The Nazca lines (, ) are a group of geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created between 500 BC and 500 AD by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor, removing pebbles and leaving different-colored dirt exposed. There are two major phases of the Nazca lines, Paracas phase, from 400 to 200 BC, and Nazca phase, from 200 BC to 500 AD. In the 21st century, several hundred new figures have been found with the use of drones, and archaeologists believe that there are more to be found.
Most lines run straight across the landscape, but there are also figurative designs of animals and plants. The combined length of all the lines is more than , and the group covers an area of about . The lines are typically deep. They were made by removing the top layer of reddish-brown ferric oxide–coated pebbles to reveal a yellow-grey subsoil. The width of the lines varies considerably, but more than half are slightly more than wide. In some places they may be only wide, and in others reach wide.
Some of the Nazca lines form shapes that are best seen from the air (at around ), although they are also visible from the surrounding foothills and other high places.Gardner's Art Through the Ages: Ancient, medieval, and non-European art . Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1991. .Hinman, Bonnie (2016). Mystery of the Nazca Lines . ABDO; . pp. 6–.Anthony F. Aveni (2000). Between the Lines: The Mystery of the Giant Ground Drawings of Ancient Nasca, Peru. University of Texas Press. . pp. 88–. The shapes are usually made from one continuous line. The largest ones are about long. Because of its isolation and the dry, windless, stable climate of the plateau, the lines have mostly been preserved naturally. Extremely rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs. As of 2012, the lines are said to have been deteriorating because of an influx of squatters inhabiting the lands.
The figures vary in complexity. Hundreds are simple lines and geometric shapes; more than 70 are zoomorphic designs, including a hummingbird, arachnid, fish, condor, heron, monkey, lizard, dog, cat, and a human. Other shapes include trees and flowers. Scholars differ in interpreting the purpose of the designs, but in general, they ascribe religious significance to them.Helaine Selin (2013). Nature Across Cultures: Views of Nature and the Environment in Non-Western Cultures. Springer Science & Business Media; . pp. 286–.Richard A. Freund (2016). Digging Through History: Archaeology and Religion from Atlantis to the Holocaust. Rowman & Littlefield. . pp. 22–.Mary Strong (2012). Art, Nature, and Religion in the Central Andes: Themes and Variations from Prehistory to the Present. University of Texas Press. . pp. 33–.Religion and the Environment. Palgrave Macmillan UK; 2016. . pp. 110–. They were designated in 1994 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Location The high, arid plateau stretches more than between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana, approximately south of Lima. The main PE-1S Panamericana Sur runs parallel to it. The main concentration of designs is in a rectangle, south of the hamlet of San Miguel de la Pascana. In this area, the most notable geoglyphs are visible.
Recorded history The first published mention of the Nazca Lines was by Spanish conquistador Pedro Cieza de León in his 1553 book, where he described them as trail markers. In 1569, Luis Monzón reported having seen ancient ruins in Peru, including the remains of "roads".Luis Monzón (1586) "Descripcion de la tierra del repartimiento de los rucanas antamarcas de la corona real, jurisdicion de la ciudad de Guamanga. año de 1586." in: Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, ed., Relaciones geográficas de Indias: Peru, volume 1 (Madrid, Spain: Manuel G. Hernandez, 1881), pp. 197–216. On page 210, Munzón notes seeing ancient ruins, saying "y hay señales de calles" ("and there are signs of streets"). Munzón asked elderly Indians about the ruins. They told him that before the Inca, a people whom "llamaron viracochas" ("they called viracochas") inhabited the area, and "A éstos les hacian caminos, que hoy dia son vistos, tan anchos como una calle" ("To those [places] they made paths, that are seen today, as wide as a street").
Although the lines were partially visible from nearby hills, the first to report them in the twentieth century were Peruvian military and civilian pilots. In 1927, Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejía Xesspe spotted them while he was hiking through the foothills. He discussed them at a conference in Lima in 1939.Mejía Xesspe, Toribio (1939) "Acueductos y caminos antiguos de la hoya del Río Grande de Nazca" (Aqueducts and ancient roads of the Rio Grand valley in Nazca), Actas y Trabajos Cientificos del 27 Congreso Internacional de Americanistas (Proceedings and scientific works of the 27th international congress of American anthropologists), 1: 559–569.
American historian Paul Kosok is credited as the first scholar to study the lines in depth. While in Peru in 1940–41 to study ancient irrigation systems, he flew over the lines and realized that one was in the shape of a bird. Another chance observation helped him see how lines converged on the horizon at the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.
Kosok began to study how the lines might have been created, as well as to try to determine their purpose. He was joined by archaeologist Richard P. Schaedel from the United States, and Maria Reiche, a German mathematician and archaeologist from Lima, to try to determine the purpose of the Nazca Lines. They proposed that the figures were designed as astronomical markers on the horizon to show where the sun and other celestial bodies rose on significant dates. Archaeologists, historians, and mathematicians have all tried to determine the purpose of the lines.
Determining how they were made has been easier than determining why they were made. Scholars have theorized that the Nazca people could have used simple tools and surveying equipment to construct the lines. Archaeological surveys have found wooden stakes in the ground at the end of some lines, which supports this theory. One such stake was carbon-dated and was the basis for establishing the age of the design complex.
Joe Nickell, an American investigator of the paranormal, religious artifacts, and folk mysteries, reproduced the figures in the early twenty-first century by using the same tools and technology that would have been available to the Nazca people. In so doing, he refuted the 1969 hypothesis of Erich von Däniken, who suggested that "ancient astronauts" had constructed these works. With careful planning and simple technologies, Nickell proved that a small team of people could recreate even the largest figures within days, without any aerial assistance. Scientific American characterized Nickell's work as "remarkable in its exactness" when compared to the existing lines.
Most of the lines are formed on the ground by a shallow trench, with a depth between . Such trenches were made by removing the reddish-brown, iron oxide-coated pebbles that cover the surface of the Nazca Desert. When this gravel is removed, the light-colored clay earth exposed in the bottom of the trench contrasts sharply in color and tone with the surrounding land surface, producing visible lines. This sub-layer contains high amounts of lime. With moisture from morning mist, it hardens to form a protective layer that shields the lines from winds, thereby preventing erosion.
The Nazca used this technique to "draw" several hundred simple, but huge, curvilinear animal and human figures. In total, the earthwork project is huge and complex: the area encompassing the lines is nearly , and the largest figures can span nearly 370 m (1,200 ft). Some figures have been measured: the hummingbird is long, the condor is , the monkey is , and the spider is . The very dry, windless, and constant climate of the Nazca region has preserved the lines well.
The discovery of two new small figures was announced in early 2011 by a Japanese team from Yamagata University. One of these resembles a human head and is dated to the early period of Nazca culture or earlier. The other, undated, is an animal. The team has been conducting fieldwork there since 2006, and by 2012 has found approximately 100 new geoglyphs. In March 2012, the university announced that it would open a new research center at the site in September 2012, related to a long-term project to study the area for the next 15 years.
A June 2019 article in Smithsonian magazine describes recent work by a multi-disciplinary team of Japanese researchers who identified or re-identified some of the birds depicted. They note that birds are the animals most frequently depicted in the Nazca geoglyphs. The team believes that some of the bird images that previous researchers assumed to be indigenous species more closely resemble exotic birds found in non-desert habitats. They speculated that "The reason exotic birds were depicted in the geoglyphs instead of indigenous birds is closely related to the purpose of the etching process."
The discovery of 143 new geoglyphs on the Nazca Pampa and in the surrounding area was announced in 2019 by Yamagata University and IBM Japan. One of these was found by using machine learning-based methods.
Lines forming the shape of a cat were discovered on a hill in 2020. The figure is on a steep slope prone to erosion, explaining why it had not previously been discovered until archaeologists carefully studied the image. (featuring many images and links) Drones are revealing sites for further research.
The number of known Nazca geoglyphs amounted to 358 in 2022. Drones now are being used to assist the anthropologists researching the area and are expected to enable them to discover many more.
2024 AI-assisted discoveries In 2024, a team of archaeologists from the Yamagata University's Nazca Institute, in collaboration with IBM Research, used artificial intelligence (AI) to discover 303 previously unknown geoglyphs depicting parrots, cats, monkeys, killer whales, and even severed heads near the Nazca Lines in Peru.
The field survey took place between September 2022 and February 2023 and was conducted on foot for ground truthing under the permission of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture. It required 1,440 labor hours and resulted in 303 newly confirmed figurative geoglyphs. The 1,309 candidates with high potential were further sorted into three ranks. A total of 1,200 labor hours were spent screening the AI-model geoglyph candidate photos.
Speculation regarding purpose
Astronomical explanations
Paul Kosok and Maria Reiche advanced a purpose related to astronomy and cosmology, as has been common in monuments of other ancient cultures: the lines were intended to act as a kind of observatory, to point to the places on the distant horizon where the sun and other celestial bodies rose or set at the solstices. Many prehistoric indigenous cultures in the Americas and elsewhere constructed earthworks that combined such astronomical sighting with their religious cosmology, as did the late Mississippian culture at Cahokia and other sites in present-day United States. Another example is Stonehenge in England. Newgrange in Ireland has tombs that are oriented to admit light at the winter solstice.
Gerald Hawkins and Anthony Aveni, experts in archaeoastronomy, concluded in 1990 that the evidence was insufficient to support such an astronomical explanation.