By James Donahue

In addition to the Ica Stones, it appears that artists living in an ancient civilization in what is now Mexico found yet another way of leaving a long-lasting record of their story. They made clay figurines . . . thousands of them . . . and perhaps left them buried in the earth for us to find.

Sometime after World War II, amateur archaeologist Val Julesrod uncovered clay figurines along a trench at the base of Bull Mountain in his native Mexico. After talking to local farmers, Julesrod learned that figurines like these were frequently being uncovered when farmers dug ditches and trenches in the area. They usually turned up in groups of between 20 to 40 pieces, and were usually found in a particular piece of land at the base of the mountain.

Julesrod began excavating the area and eventually had a collection of over thirty thousand figurines.

The figurines, all made of a particular type of clay found in the area, appear to show art works of two distinct cultures and time periods. One type with human figures with large eyes and lips depict a style of art known to be linked to a culture that lived in the area thousands of years before Columbus. Radiocarbon dating marks them at 3,500 years old.

The other figures are thought to be much older. They show figures of animals that were never thought to have been indigenous to the area, like camels, elephants and horses. And they also include exact replications of dinosaurs believed to have been extinct for over 60 million years.

While it might be argued that petroglyphs, or carvings in hard rock might survive for millions of years in a protected environment under soft earth, could we expect clay art figurines to do as well?

Thus we have a mystery left from antiquity in the soils of Mexico and Peru. These ancient art works appear to be telling us that humans not only were here at the time of the dinosaurs, but they hunted them, and may have been hunted by them. They also knew of other animals from other parts of the planet that they should not have known about.

John Tierney, an independent historical researcher, says he has spent 40 years studying the Julesrod figurines in an attempt to solve their mystery. He says he knew Julesrod and knows that this man was never interested in financial gain from his discovery. Thus he finds no reason to believe the figurines were created as a hoax.

Writing about Julesrod, Tierney said “he trusted that (the figurines) would, someday, be an important clue to understanding human history.”

And, like the Ica Stones, the clay figures show detailed images of Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Pterodactyls, both alone and in various interactions with human figures.

Also like Dr. Javier Cabrera Darquea, who collected thousands of the Ica Stones after their discovery in Peru, Julesrod attempted in vain to gain the attention of world archaeologists and introduce the world to his remarkable discovery.

In 1954 Julesrod actually convinced a team of archaeologists to visit the site where the clay figurines were found. They made some excavations and uncovered a collection of new figurines, appeared excited by their find, and stated that they thought the work was authentic. But three weeks after they returned to the university, their report concluded that they could not be real because of the impossible representations of both humans and extinct dinosaurs together.

Thus the existence of the Julesrod figurines were disregarded by the established scientific community because they did not fit the Christian mold for approved human history. If Catholic priests could have burned the Ica Stones and the Julesrod figurines in the same pile with the ancient library books, they would have gladly done so.