Nasca Lines

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The bus from Lima to Nasca was 8 hours through barren rocky desert punctuated by the occasional oasis. Nasca is a fairly small dusty town on the edge of the Pampa Colorada. Most people come here to visit the Nasca Lines, a series of straight lines and geometric shapes (geogliphs) and animal and plant drawings (biomorphs). They are spread over a 500 sq km area and are so large yet shallow that they can only be seen from the air. They remained undiscovered until commercial pilots in the 30s reported seeing them.

Maria Reiche a German mathematician spent most of her professional life studying them and theorized that they were made by the Paracas and Nasca people between 900bc and 600ad, using mathmatics and ropes to map out the designs, then moving the surface rocks away to expose the lighter coloured earth beneath. Maria thought the symbols represented some sort of star chart to be used to predict the solcistes and help farming, however there are not that many correlations between the designs and the stars and most recent researchers believe they have more to do with worshiping water in this very dry area. They believed in a god that was a flying fox so maybe they were showing the god how important water was to them and appealing for more.

Many theories have been presented by archeologists even one that the Nasca knew how to build hot air baloons and so were able to appreciate the lines for themselves!

We went to the Maria Reiche museum which exhibits her lifes work, she spent years trying to get the area protected, she saved it from being turned into cotton fields in the 60s, but couldn´t stop the Pan American Highway ploughing straight through some important shapes. The museum also shows some wonderfully preserved pottery and a tatooed mummy.

We went to two different viewing sites, one a man made tower where we saw the tree and blob with two hands, one hand with four fingers and one hand with five fingers. We could also see where the highway cuts through a lizard shape. The second view point was from a natural rock formation where you can see many lines and trapezoids.

Most people fly over the lines to get a better look, but the safety regulations haven´t been very good and there have been numerous crashes over the years, without being able to get a reliable recomendation for an operator we decided it was safer not to go up in the air. Instead we went to the planetarium which showed all the lines on their projector and gave a talk about them and all the different theories, as well as some star gazing information and a chance to see saturns rings and the craters on the moon through a very expensive looking telescope.

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Photos

Nasca Lines
Blob with two hands, one with four fingers one with five.

Nasca Lines
Tree shape

Nasca Lines
Lines and trapezoid at the base of the tree.

Nasca Lines
Many lines

Nasca Lines
Many Lines

Humming Bird
We saw these lovely hummingbirds whilst waiting for the bus.