I’ve been there several times and
although I am the furthest thing a man can be from an engineer, even I knew I
was a water system for the farms. The area flood, so the water systems were
moved season by season, hence the large number of “drawing”, well that, and
boys will be boys.
Satellite Images May Have Solved
the Mystery of Peru’s Nazca Lines
By Alanna Martinez
Lovers of ancient wonders and
viewers of History Channel’s Ancient Aliens, I have bad news for you. One of
the Earth’s great mysterious man-made monuments may not be the handiwork of
visitors from a galaxy far, far away after all, much to the chagrin of
conspiracy theorists. Stories about ancient hot air balloons and snapshots of
alien visits recorded in stone may be convenient for the sake of explaining
Nazca’s incredible images of geometric plants and animals, a well-preserved,
large-scale series of geoglyphs carved into the Peruvian desert which can only
be seen in their entirety from above. But now, new satellite imagery may shed
light on the UNESCO World Heritage site’s true purpose: water irrigation.
In a recent episode of
Motherboard’s podcast “Science Solved It,” senior researcher Rosa Lasaponara of
the National Research Council in Rome tells Vice that satellite images of the
site link the unusual designs—which are believed to have been created between
500 B.C. and 500 A.D.—to a series of spiral-shaped holes nearby called puquios.
The holes, she says, were used for irrigation, and fed into an intricate
underground aqueduct system that allowed the Nazca “to transform the desert
into a garden.”
Further evaluation of the
satellite imagery, which can detect not only existing formations on the surface
but the remnants of former structures as well, suggest that the Nazca built a
sophisticated system of settlements and canals in the region, and that the
landscape would have appeared far more cultivated and lush than the arid desert
it is today.
On the million dollar question—why
did the Nazca create their giant designs, and for whom?—Lasaponara believes
that the imagery may have been a way to show thanks to the gods for bringing
water to the valley.
Also appearing on Motherboard’s
podcast is Atlas Obscura co-founder Dylan Thuras, who provides background on
three of the more outlandish, but still widely popular, theories about the
lines. The theories mentioned propose that the imagery may have been a marking
system for astrological phenomenon, meditative ceremonial walking paths or an
artistic collaboration between the Nazca and visiting aliens.
“If you only look at it in one
framework, that it’s a giant carving to be seen from above, you get completely
hung up on trying to figure out how it was possible,” Thuras told Vice. “But if
you understand its relation to water sources, it doesn’t seem so impossible.”
Alas, Lasaponara and her
colleagues’ findings suggest an even more exciting possibility than aliens, if
such a thing is possible: that the Nazca were a far more sophisticated
civilization than previously believed.