In an isolated valley, high in the Andes Mountains of Central Peru, dozens of lines have been waiting thousands of years to be discovered. But what sets these lines apart from many other anthropoligical etchings is that they can only be truly appreciated from an airborne perspective ! Presumed to be left behind by some Ancient Civilization (possibly Atlantis), many designs resemble our modern landing strips, or depict various animals that correspond to major Constellations ~ and one looks just like an astronaut !

The Nazca Plateau: Where Human History Touches the Sky ! Perhaps this century's most amazing tangible discovery and our contribution to science is a freeway running through it ! Lines in the Sand The mysterious Nazca Lines, viewable only from high in the air, were drawn into the valley floor, perhaps many millennia ago, by people who had at least learned how to fly, if not voyage into orbit or even outer space. The designs range from abstract shapes, runway like trapezoids and long, narrow triangles to colossal images of various animals including 18 different kinds of birds, a monkey, a spider, a whale, fish, lizards (some of which have been found to conform to various bright and familiar constellations) ~ and a curious figure known as "The Astronaut" which really resembles little else. So although proper perspective could have been obtained from less technological devices, like a hang glider or a hot air balloon, the original artists had to have known what a space suit is.

Modern Science to the Rescue: Maria Reiche, the German mathematician famous for having studied the lines, felt it was unlikely that the runways were used by extraterrestrials."I'm afraid the spacemen would have gotten stuck," she said. She devoted almost her entire life to the investigation and analysis of the Nazca Lines (living there almost continuously from before World War II until her death just a few years ago), and was instrumental in the early research. Ironically, no one knew what to make of the Astronaut figure, until she was an old woman, and Humans began to make their way out into space again. A local legend, there are memorials of her in Lima, Peru (she even has an airport named after her) ~ and the Peruvian government has begun to take serious financial (tourism), if not historical, interest in the site. Today there is a guard posted, and a one million dollar fine imposed for any vandalism of the lines...

This story was published October 12, 1999
--> Spanning 500 square kilometres of the arid Peruvian desert, or pampa as it is called, the huge trapezoids, animal figures and long straight lines etched in the earth have led to some fanciful theories about their purpose. Runways for alien spaceships, the site of gigantic pre-Columbian Olympic Games and even ancient minimalist art, the Nazca lines have left a tantalizing legacy that has us wanting to ponder their usage. Yet they haven't offered quite enough information to help us solve that mystery.

Paul Kosok, an American geographer, was one of the first people to study the lines. He proposed that the straight lines represented 'the largest astronomy book in the world', believing they were intended to point to astronomical events at the horizon. He came to the conclusion after witnessing the sun setting almost exactly over the end of one of the long single lines - on June 22, the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, the shortest day of the year. The theory was further explored by Maria Reiche, a German mathematician, who spent more than half of her life measuring and mapping the lines. She believed that the lines predict the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars and that they were used to determine the correct time of year for planting seeds, the annual appearance of water in the rivers, and the right times to harvest the crops.

This story was published October 12, 1999
-->The Nazca lines aren't the only geoglyphs in the world. The tradition of drawing figures on the ground spans the pacific coastal desert areas from central California to northern Chile. The drawings at Nazca, however, are unique because they are so large and so densely packed within a 500 square kilometre area in southwest Peru. Straight lines that go on for hundreds of kilometres, only swerving out by a few degrees, huge trapezoids and spirals, and animal figures, some of which can be seen in their entirety from the air - have been puzzling archeologists since the 1920s. How did the Nazcans make them so precise? For whom? And why?

This story was published October 12, 1999
-->In the hot hazy desert of southwest Peru, couched between the Andes Mountains and the Peruvian coast, lies what many have called one of the most baffling enigmas of archeology. Huge geometric patterns and spirals, animal figures including a monkey, a spider and an 'owl man', and thousands of perfectly straight lines are immaculately etched onto the desert's surface. The last of them were drawn about a thousand years ago. Known as the Nazca lines, the drawings have mystified scientists since they were first discovered in the 1920s.

From ground level, the earth drawings, or geoglyphs as they're called, seem like a confused mass of lines. It's only when viewed from the air, that one sees how the lines and figures convey a sense of purpose, of organization. But for whom? Why? And how did they get such large drawings - one of the lines is 65 kilometres long, and some of the animal drawings are more than two soccer fields long - so precise?