“It was an exciting sight! The balloon, which cannot even be called a balloon - a gigantic tetrahedron looked like a carton of milk for Gulliver, with a cane boat-shaped gondola hanging from it swiftly went up. So a few years ago an experiment began in Peru, the main purpose of which was to test whether a person could rise into the air more than 2 thousand years ago? According to some researchers, the ancient Peruvians could well have flown, say, over the Nazca desert - the location of mysterious land lines and patterns, which, due to their enormity, can only be seen from a bird's eye view.
And now, having reached a height of 200 meters, the ball suddenly went down. The two hundred-kilogram bags of ballast thrown out by experienced aeronautics - the Englishman J. Nott and the American J. Woodman - did not help either. The gondola-boat pushed into the sand with such force that the balloonists literally "shot" out of it. The lightweight balloon soared into the skies again and landed only 12 minutes later, flying about 3 kilometers more during this time.
How to evaluate the results of an experiment? The flight was not completely unsuccessful: no one was hurt; the balloonists got off with what is called a slight fright and bruises. And you cannot call it completely useless: the balloon, built according to the drawings found on the walls of the ancient tomb of the Indians, nevertheless took off. Nott is far from a novice in the world of aeronautics (he, for example, holds the record for altitude in a balloon and many other achievements) - with the humor characteristic of the British, he declared after a high-speed landing that “it was a really fantastic flight”. However, he did not fail to add that only from under the clouds the balloonists could “enjoy the spectacle of the bizarre figures and lines of the Nazca desert”. Feverish preparations for the flight had begun several months before the flight. As conceived by the experimenters,The balloon was supposed to be an exact copy of the structure, the image of which was found on the wall of one of the Nazca tombs, built more than 2 thousand years ago. This is what explains its strange shape - a tetrahedron - a tetrahedron had a height of 10 meters and a side of the base of about 30 meters. It was made of a material similar to cloth, samples of which were extracted from ancient burials. The boat-shaped gondola was woven from Totora reeds, which are still used by the inhabitants of Lake Titicaca, the Uros Indians. When launching a balloon, the experimenters also tried to follow the technology that, in their opinion, could have been used in antiquity. The hot air and smoke coming from a fire lit in a four-meter underground tunnel gave lift to the balloon.the image of which was found on the wall of one of the tombs of Nazca, built more than 2 thousand years ago. This is what explains its strange shape - a tetrahedron - a tetrahedron had a height of 10 meters and a side of the base of about 30 meters. It was made of a material similar to cloth, samples of which were extracted from ancient burials. The boat-shaped gondola was woven from Totora reeds, which are still used by the inhabitants of Lake Titicaca, the Uros Indians. When launching a balloon, the experimenters also tried to follow the technology that, in their opinion, could have been used in antiquity. The hot air and smoke coming from a fire lit in a four-meter underground tunnel gave lift to the balloon.the image of which was found on the wall of one of the tombs of Nazca, built more than 2 thousand years ago. This is what explains its strange shape - a tetrahedron - a tetrahedron had a height of 10 meters and a side of the base of about 30 meters. It was made of a material similar to cloth, samples of which were extracted from ancient burials. The boat-shaped gondola was woven from Totora reeds, which are still used by the inhabitants of Lake Titicaca, the Uros Indians. When launching a balloon, the experimenters also tried to follow the technology that, in their opinion, could have been used in antiquity. The hot air and smoke coming from a fire lit in a four-meter underground tunnel gave lift to the balloon. This is what explains its strange shape - a tetrahedron - a tetrahedron had a height of 10 meters and a side of the base of about 30 meters. It was made of a material similar to cloth, samples of which were extracted from ancient burials. The boat-shaped gondola was woven from Totora reeds, which are still used by the inhabitants of Lake Titicaca, the Uros Indians. When launching a balloon, the experimenters also tried to follow the technology that, in their opinion, could have been used in antiquity. The hot air and smoke coming from a fire lit in a four-meter underground tunnel gave lift to the balloon. This is what explains its strange shape - a tetrahedron - a tetrahedron had a height of 10 meters and a side of the base of about 30 meters. It was made of a material similar to cloth, samples of which were extracted from ancient burials. The boat-shaped gondola was woven from Totora reeds, which are still used by the inhabitants of Lake Titicaca, the Uros Indians. When launching a balloon, the experimenters also tried to follow the technology that, in their opinion, could have been used in antiquity. The hot air and smoke coming from a fire lit in a four-meter underground tunnel gave lift to the balloon.samples of which were recovered from ancient burials. The boat-shaped gondola was woven from Totora reeds, which are still used by the inhabitants of Lake Titicaca, the Uros Indians. When launching a balloon, the experimenters also tried to follow the technology that, in their opinion, could have been used in antiquity. The hot air and smoke coming from a fire lit in a four-meter underground tunnel gave lift to the balloon.samples of which were recovered from ancient burials. The boat-shaped gondola was woven from Totora reeds, which are still used by the inhabitants of Lake Titicaca, the Uros Indians. When launching a balloon, the experimenters also tried to follow the technology that, in their opinion, could have been used in antiquity. The hot air and smoke coming from a fire lit in a four-meter underground tunnel gave lift to the balloon.fired up in a four-meter underground tunnel.fired up in a four-meter underground tunnel.
The balloon rose into the air, but did not stay in flight for long. Several conclusions can be drawn from this fact. In part, it shows that the ancient people of Peru could make such travel only in exceptional cases - for example, during large festivals, ceremonial processions, religious rites … The take-off procedure is too complicated for everyday use. However, maybe we just did not master it properly?
Legends about a certain man named Antakri, who flew over various areas of Tuantinsuyo, make one ask such a question. He flew into the air to determine the route to be followed by Tupac Inca Yupamanki - a famous person of the time - during his trip to Polynesia. In 1977, the already mentioned J. Woodman, reflecting on the mystery of the images found in the Nazca desert, put forward such a hypothesis. He suggested that the entire territory where the mysterious images were discovered had once served … as an airfield for the ancient inhabitants of this country. To test his guess, Woodman united a large group of enthusiasts in the Nazca project and, with the support of the international community of researchers, began to look for evidence in favor of this hepotese in libraries and other repositories of antiquities. And he and his colleagues managed to find something.
In particular, the researchers found out that the Montgolfier brothers did have predecessors. And at least one of them was from South America! In 1709, one of his overseas subjects, a certain Bartolomeu de Guzman, came to an audience with the king of Portugal. A young Jesuit monk amazed the royal court by flying over Lisbon in a hot air balloon filled with smoke. Moreover, the balloonist himself said that he learned this art at a Catholic school in the Brazilian city of Santos. His teachers were missionaries who worked for long periods in the most remote places in America, including Peru. They told the curious boy about the folk legends, which described the flying machines of the ancient Peruvians.
Taking one of the described options as a basis, the young monk managed to rise into the air. However, the flight left him sideways. The Catholic Church immediately accused Guzman of intercourse with evil spirits, he had to flee, and his trace was lost … Guzman's apparatus is far from the only possible repetition of ancient structures. Let us recall at least the "Paracas candelabra" - one of the images found in the vicinity of the same city of Nazca. According to experts, the drawing resembles a silhouette … of a two-keel aircraft of the modern glider type. Moreover, the sign is located exactly in that place of the desert, where powerful updrafts almost constantly arise. Therefore, he, like a lighthouse fire, could indicate to a pilot losing altitude: "Fly here, here you can again soar into the sky …". Further from the "candelabra" into the interior of the mainland goes a straight white line,well visible from a height of several hundred meters. It goes through mountains and valleys and ends on the way to the mountain plateau. It can be assumed that this line once served as an indicator of the direction in which ancient pilots flew quite often, using the updrafts prevailing here.
And the "airfield" itself in the desert has many more "signposts" that could reveal a lot to the attentive eye. So, modern glider pilots who surveyed these places found out that not only the most convenient landing approaches are indicated here, but there is also a drawing called the "delta wing", which quite accurately indicates the wind rose. “Triangles” inform the glider pilot of a possible crosswind, and “squares” inform the glider about the best landing spot. The stylized figures of birds, according to the researchers, can mean campsites. It is near them that large boulders come across, in shape and mass suitable for mooring gliders.
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Recently, archaeologists have begun to notice similar images in other parts of the coast - where there are good conditions for gliders and similar aircraft soaring. It is most often possible to notice these images exactly as they saw the drawings in the Nazca desert - from a bird's eye view, from the cockpit of an aircraft. On the ground, they are almost invisible.
S. N. Zigunenko "Chronicle of the inexplicable"