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

Why do they look like birds?

[jericho4.0]

This isn't totally convincing, but it's better that UFOs. The question about these drawings is 'why are they so damn big?', as many can only be viewed from above. Explaining them as directional indicators towards water doesn't explain why they look like birds. Or why they look like anything, for that matter. I think any desert culture would have water as a centeral them in their mythology, so finding some objects related to water isn't a huge suprise.

I think the easiest explanation is that they started out as a small scale art/devotional form that gained favour with the ruling class as a sign of prestige. That generated pressure to build 'em bigger, much like what might have happened on Easter Island.

That thereoy of Easter Is (can't remember a reference, sry) also maintained that increasing enviromental pressure on the island drove more energy towards trying to get the attention of the gods. Maybe desertifcation drove the same in Peru.

Re:Why do they look like birds?

[JabberWokky]

There's a better article explaining this better. I think I read about it several months back on Slashdot. The key point that really drove it home is that they took one that didn't seem to point to a well, "translated" it, drove to that point, and then discovered an unknown well.

--
Evan

Re:And that tells me?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's over a distance of 500 sq miles, which is about a 22.3 * 22.3 mile square. People can see 22 miles and with any number of instruments (a flag, a shiny bit of metal, whatever) could direct others to draw lines. This would only take a few days to mark the places to dig.

"But during the day, there is an upper limit to the distance at which objects can be discerned on the earth's surface. Craig Bohren, writing in Weatherwise magazine, states that this is about 200 miles under ideal conditions." - Source. This is backed up in many places, "Visibility [...] averages about 30 miles because of declining air quality, according to park literature. There was a time, however, when the view regularly was up to 233 miles on a clear day, according to the National Park Service."

So around 200 miles would be the limit. That is, if it were that large. The longest one is only 90 metres long ("the hummingbird figure is over 90 meters long."), so marking out figures in a 90x90 metres wouldn't be difficult. Given a week, any of us could do it.

"Straight lines go on for kilometers varying from straight by only a few degrees." ... so here we have the actual challenge, which spans a few kilometres.

Also, it's not like we've got original drawings that they were trying replicate. Also, what they were trying to replicate was rather stylised anyway. They may have got the beak all wrong, but we'll never know. It looks like a bird, but if they were five metres out could anyone tell a mistake was made?

It's impressive, but not out of anyone's reach. Lines stretch several kilometres and vary by several degrees. Figures are considerably smaller. I want to see it, it's impressive. No reason to think it was non-human, though.

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.

Primitives aren't

[ghostlibrary]

They're cool, but... the Hummingbird is only 90 meters, i.e. just under 100 yards, or the size of a football field. And they don't use ultratech to mow the lawn of that.

There's always this strange image that 'primitive civilizations can't do what we can do today because they lack machines'. They also lack 16-hour workdays and email sucking up their night hours; they have free time. And a good basic grounding of basic engineering-- surveying and laying out straight lines isn't that difficult.

Will archaeologists from the far future someday look at, oh, the Luxor at Las Vegas and think "the beacon on top must have been to religiously signal the gods!"

Will they look at the hundreds of regular 100-yard (football) fields, neatly hewn with strange and different sets of letters carved into each of the long ends, just after the Y-shaped ritual mark, and think "obviously a place of worship".

Related to this misinterpretation, at the Smithonian they have a set of ancient potware, cutlery, china, etc. And it's marked "ritual cookware". Again, an attempt to mark as religious or mystical, something that could just has easily been mundane. Such as 'the nice china for when the relatives visit'.

So really, if two bored farmers can create crop circles for years just for a lark, the idea of a civilization saying "Let's make some water pointers and, gosh darn it, let's make them artistic and fun as weel" isn't too weird.

Nasca/Palpa Lines: the case-modders of the BC era!