1 post tagged “nasca lines”
We were picked up at 9am and driven to the airport. After a short wait, we walked out to the tarmac to a six-seater Cessna. The pilot reviewed the flight plan, got us settled and secured, then took off. After passing over the valley, the pilot continued on to the plains to the south, following the course of the Pan-American Highway that we travelled the previous day.
To give passengers on both the left and right side of the plane good visibility of the Nasca Lines, the pilot would bank sharply to one side, then turn back and bank to the other side. The figures (or geoglyphs) cannot be appreciated from the ground, due to their size (from a few metres to 30 kilometers). They were sometimes not easily seen from the airplane, even though we were provided a diagram and were told what to look for. From left to right, the figures are:
- astronaut, monkey, dog, condor
- spider, hummingbird, tree, hands (the last two pictures show the viewing stand we saw the previous day)
Early geoglyphs tended to be representative figures, while later glyphs often included geometric shapes and lines. These have been taken as evidence for an extraterrestrial landing site. The Nasca Lines or geoglyphs are believed to have been constructed between 300 BC and 800 AD by the pre-Inca Nasca culture. The Nasca removed the darker surface material, revealing the lighter desert soil underneath, or scratched furrows into the surface up to 30 centimetres deep.
Since the Nasca had no written history and their oral traditions have not survived, the purpose of the geogylphs is open to interpretation. Paul Kosok and Maria Reiche, proposed that the figures and lines represented a giant astronomical calendar. Marie Reiche, whose pictures were prominently displayed at the Nasca Lines Hotel, dedicated her life to uncovering the secret of the Nasca Lines. Researcher Johan Reinhard believes the Nasca Lines were related to water and fertility rituals, pointing to hills and underground sources of water. Unfortunately, none of the hypotheses have sufficient supporting facts.
Our bus to Cusco was not scheduled to leave until 23:30, so we visited the local museum on the outskirts of Nasca. In addition to extensive specimens and information about the archeology of the region (unfortunately all in Spanish), the museum had a model of the aqueduct system that the Nasca constructed to access and channel underground sources of water in an area that often did not get rain.
