Some of the Nazca Lines, which are mysterious geoglyphs that span a wide swath of solid Peruvian desert, may have once been a labyrinth built for spiritual purposes, according to a new study.
A new look at the famous geoglyphs, which was published in the journal Antiquity, came from a radical low-tech way of studying ancient inscriptions in the sand: on foot.
At the time the Nazca Lines, which cover an area of 85 square miles, were drawn, “people did not look at them from the air, they perceived them from ground level,” said Timothy Ingold, head of the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. - and to understand what exactly they can mean for ordinary people, you have to walk through them."
Despite the fact that such a justification, not at first glance, seems absurd, in fact, very few archaeologists have studied the Nazca Lines from this point of view. The reason for this is the fact that most of these paintings are fully visible only from areas located above the foothills or from space.
Promotional video:
The true purpose of the Nazca Lines has been a mystery since they were first discovered in the 1920s by the Peruvian archaeologist Toribyo Mejia Zesspe. People belonging to the long-forgotten Nazca civilization created these drawings between 200 BC. e. and 500 AD e. by stripping dark topsoil in a barren desert to expose light, sandy soils, says Clive Ruggles, an archaeologist at the University of Leicester in the UK.
“Thanks to the dry, windless climate, most of the carvings are wonderfully preserved - hundreds of images in the shape of animals such as jaguars and monkeys, as well as numerous geometric patterns - are still visible today,” he adds.
The reason the ancient people created the Nazca Lines is a mystery: some archaeologists speculate that it could be an airstrip, a primitive solar calendar, or an irrigation system.
“There is no simple answer to this question. The various geoglyphs were clearly created over a considerable period of time, and almost certainly had a variety of meanings and purposes,”says Ruggles.