MYSTERY OF THE ANCIENT NAZCA LINES
CIA-STARGATE
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The Nazca lines in Peru, consisting of various geometric shapes and giant figures of animals, have remained a mystery as to their purpose and how they were created. Archaeologists have speculated that they could be prehistoric roads, farms, signals, or offerings to celestial beings. Some studies have shown that the lines align with solstice positions of the sun and moon, as well as certain stars, but no conclusive evidence has been found. The most intriguing question is why the Nazcas created these designs that can only be seen from the air.
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Mystery
of the
Ancient
Nazca
lines
PICTURE STORY BY
LOREN
McI NTY RE
ULER STRAIGHT and tack sharp, a,
09 curious marking more than a. mile
I I long etches the desert in southern
Peru. Wandering mule paths that cross
it only emphasize the precision of its design.
Throughout hundreds of square miles of
arid. plateau, other markings abound, most
of them concentrated between the towns of
Nazca and Palpa. Known as the Nazca
Lines, they form a geometrical melange of
quadrangles, triangles, and trapezoids;
spirals and flowers; narrow lines that ex-
tend more than five miles; and a desert
zoo of giant creatures-birds, reptiles, and
whales, a monkey and a spider.
Because some of the figures resemble
those decorating Nazca pottery, archeol-
ogists attribute the lines to the Nazc_as, a
coastal people whose culture rose, flour-
ished, and declined between-roughly
speaking--100 B.C. and A.D. 700.
Making the marks must have been sim-
ple enough, though time-consuming. Clear
away a few million rocks to expose the
lighter ground beneath them, pile the rocks
in rows, and you have designs that, in this
nearly rainless region, can last thousands
of years.
Hut why slid the ancients construct
them? Nobody really knows. There have
been many guesses--that they were pre-
historic roads, farms, or some form of
signals or offerings to celestial beings.
Dr. Paul Kosok, the first scholar to study
the markings after they were first recog-
nized from the air in the late 1920's, specu-
lated that they constituted a giant astro-
nomical calendar, an almanac for farmers
anxious to predict the return of water to
valley streams.
A 1968 study, financed partly by the
National Geographic Society, ascertained
that some of the lines do indeed point to
solstice positions of the sun and moon in
ancient times, as well as to the rising and
setting points on the horizon of some of
the brighter stars. But, the study indi-
cates, no more than could be expected
by chance.
And so the mystery remains, including
the most tantalizing question of all: Why
did the Nazcas create immense designs
that they themselves could never see,
designs that can be seen only from the air?
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fore first light for a breakfast of grapefruit
and canned milk. Despite her 72 years, the
then sets to work with a zeal as relentless
as the noonday sun.
With the reel of tape in her left hand,
she has just. completed measuring one of
the sides of a trapezoidal field (right).
Seen from the air (above), it negotiates a
hillock, then branches off octopuslike over
the pampa..
Miss Reiche scorns the suggestion that
such markings may have been airfields
for outer-space visitors to earth in pre-
historic times. "Once you remove the
stones, the ground is quite soft," she says.
"I'm afraid the spacemen would have
gotten stuck."
grassless Peruvian "pampa," rising be-
OR MORE TITAN 25 YEARS Maria
Reiche has photographed and charted
las lineas, striving to complete a map
of the hundreds of designs and figures that
score a tableland some 30 miles long,
threaded by the Pan American Highway
(map, upper let). A National Geographic
Society grant. now aids her work.
At her desk in Lima (left), the German-
born mathematician glances up from a
chart, where azimuths of lines dart off in
almost all the directions of the compass.
During fieldwork Miss Reiche sleeps on
it camp cut behind her car on the rocky,
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5 IF DESIGNED AND DRAWN
by a mad geometrician, markings
great and small litter the pampa
in configurations that defy explana-
tion. They sometimes ignore topogra-
phy as well.
Trapezoids congregate on a plateau
that overlooks the Ingenio Valley
(above). Others march up--or is it
down?-the slopes of an old wash
beside farmers' fields (right), accom-
panied by platoons of lines that appear
to go nowhere. The looped pattern
below them lacks the precision of
many ancient lines and may be the
remains of an irrigation system.
"Throughout the pampa," says Miss
Reiche, "lines stretch for miles, cross-
ing valleys and traversing hills, never
swerving from their courses. Survey-
ors have been astonished by their
straightness."
How did the Nazcas achieve such
exactitude? Along some lines the re-
mains of posts have been found at
intervals approaching a mile. Perhaps
sighting stations with men standing
in line behind them? Perhaps.
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ONGER than a football field and
completely visible only from the air, a
monkey(left) leans to grasp- -nothing.
Its left hand measures more than 40 feet
across (right). Miss Reiche stands within
the whorled furrows that comprise its
tail (above).
The figure looks like any of several
monkeys.-woolly, spider, or capuchin---
slopes of the Andes, some 200 miles dis-
tant. But Nazcra artists, who probably
learned of these monkeys through trade
Contacts with forest peoples, weren't al-
ways accurate in anatomical detail. They
nave their monkey four fingers on one
hand, five on the other, and a prehensile
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tail that curves tit) instead of down.
Mystery of the Ancic'tat Ncazca Lines
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