The Ica Stones first came to the attention of the scientific community in 1966 when Dr. Javier Cabrera, a local physician, received a small, carved rock for his birthday from a poor native. The carving on the rock looked ancient to Dr. Cabrera, but intrigued him because it seemed to depict a primitive fish. Hearing that the doctor was interested in the stone, local natives began to bring him more, which they collected from a river bank (not far from the famous Nazca lines). This soon developed into a vast collection of more than 15,000 stones, many etched with impossible scenes. Whereas it might be difficult to prove that the fish represented a long-extinct species, as Dr. Cabrera thought, other scenes carved on other stones are not so ambiguous. They clearly depict such dinosaurs as triceratops, stegosaurus, apatosaurus and human figures riding on the backs of flying pterodactyls. What's more, some of the scenes are of men hunting and killing dinosaurs. Others show men watching the heavens through what look like telescopes, performing open-heart surgery and cesarean section births.

The stones themselves are composed of andesite, a very hard mineral that would make etching quite difficult with primitive tools. They are covered with a natural varnish that is created by bacteria over thousands of years. The etching is made by scraping away this dark varnish to reveal the lighter mineral beneath. According to some reports, examinations of the stones show that the grooves of the etchings also bear traces of additional varnish, however, indicating that they are very old.

The Ica stone craze began in 1996 with Dr. Javier Cabrera Darquea, a Peruvian physician who allegedly abandoned a career in medicine in Lima to open up the Museo de Piedras Grabadas (Engraved Stones Museum) in Ica. There he displays his collection of several thousand stones. Dr. Cabrera claims that a farmer found the stones in a cave. The farmer was arrested for selling the stones to tourists.

He told the police that he didn't really find them in a cave, but that he made them himself.

Other modern Ica artists, however, continue to carve stones and sell forgeries of the farmer's forgeries. In 1975, Basilio Uchuya and Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana claimed that they sold Cabrera stones they'd graved themselves and that they'd chosen their subject matter by copying from "comic books, school books, and magazines" (Polidoro 2002).