Enigmatic drawings of enormous size were discovered in the Nazca Desert, located in southern Peru, in the 192s, when the first aircraft began to plow the Earth's airspace. The drawings cover an area 37 miles long and 1 mile wide. In total, 300 drawings are recorded on the plateau, the age of which is 1.52 thousand years. These are images of animals, plants and birds, straight lines, geometric shapes, spirals. The longest flawlessly straight line is 8 miles, the shortest 1.5 feet. Among the animals, a spider, a monkey, a crocodile, a whale, a hummingbird, a pelican, and a lizard are clearly distinguishable. Some of the images are 900 feet long. A drawing of a man with a raised hand was also found at the edge of the desert.
The drawings are best seen from the air. The remoteness for a long distance allows you to see all the elements of the drawings well. Therefore, many researchers suggest that the inhabitants of the desert could rise into the air, most likely on something resembling a balloon.
Scientists managed to establish the method of drawing drawings relatively easily. The fact is that the top layer of the soil in the desert is iron ore, and under this layer is the soil of a lighter shade. If you remove the ore layer, then the resulting line becomes clearly visible thanks to the created contrast. As for the antiquity of the drawings, in a desert, where the amount of precipitation is minimal, and the rocky surface is practically not exposed to erosion, preserving them in their original form is not difficult. In local burials, devices were found that represent a deep plate with a long stem. They are made of shiny metals such as gold, silver, copper and their alloys. The plates have one or two holes. Experiments have shownthat if you stick the leg of the disk into the ground and direct the sunbeam at another similar instrument, it will flash brightly. Thus, it is possible to transmit the reflected sunbeam over a distance of 30 km, adjusting the direction of the drawn lines along it.
The purpose of the giant drawings is much more controversial. Among the numerous hypotheses are the following.
1) Figures and lines served as an astronomical calendar, and the entire territory of the desert was a huge observatory. In 1968, this theory was challenged by an American researcher who, using a computer, tried to establish whether the drawings had astronomical significance. It turned out that only a small number of figures have a connection with astronomy.
2) Drawings were made by astronauts of antiquity as landing strips. They served as a reference point for alien ships. This theory fits well with the image of a person raising his hand in a greeting gesture. Skeptics ask, why did the aliens need a landing strip of this length? And where are the traces of multi-ton alien ships? After all, the topsoil in the desert is easily displaced; several drawings were even badly damaged by trucks that overwhelmed the desert.
3) Finally, the most plausible hypothesis seems to be that the lines of the drawings served ritual purposes. They may have linked the tombs together. During religious holidays, priests walked along them, praying to heaven to send down rain. The lines may also have something to do with the ritual of collecting water, which in the desert was worth its weight in gold. This theory is supported by the fact that many of the straight lines of the drawings stretch along the river beds.