Nazca Lines, Paracas, Peru

I am confused. The Nazca Lines, which were created in southern Peru some 2,000 years ago (long before the age of flight) can only be seen and fully appreciated from the air. Why create art that nobody can see? The Lines not only baffled my mind, they also have perplexed generations of scientists and armchair archaeologists alike.

It all started when someone flew his plane over the Sachura Desert in the 1920s and noticed perfectly straight lines up to 50 km (30 mi) long and giant figures etched into the dry desert floor. The figures, which are called geoglyphs, are up to 280 m (920 ft) long. They depict birds, fish, humans, and even spiders, are huge and can only be seen from the air. Their discovery, after the site has been shrouded in obscurity for 15 centuries, launched a myriad of investigations which, up to the present, have tried to explain how and why the geoglyphs were created. Not an easy task because pre-Columbian civilisations in South America left no written records of their lives and cultures.

The Pan-American Highway starts in Alaska and ends in Patagonia, the southernmost tip of South America. The highway goes right through the Nazca Lines. The lines became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The more than 75,000 ha (185,000 acres) large site in the Sachura Desert is too big to monitor effectively. Vandalism can be seen in many places.

We now know that the geoglyphs were mostly constructed by the Nazcan people, a pre-Columbian culture in southern Peru, between 200 BC and 500 AD. Hypotheses abound about the purpose and meaning of the over 800 straight lines and 70 animal and plant figures on the desert floor. They range from landing strips for alien spacecraft to indicators for subterranean aquifers to sites for spiritual rituals. Using cross-interpretations among the Nazca Lines, Nazca pottery designs and Nazca textile art, the consensus was reached that water and fertility were of primary importance to the Nazca culture. Since the Sachura Desert is one of the harshest and driest places on earth (the desert receives less than 1” of rain per year), it would make sense that the artwork on the desert floor was created to appease the gods, pray for rain and crop success and serve as places of worship.

Of course, this does not explain the enormous size of the geoglyphs and how such perfect designs could have been achieved without help from above. Perhaps we must wait for a new generation of scientists to take over before out-of-the-box thinking can solve one of the most baffling archaeological mysteries on our planet.  

More pictures can be seen on this website on the page “Gallery Archive - Central & South America III”.

~ RT