Peru is home to countless ancient mysteries, fascinating legends, and incredible myths. One such mystery is hidden deep in the rainforest of the Peruvian Amazon: a massive face carved into the rock, deeply significant to the indigenous community that has known it for generations.
Known to the Harakbut people as “el Rostro,” meaning “the face,” this striking formation has existed in Harakbut oral tradition for generations. Despite the face being well established in documented indigenous legend, its remote location in Peru’s Amarakaeri Communal Reserve made it difficult to reach for outsiders.
They call it “el Rostro Harakbut,” the Harakbut Face.
The formation is located in a remote part of the southeastern Peruvian Amazon, in the Madre de Dios region. In October 2014, British filmmaker Paul Redman accompanied a group of nine Harakbut men on an expedition to reach it, documenting the journey for a resulting short film.
“The very existence of the carved face has been the stuff of legend, passed down for generations among Harakmbut families,” stated a press release by Burness Communications announcing the film’s screening in Lima.
“But few people have seen it.”
The Amazon rainforest does contain other similarly striking rock formations, some well documented, others surrounded by local legend, part of the region’s rich geological and cultural landscape.
The resulting documentary, titled The Reunion, follows two Harakbut leaders, Luis Tayori and Jaime Korisepa, on their journey to the Rostro. It’s a moving account of what places like this mean to the Harakbut community.
“It took us three days of hard climbing to get there, but then it was glorious,” Rainforest Foundation US program director Tom Bewick, who accompanied the expedition, told The Guardian.
Footage from the film shows Tayori describing the moment of arrival: “This is a reunion with our ancestors. I think this could strengthen our people… It was very emotional seeing the Rostro.”
The formation is visibly distinct from other geological features in the surrounding area. While the region contains many natural rock formations, observers, including Bewick, have noted the Rostro appears to show tool marks unlike anything else nearby.
Whether Archaeologists Have Studied It
This needs a direct, important correction. The formation has not been the subject of a formal, dedicated archaeological excavation, but it has drawn academic attention: a 2018 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Rock Art Research, titled “What is anthropogenic? On the cultural aetiology of geo-situated visual imagery in indigenous Amazonia,” specifically examined the Harakbut Face and comparable formations, engaging seriously with the complex question of how communities identify and interpret human-like features in natural rock. This is published academic engagement, not archaeological silence.
Local Harakbut community members, recognized as the formation’s traditional custodians and the people who actually know it best, maintain it was shaped by their ancestors. Tom Bewick, who has visited the site directly, has publicly stated his own view that it shows evidence of human tool work.
Bewick’s published observations, given directly to The Guardian, include several specific points: “There are no other rocks remotely similar in shape in that river valley,” that the formation “is perched perfectly overlooking a valley, and presides over a waterfall and a basin that resembles an amphitheater,” that “there are markings all over it that indicate it was hacked out with rudimentary tools,” and, strikingly, that there are actually two faces on the formation, “a Rostro within a Rostro,” visible below the main face’s nose. He also specifically noted the river boulders appear arranged in a way that channels water flow away from directly striking the formation, an observation he offers as evidence against simple natural erosion as the sole explanation.
Geologists who have separately examined similar Amazon rock formations note that natural weathering and erosion processes can produce startlingly face-like features over time, a well-documented phenomenon in geology generally, worth weighing honestly alongside Bewick’s specific on-site observations rather than treating either view as automatically settled.
But perhaps the most significant point for why some observers believe the face is not simply natural is that there are no similarly shaped rocks anywhere else in the region. It’s also worth noting that the formation is not situated directly upstream in a way that would make flood-driven natural shaping the obvious explanation.
“The Harakbut do not have a written history, but they claim that the Rostro has been in their oral history for many generations… More studies are certainly needed,” Bewick has said.
Was the Face a boundary marker left by an earlier culture? For the Harakbut, this stone formation has been honored for generations by community elders, who maintain there are two additional, related faces in the surrounding area. Guides have also described a nearby site known as the “house of the Inca,” where visitors can see carved stone structures.
As we hope to learn more about this remarkable place hidden deep in the Amazon, it’s worth wondering why cultures across history have carved such striking figures. To honor ancestors? Deities? Whatever the reason, places like this are worth learning more about, both for their cultural significance and their still-open geological questions.
Harakbut leaders have publicly stated the Face stands as a cultural symbol against the encroaching threat of illegal mining and road construction in the region, and have formally proposed the Face of Harakbut be recognized as an UNESCO Cultural Heritage site.
