Reading Between the Lines of Nazca

Kathy Miles writes "About 2000 years ago, the people in an area of Peru etched drawings in the ground so large that they cannot be seen easily except from high above the ground. Many explanations, some far into the realm of science fiction, have been offered for the lines but now two archeologists think they know why the drawings were made. They believe that the area was then desert and that the drawings were all about water."

Comments

And that tells me?

[lowtekneq]

They believe that the area was then desert and that the drawings were all about water."

OK.. they may be about water but the main question here is how could they be planned out so perfectly. You could make a light grid and work with that, but even then over those kind of distances it would be far from that they look like now. Any other theories?
By the way, is there anyone who hasn't seen this exactly same topic on TLC over the past few years? Just my $.2

Re:And that tells me?

[eggstasy]

I watched a show once that demonstrated how the lines could have been made. They made a Neo-Nazca figure with just sticks and ropes. If you plant a stick in the ground and attach a rope to it, you can
walk in a circle by keeping your distance. Similarly, by varying the distance you can make spirals. You can vary the distance in precise amounts (more or less) by tying equidistant knots in the rope. But really its far less complicated than it seems. Another researcher claims that if you walk along the lines you can get a pretty clear picture of what they are, and in order to prove it he tried to make a figure that he drew on paper first, and then when viewed from above it was a pretty good match.
Yet another possibility is that they could have made an actual hot air baloon. They had better cloth than most modern parachutes and someone actually made a primitive baloon with the materials available around that flew up to 400ft for about 3 minutes, after being filled with hot air from one of their fire pits.
I find it hard to believe that such a primitive people understood any of the underlying principles of baloon flight however... though it could have been discovered accidentally.

Motivations

[Mazzaroth]

from the article:

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.

Considering that about 20% of the lines align with astronomical events and these lines have been crafted over a thousand years, to me, these signs might have 4 root motivations:

astronomical markers

orientation signs

rituals or religious, and

pure art

Water is included in the orientation markers as far I am concerned. So there is nothing really new.
I consider the other hypothesis (UFO, aliens and air balloons for instance) as - how can I say - less probable... :-)

Why is it ...

[Anonymous Coward]

that I have a hard time taking seriously any website which has a starfield for a background?

Re:Primitives aren't

[thinmac]

Well, for one thing, we're going to end up leaving a truly massive written record. They won't think football fields are for worship, because almost every newspaper they find will mention the game, allong with millions of books, films, cds, dvds, and who knows what else. If you look at the dates, these were probably built around the time that the Roman empire was being built. Why don't we think that the circus maximus was built for religious reasons? Because of all the written material that mentions it's actual use. The same can be said for much older cultures, such as the ancient Egyptians and Chinese. Egyptians are a really good example, because not so long ago we couldn't read their language, and we had a lot of wacky ideas about what rather simple stuff was for. It's just a fact that most history, including almost all pre-columbian new world cultures, is pretty much lost to us if they didn't leave a written record.