The Nazca Lines are a group of very large geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor. Most lines run straight across the landscape, but there are also figurative designs of animals and plants. Scholars differ in interpreting the purpose of the designs, but in general, they ascribe religious significance to them.
About Nazca Lines in brief
The Nazca Lines are a group of very large geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor. Most lines run straight across the landscape, but there are also figurative designs of animals and plants. The combined length of all the lines is over 1,300 km, and the group cover an area of about 50 km2. Scholars differ in interpreting the purpose of the designs, but in general, they ascribe religious significance to them. As of 2012, the lines are said to have been deteriorating because of an influx of squatters inhabiting the lands. The main concentration of designs is in a 10 by 4 km rectangle, south of San Miguel de la Pascana hamlet. The largest ones are about 370 m long. The high, arid plateau stretches more than 80 km between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana, approximately 400 km south of Lima. The lines are typically 10 to 15 cm deep, but over half are slightly over one-third meter wide. The figures vary in complexity. Hundreds are simple lines and geometric shapes; more than 70 are zoomorphic designs, including a hummingbird, spider, fish, condor, monkey, lizard, dog, cat, and a human. Other shapes include trees and flowers. Scholars have theorized that the people could have used simple tools and surveying equipment to construct the lines.
One theory is that the lines were designed as astronomical markers on the horizon to show the sun and other celestial bodies where the sun rose on dates. Determining why they were made has been easier than determining how they were created. Although some local geoglyngs resemble Paracas motifs, scholars believe the NazCA Lines were created by the Nazcan culture. The first published mention of theNazca Lines was by Pedro Cieza de León in his book of 1553, and he described them as trail markers. In 1586, Luis Monzón reported having seen ancient ruins in Peru, including the remains of \”roads\”. Although the lines have been visible from nearby hills, the first to report them in the 20th century were Peruvian military and civilian pilots. In 1927 Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejía Xesspe spotted them while he was hiking through the foothills. In 1939. Paul Kosok, an American historian from Long Island University in New York, is credited as the first scholar to study the Nazcas Lines in depth. He began to study how the lines might have been created as well as to determine their purpose. He proposed that the figures were created as to show where the horizon was at the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. In 1940–41 he flew over the lines and realized that one was in the shape of a bird.
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This page is based on the article Nazca Lines published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
