Surfing in 1000 BC

Viva Caballito!

Out of the Blue

A Surfboard for Everybody

Lono Wept

The New God Doesn't Surf

A Sport in Decline

On a sunny fall morning in 1987, Felipe Pomar of Lima walked into the California offices of 

 magazine, right on time for his scheduled meeting, ready to talk about a subject guaranteed to put a blank expression on just about any waverider’s face—surfing in ancient Peru. Hawaii, of course, has always been regarded as surfing’s birthplace, but Pomar wanted to propose an alternate theory of the sport’s origins. He was too smart to think he was going to waltz into 

 and change surfing’s foundation story before lunch break. Still, the topic meant enough to him that he wanted to try. Smiling confidently, he shook hands with the editorial staff.

Pomar had a unique kind of highbred surf celebrity. He was the gracious and urbane son of a plantation owner, knew his way around a polo field, and owned a tuxedo. Twenty-two years earlier he’d charged his way to a surprise win in the 1965 World Surfing Championships, held in the powerful waves just south of his hometown. 

 labeled him the “Wild Bull of Punta Rocas,” but the tag didn’t really work—there was nothing wild or animal-like about a man who wore pressed chinos, kept an appointment book, and dined at his beachfront club with bankers, industrialists, and Latin American presidents. Anyway, “the Bull” was already taken by a hulking California big-wave leatherneck named Greg Noll, who with his penchant for bar-fighting and X-rated banter, really earned the nickname.

 meeting, Pomar carried with him a small, neatly crafted bundle of reeds, squared at one end, wickedly tapered and flipped-up at the other. This, he told the 

, or “little horse.” Villagers in Huanchaco, five hundred miles north of Lima, used the 

 for nearshore fishing and to ride waves for fun and sport. Pomar looked at the 

 for a moment. The Hawaiians, he asked with a little rhetorical tilt of the head, have been surfing for how long? One thousand years? Fifteen hundred? He nodded toward the 

. Three thousand years, he said. That’s how long they’ve been riding waves in Huanchaco. Three thousand years—maybe longer.

 coincided with a new period of archaeological discovery in Peru that moved the country into the first rank of ancient civilizations. An irrigation canal in the north was estimated to be over six thousand years old. An unearthed 150-acre desert metropolis named Caral, with artifacts dating back to 2,600 BC, was filled with plazas and canals, amphitheaters, fitted-stone multifloor buildings, musical instruments, and pyramids older than those of Egypt—a few 

 anthropologists had begun referring to Caral as “The Mother of All Civilizations.” Many of these finds underscore ancient Peru’s close relationship with the ocean: wave motifs decorate bowls and fabrics and are stamped into the gold crowns of warrior-priest headgear. Towering bas-relief courtyard walls feature the unmistakable horizontal lines of an incoming swell. Wave-riding, or the suggestion of wave-riding, appears as well. A two-thousand-year-old frieze shows a deity charging across the night sky on a crescent moon in the shape of a 

. In a matched ceramic set, two Peruvians straddle their reed boats, heads low, hands and eyes forward, in a pose suggesting a fast ride toward shore. Both figures grin broadly.

let Pomar write a feature story on ancient Peruvian wave-riding. A fine bit of avocational scholarship, “Surfing in 1,000 BC” (appearing in the April 1988 issue) was informed, serious, and well-researched. Launched into the vast Day-Glo-hued expanse of late-eighties surfing, though, it vanished almost without a trace. A subscriber from Florida wrote in to cite a zoological paper on the wave-utilizing properties of clams, and noted that prehistoric mollusks “were undoubtedly ‘hanging valves’ long before man first dragged a tree branch into the shorebreak.” Nobody else bothered to comment.

For years afterward, Pomar continued to promote this new overture to surfing’s established history. He appeared on TV, gave newspaper interviews, and personally arranged visits to northern Peru with history-inclined surfers, showing them dig sites, museums, and the beach at Huanchaco. 

 he’d repeat, a polite urgency behind the words. 

Pomar was right. It’s a huge span of time. Before the slaughtering Spanish Conquest and the vast Inca Empire; before the Chimu and Moche and a few other aboriginal pre-Peruvian epochs. Wrestling is an older recreational activity than wave-riding. Gymnastics, archery, and swimming are older. But not much else. Skiing, golf, tennis, handball, team sports—all were invented centuries, even millennia, after man began riding waves.

As seen in an ancient ceramic, two Peruvian fishermen straddle their reed boats, heads low, hands and eyes forward, in a pose suggesting a fast ride toward shore. Both figures grin broadly.

Chapter: 1

Out of the Blue

Surfing in 1000 BC

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