Augusto Cardich Loarte , was born on April 22, 1924 in the province of La Unión, department of Huánuco. He did his first studies at school No. 391 in his native land and then went to Lima, studying high school at the San Agustín school. He graduated as an agricultural engineer from the National University of La Plata (Argentina), where he later assumed the chair of Archaeological Research Techniques at the Faculty of Natural Sciences. He has carried out explorations in the central highlands to identify the sources of the Marañón, Huallaga and Amazon rivers . he is owed the discovery of the so-called "Lauricocha man" , in the context of a tradition of high Andean hunters and a set of caves in the Huanuco province of Dos de Mayo, specifically in "the headwaters or sources of the Marañón-Amazonas river", with an antiquity of ten thousand years. At the same time Cardich discovered groups of cave paintings in the surroundings of Lauricocha , with typical camelid hunting scenes.
His publications include The Lauricocha deposits , New interpretations of Peruvian prehistory (1958), enlarged in Lauricocha. Foundations for a prehistory of the central Andes (1964), which won the national prize for historical research in 1965; "Prehistoric investigations in the Peruvian Andes" in Ancient Peru:Space and time (1960), "Ranracancha:a preceramic site in the department of Pasco" in Acta Praelnistórica (1962), "Peruvian prehistory and its chronological depth" in the Bulletin of the Geographic Society of Lima (1963), "Towards an interpretation of the prehistory of South America" in Annals of Archeology and Ethnology (1971), "Excavations in the cave of Huargo" in Magazine of the National Museum (1973), "Farmers and shepherds in Lauricocha and upper limits of cultivation” in Revista del Museo Nacional (1975), “Origin del hombre y la cultura Andinos” in Historia del Perú (1980).
In 1988, the government of Peru gave him the Palmas Magistrales decoration, while in 1990 the UNLP elevated him to its highest academic degree:professor emeritus. The Biographical Center of Cambridge (England) distinguished him with the title of International Scientist of the year 2001.