future civilizations millennia from now will think of the remnants of our civilization. Archeologist from the future: WTF is a 'labubu'?
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- dyauspitr 8mo agoHow have shallow holes in the ground not been completely filled up over the last 600 odd years.
- doodlebugging 8mo agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45900238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45900238 Nov. 2025
- ErroneousBosh 8mo ago# And though the holes were rather small # They had to count them all # now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Haaaalllll
- Horatius77 8mo agohere is the google maps satellite view for anyone who is interested: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Band+of+Holes/@-13.7072611,-75.875294,414m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x9110503ddf890f89:0x8f6075d3316146ad!8m2!3d-13.7070485!4d-75.8750591!16s%2Fm%2F0w7mzly https://www.google.com/maps/place/Band+of+Holes/@-13.7072611...
- tiffanyh 8mo agoI wonder if the mountain had a landslide in the past since they unexpectedly stop and what appears like a terrain change. https://maps.app.goo.gl/LFMS6uVg3V3agVZc6?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/LFMS6uVg3V3agVZc6?g_st=ic If the case, wonder how far this Band of Holes went on for originally.
- hinkley 8mo agoAfrica is experimenting with something fairly reminiscent to this. Not sure about the content, but this one has the best pictures: https://www.upworthy.com/forgotten-half-moon-water-harvesting-method-transforms-barren-wasteland-into-green-farms-ex1/ https://www.upworthy.com/forgotten-half-moon-water-harvestin... I'm just not sure if the relationship between the holes, the ridgeline, and prevailing winds (rain) line up for this being a water harvesting solution. But it's clear that in several sections they've done this on all of the terrain that's walkable on some of those hills, and I know walking ridgetops is often a solution to get through rocky or desert areas.
- armenarmen 8mo agoI always like seeing the desert reclamation stuff, but I always kind of think that the before pictures are taken in the dry season and after pictures are taken in the rainy season
- triage8004 8mo agoMaybe ancient currency like the Rai stones?
- londons_explore 8mo agoKinda sad that this was done less than 1000 years ago at presumably great human efforts, yet we have forgotten why we even did it. Lack of record keeping is the key problem. Will someone 1000 years from now know what you spent your lifetime working on? Will your lifetimes work also be a mystery to future generations and will they shrug and say "all this computer code must be for religious sacrifice, we can see no other purposes for it"? Is there any way we can make the current era of humanity the 'well documented one', for example by etching all our digital data into diamonds to last millions of years?
- otabdeveloper4 8mo ago> Will your lifetimes work also be a mystery to future generations and will they shrug and say "all this computer code must be for religious sacrifice, we can see no other purposes for it"? I doubt any computer code will survive for 1000 years.
- spydum 8mo agoreally? I feel absolutely assured that every ugly temporary code fix I put in place, will persist for eternity..
- cwmoore 8mo agoCustoms and taxes on the border ridge? I would like to see something about the wider geography of the area.
- xorvoid 8mo agoWhat if some of these ancient mysteries simply weren't logical. Investigations always assume that there was some very rational reason but still in our modern society we have exuberance and economic bubbles. The phenomenon is well-documented. What if it was something like that? The hole digging just got out-of-control?