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The Nazca Lines
The Nazca Lines are a series of geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert, a high arid plateau that stretches 53 miles or more than 80 kilometers between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana in Peru. They were created by the Nazca culture between 200 BC and 700 AD. There are hundreds of individual figures, ranging in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, and lizards.
The Nazca lines cannot be recognized as coherent figures except from the air. Since it is presumed the Nazca people could never have seen their work from this vantage point, there has been much speculation on the builders' abilities and motivations.
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Buildind the Nazca Lines
The lines were made by fusing the iron oxide coated pebbles which cover the surface of the Nazca desert. When the gravel is removed, they contrast with the light-colored earth underneath. There are several hundred simple lines and geometric patterns on the Nazca plateau, as well as over seventy curvilinear animal, insect, and human figures. The area encompassing the lines is nearly 500 square kilometers (200 square miles), and the largest figures can be nearly 900 feet (270 meters) long. The lines persist due to the extremely dry, windless, and constant climate of the Nazca region: the Nazca desert is one of the driest on Earth and maintains a temperature around 25°C (77°F) year round, and the lack of wind has helped keep the lines uncovered to the present day.
Since their discovery, various theories have been proposed regarding the methods and motivations underlying the lines' construction. The archaeological explanation as to who made them and how is widely accepted; namely that the Nazca people made the lines using simple tools and surveying equipment. Wooden stakes in the ground at the end of some lines (which were used to carbon-date the figures) and ceramics found on the surface support this theory. Furthermore, researchers such as Joe Nickell of the University of Kentucky, have reproduced the figures using the technology available to the Nazca Indians of the time without aerial supervision. With careful planning and simple technologies, a small team of individuals could recreate even the largest figures within a couple of days.
However, there is less existing evidence concerning why the figures were built, so the Nazca people's motivation remains the lines' most persistent mystery. Many scholars believe that their motivation was religious, making images that only gods in the sky could see clearly. In 1985 the archaeologist Johan Reinhard published archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data demonstrating that worship of mountains and other water sources played a dominant role in Nazca religion and economy from ancient to recent times. He presented the theory that the lines and figures can be explained as part of religious practices involving the worship of deities associated with the availability of water and thus the fertility of crops. The lines were interpreted as being primarily used as sacred paths leading to places from which these deities could be worshiped and the figures as symbolically representing animals and objects meant to invoke their aid. However, the precise meanings of many of the individual geoglyphs remain unsolved.
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Alternative Theories on the Creation of the Nazca Lines
Another theory involves the work of David Johnson. Johnson has spent long hours researching the Nazca Lines and their apparent connection with underground waterways. Johnson has allegedly used dowsing to track these water tunnels and claims that the lines indicate whether the ground contains water or not. The areas with the most geoglyphs are purportedly centered around areas with high amounts of underground water and are usually close to wells and other on-land water sources. A suggestion Johnson makes is the fact that the inhabitants living in such a dry land would spend a significant portion of their time searching for water sources. By creating a giant, full-scale map they would know exactly where to find their water no matter what area of the desert they were in. The geoglyphs would then be religious figures for the gods or names given for each water source.
Kosok and Reiche advanced one of the earliest reasons given for the Nazca Lines: that they were intended to point to the places on the distant horizon where the Sun and other celestial bodies rose or set. This hypothesis was evaluated by two different experts in archaeoastronomy, Gerald Hawkins and Anthony Aveni, and they both concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support an astronomical explanation.
Notwithstanding Gerald Hawkins' and Anthony Aveni's dismissal of an astronomical explanation of the Nazca Lines and geoglyphs, eclipsologist Robin Edgar has theorized that the Nazca Lines, particularly the biomorph geoglyphs that depict animals, human figures, birds and "flowers" are almost certainly an ancient response to the so-called "Eye of God" that is manifested in the sky during a total solar eclipse. An unusual series of total solar eclipses over southern Peru coincided with the time period during which the Nazca Lines and geoglyphs were created. The totally eclipsed sun distinctly resembles the pupil and iris of a gigantic eye looking down from the sky thus providing an explanation as to why the Nazca Indians created gigantic geoglyph artworks that are best viewed by an "Eye in the Sky".
Some (for example Jim Woodmann) have proposed that the Nazca lines presuppose some form of manned flight (in order to see them) and that a hot air balloon was the only possible available technology. Woodmann actually made a hot air balloon from materials and using techniques that would have been available to people at the time in order to test this hypothesis. The balloon flew (after a fashion) demonstrating that this hypothesis was possible, but there is no hard evidence either way.
Another theory contends that the lines are the remains of "walking temples," where a large group of worshipers walked along a preset pattern dedicated to a particular holy entity, similar to the practice of labyrinth walking. Residents of the local villages say the ancient Indians conducted rituals on these giant drawings to thank the gods and to ensure that water would continue to flow from the Andes. This take on the Nazca lines' purpose and importance is far more likely, as it correlates with the purposes of other North American geoglyphs. It also ties in with the extensive network of underground canals and waterways found dating from the same period.
Also, according to a recent hypothesis from Michael Vaillant, conductors under the form of very slim gold or copper leafs would have been stretched on the ground. These conductors would have been used as antennas to collect the very low frequencies magnetotelluric waves produced in certain seismographic areas, and that occurred a few hours (or days) before the seisms. This hypothesis rely on a controversial theory named as "SES" (Seismic Electric Signals).
The Nazca lines would be the traces of the place where these conductors would have been set down, but also of the numerous tests that would have been done and to find "suitable positions" to collect EM field and depending of local geology.
This could signify that this site would have served to protect life as an oracle with whom the Nazcans would have been able to speak to the "gods of the mountains". Indeed, a such worship seems to have been detected: Johan Reinhard detailed various ancient traditions, according to which the mountain-gods took to the skies in the form of eagles or condors. Actually, a condor and several other birds are drawn on the site, on the border of the long lines drawn.
Perhaps the most controversial theory was put forward by Erich von Däniken in his book Chariots of the Gods, who proposed that the lines were in fact landing strips for alien spacecraft. His argument is similar to Woodman's, claiming that the designs are so large and complex that they could only have been constructed using flying machines.
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