Seven years had passed since Neil Armstrong first set foot on the Moon, when the iconic astronaut descended to the bowels of the Earth to visit the Cueva de los Tayos. To admire the strange world this time he did not have to leave the planet, but on the contrary, he embarked on an adventure into the underground depths. This is the story of a cave that has been surrounded by mysticism since its discovery and that is the protagonist of hundreds of conspiracy stories.
The Tayos Cave
The Cueva de los Tayos was already well known by the ancestral peoples of what it is today, peoples who are called Shuar or Jíbaros. But it was not until July 21, 1969 (curiously a few days after Armstrong stepped on the Moon), that the world learned of the existence of one of the oldest caves in the world that, according to some, kept secrets of intelligent underground civilizations.
The discovery was made known to the world thanks to Juan Móricz, a researcher of Hungarian descent and nationalized Argentine. Móricz was very passionate about anthropology and ancient languages, and in his quest to establish contact with the Shuar, he ended up discovering one of the most mysterious caves in the world.
But it was not per se the cave that receives its name because it is the home of the Tayos, the one that he called the one of the world. Móricz claimed to have found a metal plate inside the place, which according to him was a type of metal plate with engravings on it that recalled the findings of the Sumerian culture.
“I have discovered in the eastern region, province of Morona Santiago, within the limits of the Republic of Ecuador, precious objects of cultural and historical value for humanity that consist of metal sheets that contain the historical relationship of an entire lost civilization,” Móricz told El Universo de Guayaquil on August 6, 1976.
Numerous theories began to emerge from Móricz’s statements and books were even written on the subject. One of them was published by Erich von Däniken ‘The Gold of the Gods’, which affirmed the existence of a supposed intelligent underground civilization.
Neil Armstrong and the 1976 expedition
The world immediately set its eyes on Ecuador and the mysterious cave, as many wondered if within it there could be signs of an intelligent civilization other than humanity or that perhaps we had not yet discovered. For this reason, the governments of Ecuador and England financed a large expedition to finally reveal the secrets of the Cueva de los Tayos.
It was precisely on this adventure that Neil Armstrong was part of the Cueva de los Tayos expedition team that descended its intricate walls in 1976. He and the team rappelled down 63 meters into a two-meter-wide cavern. Then they arrived at a cavity 68 meters long and 7.8 meters wide, where there are now camps for adventurers who enter it.
It is currently known that the cave is more complex than this and in fact, there are tunnels that not even the Shuar know about. The last extended expedition was the one carried out by filmmaker Miguel Garzón in 2017, to film a documentary that portrays the underground wonder. Garzón himself said that the mysterious cave is “the world is full of life. There are insects, spiders, tarantulas, snakes, tayo birds. Is very surprising”.
Geologists believe that the Tayos Cave dates back about 200 million years and is mainly composed of karst rock, which is very strange since there are very few caves like this in South America. They also estimate that its underground length could extend over 460 kilometers, along which underwater paths and intricate narrow caverns branch off.
Regarding the supposed metal, it is not known exactly if it really existed or if everything was part of a theory that mixes the magic of nature, how incomprehensible the planet can be and the desire for the existence of non-human civilizations of great intelligence. . There is no indication so far of such findings.