Reading Between the Lines of Nasca

On a dry, desolate Peruvian desert, someone created a series of drawings sometime over 2000 years ago. The lines create pictures on a 500 sq. mi. area of the desert. Some are huge, the hummingbird figure is over 90 meters long. Pilots in the 1930's discovered the pictures of hummingbirds, monkey, condor, spider and a tree. Some of the pictures can be viewed from nearby foothills, but to see most of them in their entirety, one has to view them from the air.

The Nasca lines are called Geoglyphs and they are not the only geoglyphs in the world, but they are the largest and most spectacular. Straight lines go on for kilometers varying from straight by only a few degrees. How they were made is at least one topic that scientists agree on. The desert is covered with blackened volcanic rocks. Several inches below these rocks is a soft yellowish white sand. By removing the rocks, the light yellow sand is exposed, providing a perfect medium for the artists. Because this desert is one of the driest and most windless places on Earth, the drawings have been nearly perfectly preserved.

How the lines were made may be agreed upon, but why they were made is a whole different story. Many theories have arisen over the years as to why the drawings were made, some from scientists some from people who just like a mystery and some by pseudoscientists. Perhaps the wackiest explanation claims that the drawings are made as navigation signals to extraterrestrials visiting in spaceships. Some of the drawings, it was claimed, were apparently to park the family spacecraft on. Scientists generally chuckle and shake their heads over those type explanations, but they had also shaken their heads and been unable to agree on an alternative reason. Now though, two archeologists think they may know why the ancient Peruvians made these famous lines.

Archeologist Johny Isla has proposed that the Nasca lines, and nearby Palpa lines were made to tell people where they could find water in the desert they were traveling in. In a desert, water is everything. representing life itself. Isla has been studying the Nasca lines since 1997. Isla believes that people settled where they could find water year round because even the nearby rivers are not full all year.

Isla explained that some of the drawings point east or northeast toward the rivers. Archeologists also discovered mounds at the ends of several of the trapezoids which turned out to be tombs. In the tombs were offerings of things like orange spondylus shells that can be found in Ecuador during the El Nino weather phenomenon and which have been considered symbols of water and fertility in the Andes for thousands of years. There were also crab claws and other things which seemed to point to a water cult.

Isla and Reindel have also explored the mystery of just who made these drawings and lines. Previously, scientists had assumed the lines were made under the Nasca civilization, which ran from 200 B.C. to 650 A.D.

The archeologists now believe that the drawings may be much older than they had thought. Excavations have shown that there was a civilization on the Nasca plains much earlier than the Nasca civilization we know of. It appears that the first drawings were those done around Palpa, and that at least most of the Nasca lines were made afterwards.

Accordingly, the first Palpa lines dated from around 200 B.C., the end of the Paracas culture -- a civilization famous for its textiles, which flourished from 800 B.C. to 200 B.C. Although the earliest Palpa lines were formed in a slightly different way than the Nasca lines, and were thicker, Isla said some of the lines that crisscross the desert are connected over 9 miles of plain.

The archeologists also excavated what Isla said were key religious and administrative sites from the early- and mid-Nasca period -- called Los Molinos and La Muna, respectively. Unfortunately, as with so many ancient sites, tomb-robbers had long ago plundered them.

Isla and Reindel believe that the drawings led people to water, but they were also used for rituals. This theory is supported by findings of broken ceramics and musical instruments.

The Nasca lines are a U.N. world heritage site, although lack of security has failed to crack down on vandals that have defaced them, and the Palpa lines have no protection, something Isla said his team would like to see change.

As is so common in archeology Isla noted, more questions remain and scientists are hoping to use a revolutionary new irradiation technique to pinpoint the lines' ages by measuring when the stones they contained were last exposed to daylight. The lines were made by pushing surface shale on top of other stones, irradiating those that were hidden. Analyzing the irradiation could prove a more accurate dating method.

One of the top remaining mysteries is why whoever made the drawings, made them so large that many are only completely visible from the air. To this, Isla noted that the principal Nasca god was often shown in flight or related to divinities like the condor. "I imagine they didn't need to see (the lines) -- they were offerings to the god. It was all for him," he said.

Another more controversial theory was that these ancient people used a crude hot air balloon to direct the construction of the lines and to view them. Bill Spohrer, an American resident of Peru decided to test this theory in 1975. He assembled a balloon using only materials and technology that he felt would have been available to the Nascans. Nasca tombs have revealed a fabric with a finer weave and greater tensile strength than present-day parachute material and tighter than hot-air balloon. Spohrer and a few helpers used a cotton with nearly identical weave and weight to construct a hot air balloon in the shape of an inverted triangle with a hole at the bottom. The hole allowed the heat energy from the burn pit to enter the balloon. They constructed a boat for the balloon from the reeds they gathered by nearby Lake Titicaca.

In November of that year, two people took to flight in the balloon named "Condor 1." Within seconds they floated to 400 feet and stayed afloat for about three minutes. This short flight was enough to allow them to see many of the pictures in the desert. This proves that the Nascans could have created and flown a hot air balloon. Though this theory will likely never be proved, it does provide for fascinating speculation.

If you liked the above article, and you are interested in archeology and astronomy, then these books below are a real must! Ed Krupp is perhaps the world's leading authority on archeoastronomy and has excellent writing abilities. You'll be fascinated as Ed takes you to far off mystical places where our ancient ancestors trod.

Reading Between the Lines of Nasca

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