It appears that a
rubber tapper who participated in a violent attack on
indigenous people in 1909 may have been the first non-indigenous person to encounter the
petroglyphs, with the next visit having been made by Vicente Cenitagoya, a missionary of the
Dominican Order, in 1921. A smattering of
adventurers began to arrive at the site in the 1950s, and in 1969 it was visited by the Peruvian physician Dr.
Carlos Neuenschwander Landa (who would return in later years accompanied by Peruvian explorer, Sr.
Santiago Yábar). In 1970 another Dominican, Padre Adolfo Torrealba, reached the site, followed by Japanese explorer
Yoshiharo Sekino, and the French-Peruvian explorers Herbert and Nicole Cartagena in 1978. Two years later, it was visited by Peruvian
archaeologist Federico Kauffmann Doig. In 1991 the party of North American explorer
Gregory Deyermenjian, including Peruvian explorer Paulino Mamani and the previously mentioned Santiago Yábar, arrived at Pusharo. The site has since been visited and studied by rock art scholar
Rainer Hostnig. In 2008, it was the subject of a documentary-trek filmed for the
BBC television series
Extreme Dreams presented by
Ben Fogle. In 2016, the petroglyphs of the site played an important role in the research of Vincent Pélissier, as he searched for the mythical lost city of
Paititi. In the research, the petroglyphs were interpreted as a map, leading from the glyphs to the city. The research assumes two things as fact: the petroglyphs are a map, and the carvings were made by the Inca. Neither of these assumptions have been proven definitively. ==Description==