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Nazca
In the Peruvian desert, about
200 miles south of Lima, there lies a plain between the Inca and Nazca valleys. Across
this plain, in an area measuring 37 miles long and 1 mile wide, is an assortment of
perfectly straight lines, many running parallel, others intersecting, forming a grand
geometric form. In and around the lines there are also trapezoidal zones, strange symbols,
and pictures of birds and beasts all etched on a giant scale that can only be appreciated
from the sky.
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The forms are so difficult to see from the ground that they were not discovered until aircraft, being used to survey for water, spotted them in the early 1930s. The plain, crisscrossed, by these giant lines, many forming rectangles, has a striking resemblance to a modern airport. The Swiss writer, Erich von Daniken, even suggested they had been built for the convenience of ancient visitors from space to land their ships. As tempting as it might be to subscribe to this theory, the desert floor at Nazca is soft earth, not tarmac, and would not support the landing wheels of either an aircraft or a flying saucer.
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So what are the lines for? The American explorer Paul Kosok, who made his first visit to Nazca in the 1940s, suggested that the lines were astronomically significant and that the plain acted as a giant observatory. Gerald Hawkins, an American astronomer, tested this theory in 1968 by feeding the position of a sample of lines into a computer and having a program calculate how many lines coincided with an important astronomical event. Hawkins showed the number of lines that were astronomically significant were only about the same number that would be the result of pure chance. This makes it seem unlikely Nazca is an observatory.
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Perhaps the best theory for the lines and symbols belongs to Tony Morrison, the English explorer. Morrison, by researching the old folk ways of the people of the Andes mountains, discovered a tradition of wayside shrines linked by straight pathways. The faithful would move from shrine to shrine praying and meditating. Often the shrine was as simple as a small pile of stones. Morrison suggests that the lines at Nazca were similar in purpose and on a vast scale. The symbols may have served as special enclosures for religious ceremonies.
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How were they built? Straight lines can be made easily for great distances with simple tools. Two wooden stakes placed as a straight line would be used to guide the placement of a third stake along the line. One person sights along the first two stakes and instructs a second person in the placement of the new stake. This can be repeated as many times as needed to make an almost perfectly straight line miles in length. The symbols were probably made by drawing the desired figure at some reasonable size, then using a grid system to divide it up. The symbol could then be redrawn at full scale by recreating the grid on the ground and working on each individual square one at a time.
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The lines at Nazca aren't the only landscape figures Peru boasts. Some 850 miles south is the largest human figure in the world laid out upon the side of Solitary Mountain. The Giant of Atacama stands 393 feet high and is surrounded by lines similar to those at Nazca.
Along the Pacific Coast, in the foothills of the Andes Mountains, is etched a figure resembling a giant candelabrum. Further south Sierra Pintada, which means "the painted mountain" in Spanish, is covered with vast pictures including spirals, circles, warriors and a condor. Archaeologists speculate that these figures, clearly visible from the ground, served as guide posts for Inca traders.
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