Paratoari

Paratoari (also known as "the Pyramids of Paratoari" and "The Pyramids of Pantiacolla" and "The Dots") refers to the site within southeast Peru's Manu area of dense tropical rainforest, that is composed of pyramid-shaped formations, that first came to very limited public's attention via NASA satellite photograph number C-S11-32W071-03, released in 1976, and subsequently garnered greater attention among South America aficionados through a series of three articles which questioned from afar what "The Dots" might truly represent (and settled upon a geological explanation being the most plausible) in 1977 - 1979 issues of the "South American Explorer" journal, most cleverly written under the name of "Ursula Thiermann" by Don Montague, president of the South American Explorers Club. The next 20 years were filled with speculation as to the formations' true nature, as they appeared to be symmetrically spaced and uniform in shape, looking like a series of eight or more pyramids, in at least four rows of two. In August of 1996 Boston-based explorer Gregory Deyermenjian, of the New York-based The Explorers Club, along with exploration partner, Peru's Paulino Mamani, and Peru's Dante Núñez del Prado, Fernando Neuenschwander, Ignacio Mamani, and Machiguenga "Roberto" and his wife "Grenci" and baby daughter "Reina," was first to make an on-site exploration and ground survey that provided definitive, published, first-hand information as to Paratoari's true nature: natural formations, of sandstone, not really as symmetrical in placement or as uniform in size as suggested by their image on the satellite photograph, and without any sign of the influence of ancient culture. The formations, which are at the edge of a higher area that breaks down into lower jungle, are almost certainly a geological formation known as "truncated ridge spurs" (as put forth 17 years previously in the last of the three "Ursula Thiermann" articles). (Deyermenjian has since, in 1999 and 2006, seen and photographed various very similar sites in the area of the Río Timpía, with intriguingly pyramidal-shaped huge natural formations.) (It has recently--in 2007--come to light that the first group of non-native investigators to reach "the Dots" on foot was that which accompanied Robert Laughlin, now with the Smithsonian, in December of 1979. No report was made or published by this group, but one by Mr. Laughlin should be forthcoming.)

References

*"Tips & Notes" section of South American Explorer journal, No. 54, Winter 1998, page 46, "Seeing Dots" (update concerning "the Dots" and Deyermenjian's follow-up to the SAE articles of the 1970's).

*Gregory Deyermenjian, "The Search for the Lost Pyramids of Peru: My Dash to the Dots" in World Explorer, Vol. 2 No. 3, 1998.

*"Ursula Thiermann," "Dots Dots Dots" in South American Explorer journal, Vol. 1 No. 4, April 1979.

*"Ursula Thiermann," "Dots Update," in South American Explorer journal, Vol. 1 No. 2, March 1978.

*"Ursula Thiermann," "The Dots of Pantiacolla," in South American Explorer journal, Vol. 1 No. 1, October 1977.