Nazca Lines

The Mysterious 

Nazca Lines

Nazca lines

 A predecessor to the Incan civilization that would unite all of Coastal Peru five hundred to two thousand years later, the Nazca (or Nasca) culture flourished from 200 bce to 600 ce during the Early Intermediate Period in the Nazca River Valley in southern Coastal Peru.  Named for the nearby town of Nazca, little is known about the civilization except what can be inferred from the material culture left behind.  Famed for the Nazca Lines that traverse the pampa (or elevated desert) and the ceremonial city of Cahuachi, the Nazcans were an agricultural community farming “principally cotton but also… maize, grapes, tobacco, barley, squash, melons and tubers.”1   Relying on an underground system of irrigation that drew water from the mountains down into the valley, water played an integral role in their livelihood.

The Nazca Lines

Alan Sawyer notes: “art is always an expression of the time and place in which it is produced,” and so it seems that the Nazca Lines are a manifestation of the culture and environment of the people who created them.   Little is known of the Nazca culture and what is known has been discovered through the study of the lines themselves and the excavations of Cahuachi.  The city is located to the south of the Nazca Lines along the banks of the Nazca River.  Originally thought to be a populated city or a fort, archeological research has shown that it was most likely a ritual site.  In the 1980s “Helaine Silverman found forty or so temples in no apparent pattern… vast plazas… burials and cached offerings, but no domestic housing.”   Initially believed to have been enclosed by a surrounding wall, this wall was later found to be only sixteen-inches (forty centimeters) in height, much like the delineating boundaries that flank the mysterious lines; conceivably the outlines were a means of separation of physical space or, perhaps, a delineation of sacred space.

The Spider

In the desert of the Nazca River Valley, water is scarce.  Relying on rainfall and ground water, the Nazcans would experience periodic droughts where the River would run dry for several months in a year and sometimes even for years at a time.  Thus, the Nazcans “ingenious[ly adapted] to the desert… [creating an] elaborate system of underground filtration canals that were constructed over many centuries” and are in use to present-day.   With this scarcity of water, it is only natural that there was a concern for their relationship to and with the natural environment.  It was believed that the rainfall on the mountains to the east provided water to the rivers, which in turn provided water to people through the canal system.  It is little coincidence that Nazcans deities are identified as mountains and springs.   For example, the Nazcans believed that a lake existed in the center of Cerro Blanco – one of the three principle mountains that envelope the valley – which fed the canal system.  Thus, Cerro Blanco was identified as a deity as was Illa-Kata and Tunga, the highest mountain on the eastern horizon and the mountain nearest the coast, respectively.  Illa-Kata was, to the Nazcans, the mountain-weather deity that supplied the surface water of Nazca River and Tunga was the god of the sea.

The Killer Whale

The Nazca Lines cover 193 square miles (or 500 square kilometers) on what has been described as a “natural blackboard.”   The desert is “strewn with sharp volcanic fragments… coated with… a surface layer composed of [manganese and iron oxides] deposited by aerobic micro-organisms.”   Over time, “oxidation gradually darkens the exposed sand” creating a contrast between the darkened layer of stones and the lighter colored sediment.   Thus, the figures were created by removing the top layer of sediment and piling the removed layer to either side.  This resulted in a sharp outline that can be found in present-day.  More accurately, and quite simply, the lines, or geoglyphs as they are termed archeologically, are (what we term) etchings, however, on a much grander scale.

What is most striking about the surface features is the fact that the lines are amazingly straight, maintaining straightness within 3° of variance from starting point to ending point.  There are many questions as to how this was achieved.  Josué Lancho, a local schoolmaster, conducted an experiment using the simplest of tools: stakes and string.   By lining up the stakes and linking them with string, he proved it was entirely possible to have achieved the Nazcan lines with “primitive tools.”  Furthermore, subsequent studies conducted by scientists and historians prove that the Nazcans would have been able to achieve such accuracy in the straightness of the lines.   Another question that arises is the elaborate spirals and figures found on the pampa.  Looking at the textile art of the Nazcans, the motifs that appear in the lines may have been originally conceived in textiles and translated to the larger surface by simply scaling the original image.   Based on present-day understanding of the Nazca culture, it is entirely plausible that the lines could have been conceived and executed by the Pre-Columbian civilization.

Many believers in ancient astronauts cite
the Nazca lines as evidence

Discovered in the 1920s as passengers on commercial flights noted “landing strips” on the desert, these large-scale drawings have fascinated and confounded archeologists, anthropologists, as well as astronomers, mathematicians, and forensic biologists.  Reminiscent of the cave painting of Paleolithic Europe, Nazca River Valley is “covered with hundreds of lines, trapezoids, radiating lines (called ray centers), as well as thirty immense figures of animals, humans, plants and fantastical patterns” ranging in widths from a few inches to upwards of 650 feet (200 meters).   The layering of sediment and remnants of pottery and ceramics suggest that the figural geoglyphs were created before the straight lines.  However, it is difficult to make these conclusions because the only known way to date the Nazcan civilization is through stylistic analysis of the pottery.

The Nasca lines fall into three categories, both visually and chronologically.  The first group is the thirty abstracted representational figures that are clustered together in a section of the pampa.  The anthropomorphic figures include birds, a spider, sea creatures, a flower, trees, a monkey, a lizard, and, most interestingly, a man.  In contrast, the second group is composed of the eight hundred or so straight crisscrossing lines found throughout the expanse of the valley.  The third group represents geometric shapes, trapezoids and triangles, which seem to have been conceived with the network of straight lines.

The Monkey

Many theories exist as to the purpose and impulse for the creation of the Nazca Lines but the three main theories seem to take precedence in the debate over the lines.  The first theory proposed by the American geographer Paul Kosok in the 1940s and reiterated by the German mathematician Maria Reiche who devoted her adult life to cataloguing and protecting the lines was that they were astronomical sightlines that marked the course of the agricultural year.  Both Kosok and Reiche observed that the lines perfectly aligned with the solstices and suggested that perhaps some of the geoglyphs of animal figures were attempts of depicting constellations as perceived and conceptualized by the Nazcans.  However, in 1965, American astronomer Gerald Hawkins of Stonehenge fame disproved this supposition.  “Hawkins could find no correlation at all between the lines and the stars.”   Interestingly, archeologist and geoglyph expert Persis Clarkson notes that there was “very little attempt [by Hawkins] to look at the Andean conceptions for constellations,” leaving room for speculation that perhaps these lines could be astronomical sightlines.

Through comparison with subsequent civilizations, it has been suggested perhaps the Incan ceque lines derived from the Nazcan lines.  Ceque lines were based on the idea of “imbuing power to landscape features.”   Ceques led from Corcancha – a temple in Cuzco that was the center of the Incan Universe – and “were specified by actual physical sacred places or huacas.”   Functioning as calendar, astronomical sightlines, and routes of pilgrimage, it divided the Incan community into groups assigning certain ceque lines as pilgrimage routes for specific groups, a means of organizing the populace in terms of ritual.

The Condor

The most popular theory as to the purpose of these lines is that they pointed to water sources as proposed by Anthony Aveni.  Since water was an integral part of the agriculturally based Nazcans, this theory seems highly plausible.  It is suggested that the eight hundred miles (1,300 kilometers) worth of straight lines map the direction of water sources and the highly advanced irrigation system.  Two-thirds of the lines follow channels of the irrigation system.  “The points at which water occurs on the pampa, together with the direction in which it moves, correlate strongly with the radial line centers.”   It has been found that the axes of trapezoids and triangles parallel the orientation of watercourses and the points at which these lines intersect to create radial points seem to be points of water sources.  These points at which create the center at which the lines converge (or diverge) are elevated, either naturally occurring high points in the landscape or built-up manually as if simulating the mountains.  It is important to note that Cahuachi was also located among hillocks and atop a water source as are many of the convergence points.

It has also been suggested that the Nazcan lines could have been ritual pathways.  Their unique constructions seem to indicate a possibility that they were a means of ritual pilgrimage or perhaps ritual in invoking the benevolence of the gods in providing for the people.  For example, spirals are conceived so that the path not only leads inwards but outwards without retracing ones’ steps over the same path as seen in the tail of the monkey.  The outline shape of the condor, cormorant, and hummingbird as well as the other figural geoglyphs further supports this idea.  Perhaps, the geoglyphs were “forms of haptic art, which is intended to be experienced not by viewing but by moving over and through it;” the ultimate goal was the journey, not the destination.   Reminiscent of the idea of the labyrinth in Western religious vernacular, what links and seemingly unites these three theories is the common underlying theme: “the idea of repeated ritual action.”

The Dog

Lesser-accepted but widely known theories involve the idea that perhaps the lines originated from extraterrestrial beings.  Proposed by Erich bon Däniken, this is a popular theory that seemingly holds up in many respects.  Most fascinating is Maria Reiche’s observations from having interacted with the land for over fifty years; she emphasized “that ‘all things on the pampa have a harmony and beauty.’”   At one point she wondered if she was attempting to make sense of the senseless but soon returned to her beloved pampa unable to escape her fascination with the lines.  Perhaps it is this unknown that fascinates and inspires awe even today; however, the fact that the lines were of importance to the Nazcans having been conceived on such a large canvas suggests that perhaps the meaning of the lines is greater than the literal.