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Science

Reading Between the Lines of Nazca 38

Posted by timothy from the of-archaelogical-interest dept.
Kathy Miles writes "About 2000 years ago, the people in an area of Peru etched drawings in the ground so large that they cannot be seen easily except from high above the ground. Many explanations, some far into the realm of science fiction, have been offered for the lines but now two archeologists think they know why the drawings were made. They believe that the area was then desert and that the drawings were all about water."
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Reading Between the Lines of Nazca More

Reading Between the Lines of Nazca

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  • And that tells me? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by lowtekneq ( 469145 )
    They believe that the area was then desert and that the drawings were all about water."

    OK.. they may be about water but the main question here is how could they be planned out so perfectly. You could make a light grid and work with that, but even then over those kind of distances it would be far from that they look like now. Any other theories?
    By the way, is there anyone who hasn't seen this exactly same topic on TLC over the past few years? Just my $.2

    • Re:And that tells me? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @08:16PM (#4764138)
      It's over a distance of 500 sq miles, which is about a 22.3 * 22.3 mile square. People can see 22 miles and with any number of instruments (a flag, a shiny bit of metal, whatever) could direct others to draw lines. This would only take a few days to mark the places to dig.

      "But during the day, there is an upper limit to the distance at which objects can be discerned on the earth's surface. Craig Bohren, writing in Weatherwise magazine, states that this is about 200 miles under ideal conditions." - Source [alaska.edu]. This is backed up in many places, "Visibility [...] averages about 30 miles because of declining air quality, according to park literature. There was a time, however, when the view regularly was up to 233 miles on a clear day, according to the National Park Service."

      So around 200 miles would be the limit. That is, if it were that large. The longest one is only 90 metres long ("the hummingbird figure is over 90 meters long."), so marking out figures in a 90x90 metres wouldn't be difficult. Given a week, any of us could do it.

      "Straight lines go on for kilometers varying from straight by only a few degrees." ... so here we have the actual challenge, which spans a few kilometres.

      Also, it's not like we've got original drawings that they were trying replicate. Also, what they were trying to replicate was rather stylised anyway. They may have got the beak all wrong, but we'll never know. It looks like a bird, but if they were five metres out could anyone tell a mistake was made?

      It's impressive, but not out of anyone's reach. Lines stretch several kilometres and vary by several degrees. Figures are considerably smaller. I want to see it, it's impressive. No reason to think it was non-human, though.

      • Re:And that tells me? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by j_w_d ( 114171 )
        It's over a distance of 500 sq miles, which is about a 22.3 * 22.3 mile square. People can see 22 miles and with any number of instruments (a flag, a shiny bit of metal, whatever) could direct others to draw lines. This would only take a few days to mark the places to dig.

        I agree with your conclusions. The Inca and their predecessors were adept at surveying and built carefully graded canals that were miles long.

        However I think you are probably neglecting some essentials about the visibility issue. First, the earth's curvature. From twenty miles off, the object would have to be tall enough to stand above your horizon. For a six foot tall individual this distance is less than five kilometers (see this [nasa.gov] for example). Atmospheric conditions that increase refraction can increase this distance, but normally not much.

        Another point is object size. A two meter object subtends about 1/5,000 of a degree of arc at 10 kilometers - 6 miles - (if my trig is correct). Regardless of how clear the atmosphere may be, a normal human eye doesn't have that kind of resolution.

        Very long linears can be accurately surveyed in short segments using geometric methods provided that care is exercised. A siting device such as a staff, ropes, and pegs for swinging arcs, and possibly a leveling device, are probably all that was necessary. High visibilty probably was not necessary. In fact, the lines could probably have been done in moderate fog.

    • Re:And that tells me? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by eggstasy ( 458692 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @08:16PM (#4764145) Journal
      I watched a show once that demonstrated how the lines could have been made. They made a Neo-Nazca figure with just sticks and ropes. If you plant a stick in the ground and attach a rope to it, you can
      walk in a circle by keeping your distance. Similarly, by varying the distance you can make spirals. You can vary the distance in precise amounts (more or less) by tying equidistant knots in the rope. But really its far less complicated than it seems. Another researcher claims that if you walk along the lines you can get a pretty clear picture of what they are, and in order to prove it he tried to make a figure that he drew on paper first, and then when viewed from above it was a pretty good match.
      Yet another possibility is that they could have made an actual hot air baloon. They had better cloth than most modern parachutes and someone actually made a primitive baloon with the materials available around that flew up to 400ft for about 3 minutes, after being filled with hot air from one of their fire pits.
      I find it hard to believe that such a primitive people understood any of the underlying principles of baloon flight however... though it could have been discovered accidentally.

    • Re:And that tells me? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The Andean civilizations were fairly able as surveyors. Their water works are excellent examples following steady grades for miles. So, design isn't a real issue. The main problem with the idea in the article, is that you still can't make out the figures except from an elevation. So, they are not likely guides for groundlevel searches for water.

  • Why do they look like birds? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jericho4.0 ( 565125 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @08:14PM (#4764134)
    This isn't totally convincing, but it's better that UFOs. The question about these drawings is 'why are they so damn big?', as many can only be viewed from above. Explaining them as directional indicators towards water doesn't explain why they look like birds. Or why they look like anything, for that matter. I think any desert culture would have water as a centeral them in their mythology, so finding some objects related to water isn't a huge suprise.

    I think the easiest explanation is that they started out as a small scale art/devotional form that gained favour with the ruling class as a sign of prestige. That generated pressure to build 'em bigger, much like what might have happened on Easter Island.

    That thereoy of Easter Is (can't remember a reference, sry) also maintained that increasing enviromental pressure on the island drove more energy towards trying to get the attention of the gods. Maybe desertifcation drove the same in Peru.

    • Re:Why do they look like birds? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JabberWokky ( 19442 ) <slashdot.com@timewarp.org> on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @08:16PM (#4764144) Homepage Journal
      There's a better article explaining this better. I think I read about it several months back on Slashdot. The key point that really drove it home is that they took one that didn't seem to point to a well, "translated" it, drove to that point, and then discovered an unknown well.

      --
      Evan

    • It's likely that they did drawings of some of their gods/spirits. It would make sense if they attributed water to a god, that they would then honor that god. As to why they are so large, well if you look at Stonehenge, those stones certainly didn't need to be so huge just to be astronomical markers. People then placed a lot of emphasis on pleasing the gods. I am from the Hopi nation and I know how much a part water is to our culture, as someone else said, if you live in a desert, water can be a rather consuming thought!

      I'm not sure if I buy the hot air balloon story, but it's interesting and I don't think we should underestimate people just because they came from less technical times.

      I think the truth lies in a blending of theories, but it's interesting to speculate about.

  • Primitives aren't (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ghostlibrary ( 450718 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @08:40PM (#4764291) Homepage Journal
    They're cool, but... the Hummingbird is only 90 meters, i.e. just under 100 yards, or the size of a football field. And they don't use ultratech to mow the lawn of that.

    There's always this strange image that 'primitive civilizations can't do what we can do today because they lack machines'. They also lack 16-hour workdays and email sucking up their night hours; they have free time. And a good basic grounding of basic engineering-- surveying and laying out straight lines isn't that difficult.

    Will archaeologists from the far future someday look at, oh, the Luxor at Las Vegas and think "the beacon on top must have been to religiously signal the gods!"

    Will they look at the hundreds of regular 100-yard (football) fields, neatly hewn with strange and different sets of letters carved into each of the long ends, just after the Y-shaped ritual mark, and think "obviously a place of worship".

    Related to this misinterpretation, at the Smithonian they have a set of ancient potware, cutlery, china, etc. And it's marked "ritual cookware". Again, an attempt to mark as religious or mystical, something that could just has easily been mundane. Such as 'the nice china for when the relatives visit'.

    So really, if two bored farmers can create crop circles for years just for a lark, the idea of a civilization saying "Let's make some water pointers and, gosh darn it, let's make them artistic and fun as weel" isn't too weird.

    Nasca/Palpa Lines: the case-modders of the BC era!
    • Interesting stuff! What if cave drawings are only graffiti?

    • Good to see i am not the only one who wonders about that sort of thing. These people, whoever they were, were likely at least as smart as we are and as pointed out certainly had more free time.

      Some hunter gatherer groups around the world work as little as four hours a day for all there daily needs. Now that is some serious free time.

      As for the people who doubt the water thing. think about this... Many of the 30,000 year old dot paintings from from the caves in the Flinders Ranges (in Australia) are in fact detailed maps to finding water. The worlds oldest known maps in fact. If the Australian Aboriginals can do it, why not the Nasca/Paracas/Palpa? And make it artistic too while your at it!

      Q

    • Re:Primitives aren't (Score:3, Insightful)

      by thinmac ( 98095 )
      Well, for one thing, we're going to end up leaving a truly massive written record. They won't think football fields are for worship, because almost every newspaper they find will mention the game, allong with millions of books, films, cds, dvds, and who knows what else. If you look at the dates, these were probably built around the time that the Roman empire was being built. Why don't we think that the circus maximus was built for religious reasons? Because of all the written material that mentions it's actual use. The same can be said for much older cultures, such as the ancient Egyptians and Chinese. Egyptians are a really good example, because not so long ago we couldn't read their language, and we had a lot of wacky ideas about what rather simple stuff was for. It's just a fact that most history, including almost all pre-columbian new world cultures, is pretty much lost to us if they didn't leave a written record.
      • Well, for one thing, we're going to end up leaving a truly massive written record.

        Plenty of modern paper isn't especially durable.

        hey won't think football fields are for worship, because almost every newspaper they find will mention the game,

        Newspaper isn't even intended to be long lasting.

        allong with millions of books, films, cds, dvds, and who knows what else.

        CDs, DVDs, magnetic tape, etc may well be in a format unknown to future archaeologists, even if they can recover data from them.

        If you look at the dates, these were probably built around the time that the Roman empire was being built. Why don't we think that the circus maximus was built for religious reasons? Because of all the written material that mentions it's actual use.

        The vast bulk of Roman written material has vanished.
    • at the Smithonian they have a set of ancient potware, cutlery, china, etc. And it's marked "ritual cookware". Again, an attempt to mark as religious or mystical, something that could just has easily been mundane. Such as 'the nice china for when the relatives visit'.

      "ritual" is a word archaeologists tend to use when they can't think of a good explanation for why something should have been used.

      So really, if two bored farmers can create crop circles for years just for a lark, the idea of a civilization saying "Let's make some water pointers and, gosh darn it, let's make them artistic and fun as weel" isn't too weird.

      It didn't take Doug and Dave (or their copiers) long to create large crop features. They were working in darkness, covertly and with a tight timescale.

  • Water? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by penguin_punk ( 66721 )
    Would it not have been better to build something up, not out? With all the work that was put into this, IMHO, I would think that if it was for water, it would be better to use your time to start stacking rocks up, even if it's into one large pile (per site). This way if you're stumbling across the desert you would be able to see the marker from a farther distance.

    Maybe I'm just old-fashioned (probably not as old as YOU, but I grew up reading conspiracy and UFO files on bbs') but I still like the idea of the images being signs to aliens. ...Really. I mean, check out 'The Owl Man' [exn.ca]. Does that not look like our friend Mr Aldrin? (hehe. Buzz=funny name. Like my friend 'Shitter'. I'll never figure that one out.)

    In any case, I'll stick with my alien conspiracy.

    On a side note, isn't Atlantis recently being 'proven' to be located in South America too? ...And the plot thickens. (Don't get me started on 'the money changers' hehe)

    • Re:Water? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by meatpopcicle ( 460770 )
      Thats just a theory. One of many. What it comes down to is that the scientists have no idea what they were for. They can speculate, and thats all.

      I've been to Peru and took many pictures of these lines. They are fabulous! I don't know if they were for aliens or just for water, whatever their purpose, they were very important to the people of the area.

      If you think "why would someone build these lines?", you should really be asking yourself why would people build the:
      -pyramids
      -great wall of china
      -world trade center

      • If you think "why would someone build these lines?", you should really be asking yourself why would people build the:
        -pyramids
        -great wall of china
        -world trade center

        Arrogance, protection, and money, in that order. The pyramids were built by the pharoahs pretty much because they were big and awesome and they didn't really care if slaves died in the process of stroking the pharoah's ego.

        The Great Wall of China, if I remember correctly, was for border defense. China, like Rome, was an impressive civilization surrounded by roaming bands of barbarous tribes. So, of course, the roaming bands of barbarous tribes tried to destroy the impressive civilization so they could get its goods, and the Chinese needed to hold them back, and apparently decided that the best defense of their huge border was a single, unified defensive structure.

        The World Trade Center was probably built mostly for monetary purposes, because having your corporation's offices housed one of the largest buildings in New York City holds a certain prestige.

        The key, of course, is that the Egyptians, Romans, and Americans have left written records of their lives and intentions. The people in this case did no such thing, so we just have to guess.
        • The pyramids were built by the pharoahs pretty much because they were big and awesome and they didn't really care if slaves died in the process of stroking the pharoah's ego.

          Current archaeological theory holds that the pyramids were built by hired craftsmen.
          Archaeologists have discovered some financial records from the time, listing payments to workers, etc., and have also discovered small pyramids in a cemetary near the workers' villiage in which were entombed supervisors (mid-level managers?), etc.
          It is now thought that the workers were well-fed and, in general, well-treated.

  • Coverup! (Score:2, Funny)

    by uncoveror ( 570620 )
    So, who paid off these archeologists to publish this whitewash? Could it have been the US Air Force? NASA? the Men In Black? The Nasca lines were placed there for the aliens, whom the primitives believed were gods! They offered these "gods" the Nasca lines, human sacrifices and their women.

  • This is embarrassing. (Score:3, Funny)

    by gene_tailor ( 601527 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @09:05PM (#4764427) Journal
    We're 3 days behind "The latest in Witch/Pagan" News aka Witchvox.com [witchvox.com] article 5538.

  • Motivations (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mazzaroth ( 519229 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @10:31PM (#4764805) Homepage
    from the article:
    Isla and Reindel believe that the drawings led people to water, but they were also used for rituals. This theory is supported by findings of broken ceramics and musical instruments.
    Considering that about 20% of the lines align with astronomical events and these lines have been crafted over a thousand years, to me, these signs might have 4 root motivations:

    astronomical markers

    orientation signs

    rituals or religious, and

    pure art

    Water is included in the orientation markers as far I am concerned. So there is nothing really new.
    I consider the other hypothesis (UFO, aliens and air balloons for instance) as - how can I say - less probable... :-)

    • What's implausible about the hot air balloon hypothesis? It's not even in conflict with your other ideas; signs, markers, and art all make a great deal more sense if you can actually, y'know, see them. It's one thing to scoff at notions that they had aliens helping them, but if they had the physical capability to build balloons like the fellow says, why wouldn't they?
      • The baloon hypothesis is plausible, but there is a lack of evidences supporting it. No reports whatsoever (oral or written), no drawings of such balloons, no artefacts, no traces (other that the interpretation of the signs).

        However, because absence of proof is not a proof of absence, I simply don't rule out this hypothesis, I just put less probability on it.
        • When you assess a probability in the absense of statistics, what are you basing it on other than the plausibility to you of the hypothesis?
          • If there is an absence of evidences for the balloon hypothesis, it is not because nobody looked for it. And when researchers are actively and seriously looking for evidences in favor of some hypothesis (I don't have any references for serious efforts in that direction though), and don't find any (as far I know), then I think it is fair to lower the probability of that hypothesis.

            But again, don't get me wrong, I don't rule this hypothesis out.

  • Bullshite (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cornjchob ( 514035 ) <thisiswherejunkgoes@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 27, 2002 @12:03AM (#4765163)
    Ok, it's fine and dandy if people want to believe that these things were for water. But how did the people see them? And I'm not just talking about that you need to be high from the ground...you can't even see most of the markings from the ground! You wouldn't even know a line were there if it weren't for the fact that many of them are deeper than their surroundings. How does one explain that? I'm unaware of any primitive people's technology that includes anything like a material or coating or anything that changes with angle. None. And besides that, why would these people be in the desert? There's plenty of water everywhere else, not even 30 miles in each direction. People--primitive or not--don't do that.

    Give me one piece of evidence that proves anything with any of these line sites, and it's probably wrong. A good book to read is "Arrival of the Gods" by Erich von Daniken. While I don't believe most of his beliefs, the book presented a lot of good points, such as those I've listed. Points that are easily provable scientifically and have been documented and cited and that lay to waste most theories formed.

    I'd also like to point out that the theory in question has been around quite sometime.

  • wha? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Transcendent ( 204992 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2002 @12:28AM (#4765248)
    Isla explained that some of the drawings point east or northeast toward the rivers.

    First, most of the drawings are so huge that you can't see them fully without being suspended in air... seeing some random lines going in multiple directions on the dry desert wouldn't make me think there there's water anywhere, nor give me a sence of direction to where it was...

    If they were going to point to water, why not make an straight arrow with a symbol for water by it???

    ~~~
    ~~~ ---->
    ~~~

    There were also crab claws and other things which seemed to point to a water cult.

    Ok, so they praised water... who wouldn't if you lived in a desert? It's the thing that kept you alive... I'm sure a lot of people held it in high regard...

    I think they should have just stuck with religion... making symbols for your gods is a more plausable explanation than a complex, undefinitave, non-universal method of communicating where water is. We do crazy stuff for our god(s) too... Look at all the huge churches we make for our god(s)....

  • Why is it ... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    that I have a hard time taking seriously any website which has a starfield for a background?
  • The pictures ARE indicators of where water is. Aliens need to drink too, ya know... ;-)

  • Why are Christian churches laid out in the form of a cross?
    If you look at the floor plan for almost any Medieval Christian church or cathedral, you will see that it is laid out in the form of a cross.
    This cross can be seen only from the air.

    So why were they laid out that way?
    They were built that way because they were meant to be viewed by their gods (Jesus and Yahweh).

    It's not too much of a stretch to consider that the Nazca lines were created the way they were because they were meant to be viewed by their creators' god(s).

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