Nazca Lines

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If you would fly over the Nazca desert in southern Peru,

you would be astounded to see hundreds of miles of thick lines drawn into the earth,

creating massive shapes, including animals and plants.

These designs, called geoglyphs, were made more than 2,000 years ago.

But who made them? And why?

Was it aliens?

This is the story of the mysterious Nazca lines.

D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D!

Hello and welcome to History Dispatches.

I'm McKinley joined by my dad Matt,

and we are the illustrious father-son duo who bring you a new and interesting little bit of history every single weekday.

Dad, hello, how are you today?

I'm good, thank you.

Good.

Today we're delving into some mysterious stuff.

Yes.

Yeah, the Nazca lines, I know a little bit about this,

but this is your show, so take it away.

Yeah, I'll start first of all by dropping a note that we're both suffering from a little bit of sore throats,

so we may be a little horsey sounding today.

Nay!

I knew you were going to do that.

Thank you.

I literally knew he was going to do that,

and I would have been disappointed if you didn't, even if it was lame.

Anyhow, today's story is the Nazca lines.

Most of you probably have seen the Nazca lines,

maybe you don't know the actual name,

but they are a group of geoglyphs,

made in the soil in the Nazca desert in southern Peru,

and a geoglyph, by the way, is a large-scale drawing on the surface of the earth.

It has to be, I think, technically at least 13 feet or 4 meters in size,

and it has to be made to last.

You can't just go draw SOS in the sand and say I've made a geoglyph.

Okay.

It's got to be something made to last,

and these were definitely made to last,

because they're 2,000 years old.

We mentioned that these are in Peru,

and they are up on a plateau at an altitude of about 1600 to 2,000 feet,

or 5 to 600 meters,

and they are between the towns of Nazca and Palpa,

which is about 250 miles south of Lima.

We have hundreds of miles of these crazy designs,

but we'll start by just saying that they were created sometime between 500 BC and 580

by the Nazca culture of the people who lived there at the time,

who were known to be skilled in agriculture and pottery and other things.

These geoglyphs are of a lot of different sizes and shapes.

Most of them are just lines that run straight.

They almost look like you're looking at an airfield or something like that,

if you see pictures of them.

And by the way, we have some links to pictures in the show notes.

I really encourage you to look at them if you haven't seen them.

They either look fake or really small,

but they are huge and incredible.

Yeah, they are pretty amazing.

And like I said, they're mostly straight lines,

but there's also figurative designs,

mostly of animals and plants,

although there are some humans in there too.

So the combined length of all these geoglyphs is about 800 miles or 1300 kilometers,

and they cover an area of about 1920 square miles or 50 kilometers.

So they're pretty centralized in one spot, more or less?

Yeah, they're not hundreds of miles apart.

No, no, no.

So what exactly are the lines?

Well, typically they are about 4 to 6 inches deep or 10 to 15 centimeters.

And the width of these things is 12, 13 inches or a third of a meter.

But they can be as big as 6 feet or 1.8 meters.

It varies, but that 12, 13, 14 inches.

I think I read that over half of them are about that size.

The largest of these is 1200 feet long or about 370 meters.

So we're talking, push in a quarter of a mile.

So that's pretty big.

There's a lot of variety and complexity in these geoglyphs.

Hundreds of them are just simple lines and geometric shapes.

But more than 70 are of zumorphic designs.

This includes a hummingbird, a spider, fish, a condor, a heron,

a monkey, a dog, a cat, and even a human.

But there are also trees and flowers as well.

These shapes are usually made from one continuous line.

What's not like they drew a little bit then made another block over here.

It's one continuous line that they've made this all from.

They're at least 1500 years old, but as high as 2500 years old.

And you may be going, how have these weird lines survived to this day?

And that's a great story.

The Nazca desert here is covered in a layer of reddish brown,

ferric oxide coated pebbles.

A lot of people think of deserts as sand, but a lot of times they're just rock.

And that's what this is, these little reddish rocks.

What's happened is the people would remove this gravel like substance

and go down four or five six inches.

There there would be a light colored clay earth exposed.

And it was a beautiful contrast to the red pebbles that dominated this area.

So basically you just got down far enough and you had this nice offset color.

The other thing was this clay earth stuff included lime.

And what would happen is then in the mornings they do would settle on the desert.

And it would basically turn that surface and harden it and make this protective coating.

So then you've got a perfect way to preserve the lines.

Also the area up here is really dry and windless and has a very stable climate.

So that's really helpful in preserving these ancient lines.

Plus it's isolation.

We don't know if you know the science that goes into the preserving of the lines was intentional

or just a happy accident.

Maybe a little bit of both.

Yeah, maybe a little both.

You can see someone digging up a trench.

Bob, didn't you dig that trench up two years ago?

It's just sure did George.

Looks great.

Just like it was yesterday.

And then someone else gets an idea and then they start digging lines.

The crazy thing about the Nazca lines or any geoglyph is that you don't really see it from the ground.

I mean, sometimes you can look at a mound and oh, that's a bear mound or something like that

because it's not that big and you might see it even from a hill.

But the Nazca lines are huge and they're sprawling.

So it's best seen from the air.

They say that basically at about 15,600 feet or 500 meters is kind of the best way to see it.

Otherwise if you get too high they lose their definition.

You can also though see it from the foothills of the area.

But a lot of times you don't even realize it's there.

It's just a little different.

So we kind of know the where, the why, the how of the Nazca lines.

But what is the history behind us learning their history as well as the mysterious meanings of these strange markings?

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The first published mention of the Nazca lines was by a Spanish conquistador Pedro Sienza de León back in 1553.

And he describes the Nazca lines as trail markers.

A few years later another Spaniard talks about the remains of roads in these areas.

Again seeing the lines.

Then you can understand how that could be.

The weird part is you know these things if you look at them now you go wow that's cool that's amazing.

But for the most part for hundreds of years they were ignored because you know what you don't really see it.

Yeah unless you're up there so until you get to the 20th century and planes a lot of people just ignored it.

The first big notice of the lines were from proven military and civilian pilots in the early 20th century.

Then in 1927 a proven archaeologist I'm going to say his name because I think it's important to acknowledge people but I'm going to do this really badly.

Toro Biel, Mejia, Jespa, it's X-E-S-S-P-E.

So forgive me on that one but I mean these people do work a hundred years ago and I want to say dude well done.

Anyways he spotted these things while walking in the foothills and he would then go investigate them and ultimately talk about them to other scholars.

Then in 1940-41 an American historian named Paul Casac would go to the area to study ancient irrigation systems.

And he flew over these lines and realized oh my gosh that's the shape of a bird.

So again a lot of times these things are mostly just lines but then he realized this is a lot more complex than just making a line.

Another chance observation helped him see the lines converged on the horizon at the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere.

So he's seeing complexities to these lines that show they're not just random things drawn.

People would of course get interested in this and they would go and study the place and say okay how are these things created why.

And they have shown that the people of that time with the tools that they had with the technologies that they had they could have done all these things.

So a lot of people go there's no way that anyone from 2000 years ago could have done this and it's really not that hard.

It just takes a lot of patience and a lot of dedication from a large group of people to do it.

Pyramids are the same way people like there's no way that someone from 4500 years ago.

Well with enough money and time you can put a lot of blocks up and in this case they clearly had some very smart artists and architects and a lot of people that were able to dig.

People have been able to make perfectly straight things independently for a long time.

And so it's not unreasonable that an ancient civilization could do this.

But you know people find old stuff and always discount the local people and say they're too stupid or not advanced enough.

You know the great Zimbabwe, a million other places that no way those people could have done that.

The kingdom of Kush.

Yeah.

Just talk about that one.

Otherwise as people did investigate this they were kind of stunned at the complexity that was revealed by the studies.

A few numbers for you.

The largest figure spans about 1200 feet.

Some of the figures have been specifically measured.

The hummingbird for instance is 305 feet in length.

The condor is 440.

The monkey is about 300 feet as well.

There's also a spider.

He's 154 feet.

The big question is why.

And I'm going to give it the we don't know.

That's really the answer.

Scholars have differed and debated and brought out theories as to the reasons for these things.

A lot of it is religious significance per chance that this is something religious that these people are doing.

A lot of people believe there's a astronomical connection to these that maybe these are markers that show the horizon where the sun does this and that you know and they're trying to figure those things out.

Some other things that sound interesting were they were related to irrigation because the irrigation was really important in an arid place like the desert here.

So maybe those lines had some significant things for the irrigation systems and the same time they could have been plot points to mark fields to mark areas of whatever.

In the end we weren't there and so we don't know for sure and it might be a combination of things because remember linking the gods with fertile fields and water is not uncommon in ancient civilizations.

The religious one too is interesting because if you think about it, a Catholic cathedral is designed to emulate the beauty of heaven inside of it.

I could see the Nazca people you know we need to build something that the gods could see from up above and so they build a giant monkey out of the ground.

And sometimes we read stories about these places and we want to know why and unfortunately we can't get into these people's heads 2000 years later.

But my guess is that it's a combination of all these things because again a lot of these things intertwined in these people's worlds as it was so why not this as well.

I'll just mention that in 1994 they were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.

There have been other geoglyph discoveries in this area, especially in the last 20 years.

In 2012 a Japanese team from Yamagata University found 100 new geoglyphs and then even more in 2019.

By 2022 there were 358 identified Nazca geoglyphs.

However that's going to grow because just a year or two ago AI helped identify over 300 more of these glyphs.

We like to make fun of AI and curse it but here's one where it actually took in the information actually identified what could potentially be future geoglyphs and I'm sure there'll be more down the road.

So this huge area is maybe even growing.

Now that's kind of the story of the Nazca lines but I do want to address two things.

One is going to be the conspiracy theory and the other will be about the threats to these places.

Let's talk about the conspiracy theory.

The most popular one is aliens.

That aliens somehow this was a landing craft came here and you know this really took off in the late 60s early 70s when a guy named Eric Van Dahniken,

a Swiss pseudo science writer published the book Chariots of the Gods and it was a huge success at the time.

But it was all about oh the aliens have come down and they helped us build the pyramids.

They did these they did this they did that and so forth and I'm not going to lie to you.

I don't believe any of that.

I think it's kind of silly but it doesn't mean it wasn't kind of fun sometimes too.

I also want to say I don't like these things because it also tries to discount the abilities of the ancient peoples, which is usually BS.

Yeah, these people they weren't dumb they had the ability in the means and we've proven that.

The last thing I'll mention is just the threats to the Nazca lines and those are basically three things erosion pollution and people erosion pollution.

I mean those are pretty obvious the problem is that people are moving into this area and the more that happens the more problems you run into.

You can look at stories and it's sad you know.

Guide drives is a TV all over some stuff and just ruins things or squatters come through and without realizing it just set up shop somewhere

and you're like dude you're on a UNESCO heritage site.

And with a big area it's hard to protect it but that is the biggest threat to the Nazca lines.

And more than anything I just want to say go look at the photos if you haven't seen this stuff because it is really cool and you can just imagine these people making these huge designs on the ground thinking whatever they thought.

You know like all the gods are going to see my perfect line or they're going to see my drawing of a spider just mind boggling when you look at it and it's really cool.

The last thing I'll mention is kind of related to something you said McKinley and that is that as we try to understand why these things were done.

We can just look around the world and the same question hits us with all sorts of other things the pyramids the stone statues of Easter Island the great site of stone hedge stuff like that.

You know what we don't understand all of them but they knew what they were doing we've proven that they can do it through various means.

But you can't get into their heads and so we can't always really understand why these things were done.

We just know that they exist and we hope that they exist for lots longer and they can stay protected.

Anyhow that is the story of the Nazca lines.

I always love things like stone hedge and stuff big old monuments that we know one percent of what we want to about them.

And it leaves so many cool questions and then thinking about a society and in this case with the Nazca people they didn't have much metal.

They didn't have writing didn't have the wheel the wheel and they have the ability and the means and then the dedication to do something absolutely remarkable and create an amazing piece of human history.

And still exists and still exists 2000 years later that's amazing.

Well dad thank you very much you are welcome.

I will leave you with our tidbit of the day and whatever you think of chariot of the gods the official position of history dispatches is we are not a fan.

Von Daniken's book was a humongous success when it was released in 68 and it sold between 60 and 70 million copies.

It has also inspired a whole lot of other books movies and TV shows including the ever present brain family meme about ancient aliens.

Georgio with the crazy hair you almost guarantee you've probably seen that meme before.

Yeah we like to make fun of Georgio.

Doesn't mean he's not entertaining.

No he's very entertaining.

Alright dad thank you very much.

You're welcome.

I just want to say thank you very much for listening we really appreciate if you want to learn more check out history dispatches.com

And as always have a wonderful day.

Transmission completed.

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