Scientists around the world are showing an increased interest in the Nazca desert in Peru. More precisely, to drawings of impressive size on the surface of one of the harshest deserts in the world, to a gigantic square, lined with impeccably straight lines, geometric shapes, images of strange creatures left over from ancient civilizations.
Some of them believe that drawings in this desert existed for at least more than two thousand years before the arrival of the Spaniards there in the sixteenth century. The people who left these drawings performed incomprehensible rituals, experimented with the most complex operations on the skull and preserved the dead with particular care.
What happened to the inhabitants of this area? Can you find the answers in the images on the surface of the Nazca desert? It's not for nothing that this is one of the most mysterious places on Earth. Nazca is a huge desert area about 400 km southeast of the capital of Peru, Lima. There are about 300 drawings, including a 46-meter spider, a giant humanoid with the eyes of an owl, and a bird the length of seven football fields.
For thousands of years, these amazing drawings were unknown to the world. This was until the mid-1920s, when pilots of planes flying over the Andes first saw what they called ancient airstrips.
Today we can more accurately determine the age of the drawings of the Nazca desert, which scientists have called "geoglyphs". There are two types of geoglyphs - images of animals or plants and straight lines. Humanity has earthenware jugs that were made at the beginning of the Nazca civilization.
They are meticulously painted, and we see on them the same image of a monkey and a spider, which is in the Nazca plain. Therefore, there is every reason to believe that the drawings were made between 100-500 AD. Determining the age of straight lines is not so easy. Most likely, the pots served as gifts to the gods, and people made offerings in places where the lines intersect.
Most of the lines are absolutely straight, and their length reaches several hundred kilometers. Many of them cross the entire territory of the desert, and almost all of them start at one point (this is either a hill or the foot of a small ridge). These drawings can be seen not only from the air, but also by climbing a low mountain or even a hill.
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Scientists think that the drawings were created not only to point in a certain direction, but simply to admire them. The figures of the animals are not as big as they might seem. For example, the figure of a monkey (one of the largest) fits on a football field, and two spiders depicted on a plain can be placed on the same field.
The technology for creating Nazca geoglyphs is not too complicated. The desert surface is very flat, it is covered with small stones (the size of a fist) of a dark red-brown color, the soil under the stones is light yellow. To make a line, it is enough to remove stones from the surface of the earth, revealing its lighter color.
It was more difficult to make the image of the animal, but the people inhabiting Nazca had the required skills. The Nazca people created amazing textiles and tapestries. Paracas knew how to make very complex patterns and apply them to any surface, moving stones or embroidering fabrics with colored threads.
All these findings boggle the imagination of scientists, but they do not answer the basic questions. Who were the Paracas - the Nazca people? Why were these lines drawn on the ground? Perhaps the answer is buried along with the bones of these mysterious people who once inhabited this desert. Their ancient tribe consisted of farmers, artisans, healers and warriors.
Now scattered across the desert are skeletons with deformed skulls with holes that look like bullet holes. The shape of the skulls was not accidental. It was the result of special deformation of children's heads to achieve the desired result. And what appeared to be a bullet hole was evidence of a craniotomy.
The Paracas believed that the sick could be cured by making a hole in the skull. Only sixty percent survived after such an operation. There is no doubt that many of the survivors later died from complications. The Paracas believed that death was the first step on a new journey. In the graves, which were four and a half meters deep, they laid their dead in a uterine position as if the dead were awaiting rebirth.
They were buried along with money, food, personal belongings that should be useful to them in later life. Most of the mummies look at the place of sunrise, since the sun was their deity. The Paracas believed that the next dawn would bring them back to life.
Scientists believe that the lines on the earth were possibly intended for the communication of the paracas with the Sun God. If you look closely at the geoglyphs of animals, you will notice that each of them is made with one line, the width of which is equal to the size of the average human step. Each animal figure has an entrance, you can walk along the perimeter of the whole figure, and then there will be an exit.
Apparently the geoglyphs were meant to be walked on. There are many versions of why geoglyphs were created in principle. Some scholars believe the lines were ancient treadmills. Others believe they were created to pinpoint exactly where the sun will set. Many of the animal figures represent constellations, and many of the lines in the drawings are directed towards specific stars or planets.
In those days, these lines, one way or another, were associated with the idea of people about space and the gods that rule the world. There is reason to believe that these images were dedicated to the gods of nature, including those who ruled the rains. Each of the drawings was intended for a conversation with deities, thereby the ancient people tried to secure their crops.
They endowed the sun, moon, stars with supreme power and worshiped the condor, for the Peruvians it is a symbol of rain and weather. Some scholars even believe that the lines are associated with water sources or that or with an irrigation system. Nazca is one of the driest places on Earth. And water is one of the main elements without which life is impossible.
The locals have created a rather interesting system of aqueducts that accumulate groundwater in order to then irrigate the fields in those places where the lines are located. One of the longest lines runs from Cahuachi to the Ingeneo River. It is believed that Cahuachi was the capital of the people who inhabited Nazca. Perhaps this place was even more important.
In the middle of the ancient settlement, there are sacred pyramids made of hundreds of thousands of ancient bricks. The Nazca people built these temples in order to be able to control the valley and the drainage systems located on it. Maybe the lines simply served as roads leading to these sacred temples like the pyramids of Cahuachi?
The direction of the lines is very important. A group of lines leads directly to the pyramids or other structures of Cahuachi. If you walk along any of the lines, you will either get to the hill or to the temple. But the most striking theory of the appearance of the Nazca lines, which attracts everyone's attention and causes controversy, is that the paracas were ruled by highly developed aliens. It was they who forced the Paracas to build landing strips and launch sites for their ships, in case of an urgent evacuation.
Proponents of this theory believe that the strange geoglyphs in the Nazca desert and the ancient Paracas tribe have long-standing connections with aliens. As evidence of this fact, the size of the drawings, their similarity with drawings from other cultures and the strange anatomical remains of the paracas are given.
Each drawing and each line served as a specific guide to the spacecraft about the landing site in Peru. Most archaeologists strongly disagree with this theory, rejecting evidence of scientific things with unscientific arguments.
Another question that torments many: what happened to the people who built all this? Scientists suggest that the people who lived here suffered from a global catastrophe. By AD 750, we see the complete disappearance of the Nazca civilization. The temples give an idea of what happened to the paracas as they show that there was a powerful earthquake.
Ancient people took this as evidence of the discontent of the gods. They tried to propitiate them with sacrifices before leaving this place. Scientists have found skeletons of llamas and pieces of flutes, which were played during sacrifices. They were placed in fractures created by an earthquake. The flutes were also sacrificed and smashed to pieces so that no one else could play them.
Archaeologists have found a room with the skulls of sixty-four sacrificial lamas. They were stacked together, and on top was a human skull. This room turned out to be part of the temple, which survived after the ritual burning. Then people left this place. Perhaps they lost faith in their leaders, who could not prevent the devastating earthquake and felt that the gods turned away from them, burned Cahuachi and left.
But even greater misfortune lay ahead of them. Between 500-600 years there was a terrible drought, the rains stopped in the Andes, the water stopped filling the rivers flowing through the desert. In another place of rituals, where there was the greatest concentration of the so-called sacred roads, among the ruins, archaeologists found evidence that the paracas were in a panic.
For the first time, the remains of people apparently sacrificed were discovered. So in one of the graves a woman with a broken cervical vertebra was found. They stuffed her mouth with feces, then cut off her head, opened the skull, took out the brain and covered the skull with tissue. But these sacrifices did not save the Nazca people. Those who survived the drought faced an even more powerful enemy. They were conquered by people who descended from the Andes.
Earthquake, drought, invaders … The Paracas had reason to believe that the gods turned away from them. Now only these lines, images on the surface of the desert and mummies have remained from the ancient civilization of Nazca. Who led the people who built these lines? Aliens, gods, or your own passionate desire to survive on this harsh land?
The clouds of secrets are gradually dissipating over Nazca. But even those who have devoted their whole lives to the study of these endless lines, recognize that the desert holds many more secrets. Perhaps we will never know the whole truth about these mysterious lines, and even in hundreds of years people will come here, attracted by mysterious drawings, the likes of which are not found anywhere else on Earth.