In the arid desert of Sechuranear the coast of Southern Peruamong the cities of Nazca And Palpathere is an area characterized by some very particular archaeological testimonies: the famous Nazca lines. It is geogliphs (not to be confused with the hieroglyphics, one of the first known forms of writing), or engravings drawn directly on the ground with different techniques: removal or repositioning of the stones, or exposure of strata of soil of different color, to form even rather complex, large figures and visible exclusively from above. A few months ago, thanks to the use of new archaeological reconnaissance techniques and artificial intelligence, the number of gearfies known in the area is more than that doubledpassing to 700 Department of Note.
These geogliphs were made in a long period that goes more or less from half of the The millennium a. C. in the middle of the The millennium d. C. In the oldest phases, the people of civilizations made these lines of Paracasand later their direct successors, the Civilization Nazca. These ancient Peruvian civilizations prospective in the area many centuries earlier than the best known Inca Empire. The first Westerners to report the lines were the Spanish colonizers in the 16th century, but then for many centuries the GeogliFi came ignored due to their remote position, until they rediscover from the 1920s. The exploration of the desert plateau has always made it possible to catalog a greater number, also thanks to the use of means such as the aerial photoup to drones and toartificial intelligence today.
The lines made on the desert surface consist of both representations geometric both of elements from the natural world, above all plant And animals (like the spider or the colibrì), but representations of the human figure. Although in a sensationalistic key some have stated that the lines are visible exclusively from the sky, this is not true: the desert area between Nazca and Palpa is surrounded by numerous hillsfrom whose top it is possible to grasp the forms traced in the ground. For this reason, the archaeologists who dealt with the study of the Nazca civilization have hypothesized that the depictions could act as communication method Among the different communities that populated this desert plateau between the 1st millennium BC and the 1st millennium DC
Other hypotheses would like the Nazca lines as representations religious or anyway ritualsa sort of direct contact with the divinity of the Paracas and the Nazca, which in the vision of these ancient peoples could have observed and appreciated them from the sky. Other archaeologists, on the other hand, have thought that some geogliphs can instead be linked to a sort of waters (because of the proximity to some aquifers in one of the most arid places in the world) or even that it may be a astronomical calendar.
The peculiarity of the lines of Nazca and Palpa has given rise to numerous “Fantastic theories”which would see them made by extraterrestrial civilizations, with the function of landing tracks for the spaceships, or as a real method to communicate with aliens. The progress of Andean archeology in recent years are allowing us to always collect More data on the ancient Peruvian civilizations of the Paracas and Nazca. However, although the Geoglifi are a heritage UNESCO Since 1994, their preservation has been in dangerfinding itself on such a large and difficult to control area and being often not visible directly from the ground, some drawings have been destroyed or ruined from the passage of the off -road of tourists, from theerosion linked to climate change and by government policies on agriculture and mining extraction.
