Do you know what Nazca is? This is an ancient Native American civilization. It got its name from the river, in the valley of which you can still admire the numerous cultural monuments. The heyday of this civilization was observed in the first millennium BC. Later, the name Nazca was a small Indian village in southern Peru, located behind the mountain ranges. In order to get to it from the capital of the state of Lima, it was necessary to drive many kilometers along a dusty dirt road located in a rocky and sandy wasteland.
Today, the capital of Peru and the city of Nazca are connected by a four-lane freeway. Moreover, that part of it that passes through the bare hills and desert is paved with wild stones. A small and quiet village in the past today is a small but very neat town. It has its own museum and a small park, various shops and even two banks. There are hotels of various classes in the town that accept tourists who have traveled to this area in order to get acquainted with the world-famous Pampa de Nazca.
Geography
What attracts tourists from all over the world to a small town in the south of Peru? Travelers come here to look at the amazing and mysterious Nazca plateau. This is a plain located on a certain hill. For it, as for all plateaus, a smooth, and sometimes even wavy relief is characteristic. In some places it is slightly dissected. Distinct ledges separate the plateaus from other plains.
Where is Nazca located? This plateau is located in the south of Peru. It is 450 km from the capital of Lima, which must be overcome in a southeast direction. The Nazca desert on the map is located almost in the coastal zone of the Pacific Ocean. From the plateau to its endless waters - no more than eighty kilometers.
The coordinates of Nazca will help to quickly find this area on the map. They are 14 ° 41 ′ 18 ″ south latitude and 75 ° 7 ′ 22 ″ west longitude.
The Nazca Plateau is elongated from north to south. Its length is 50 km. But the width of the terrain from western to eastern borders ranges from five to seven kilometers.
Natural conditions
Nazca coordinates are such that the area is located in a zone of dry climate. In this regard, it is sparsely populated. Winter lasts from June to September. This is surprising for us, but the change of seasons in the Southern Hemisphere does not coincide with that characteristic of the zone located north of the equator.
As for air temperature, it is almost stable in this area. In the winter months, its value is not lower than sixteen degrees. In the summer, the thermometer almost constantly keeps at +25.
The Nazca Plateau, as mentioned above, is located in close proximity to the waters of the Pacific Ocean. However, despite this, rains are very rare here. They are absent on the plateau and wind, since it is protected from air masses by mountain ranges. There are also no rivers and streams in this desert. You can see here only their dried up channels.
Nazca lines
However, many tourists to this region are not attracted by its location. The Nazca Plate attracts mysterious drawings and lines located directly on the earth's surface. Scientists call them geoglyphs. This concept means a geometric figure made in the ground, the length of which is at least four meters.
Nazca geoglyphs are grooves of a mixture of sand and pebbles dug in the soil. They are not deep (15-30 cm), but long (up to 10 km), having different widths (from 150 to 200 m). Geoglyphs, or, as they are also called, Nazca lines, are made in a very bizarre form. Here you can see the outlines of birds, spiders and animals, as well as geometric shapes. There are about 13 thousand such lines on the plateau.
What is it? Secrets of the story? Mysteries of the past? There is no single answer to these questions. Some scholars believe that the Nazca drawings were applied to the earth's surface with skillful human hands. However, it is still not possible to confirm such an assumption. There is another, fairly stable opinion, according to which, stripes and lines were drawn not by people, but by representatives of an alien mind. This is the greatest mystery of the Nazca desert, over which dozens of scientists are fighting. However, despite this, the mystery of the Peruvian plateau remains unsolved for the modern world.
Discovery story
The Nazca desert (Peru) is known for huge paintings located on the plateau. These drawings, created by unknown creators, belong to the greatest achievements of world culture and are an undoubted monument of art of our entire planet.
For the first time, ground-based giant paintings were noticed by pilots in 1927. But the scientific community of Nazca geoglyphs became known only twenty years later. It was then that the American historian Paul Kosock published a series of photographs of amazing and mysterious drawings that were made from the air.
Creation technology
The Nazca drawings were created when removing debris, brown stones and volcanic pebbles, covered with a thin coating of black, with a light subsoil, consisting of a mixture of calcite, clay and sand. That is why the contours of giant figures are clearly visible from the side of a helicopter or aircraft.
From the air, all lines against the background of the soil look lighter, although from the ground or from low mountains, such patterns merge with the ground, and they cannot be distinguished.
Lines and geometric shapes
All images that can be observed in the Nazca desert have a different shape. Some of them are stripes or lines whose width ranges from fifteen centimeters to ten or more meters. Such soil recesses are quite long. They can last from one to three or even more kilometers. The stripes can also expand smoothly along their length.
Some Nazca lines are elongated or truncated triangles. This is the most common form of geometric shapes on a plateau. Moreover, their sizes are most diverse and range from one to three kilometers. Such triangles are often called trapezoid. Some of the Nazca designs are large sites that are rectangular or irregular in shape.
You can also see quadrangles familiar to us from geometry, such as trapezoids (with two parallel sides) on the plateau. There are about seven hundred such creations with clear forms in the desert.
Many lines and platforms have some deepening of the arched profile to thirty or more centimeters. Moreover, all these grooves have clear boundaries that resemble a border.
The Nazca Line Feature
The geoglyphs of the Peruvian desert are widely known because of their straightforwardness. The imagination of travelers is literally struck by the lines stretching for many kilometers along the plateau, easily overcoming all the features of the relief. In addition, the figures of Nazca have a kind of center, located, as a rule, on the hills. At these points, different kinds of lines converge and diverge. Often the recesses in the soil are connected to each other, combining in various combinations. It happens that figures and lines cover each other.
The location of the trapezoid is also interesting. Their bases, as a rule, are turned in the direction of river valleys and are located below the narrow part.
It is also surprising that:
- the edges of all lines have the highest accuracy, the spread of which is within just five centimeters over a length of several kilometers;
- the visibility of the contours is preserved even when the figures are superimposed on each other;
- there is a strict restriction on the width of figures with significant lengths of strips;
- the visibility of the strips is maintained even with changes in soil characteristics;
- there is a similarity between the configuration and arrangement of the beam-shaped figures with optical schemes;
- the geometry of the figures is preserved even with complex terrain;
- there are lines that are astronomical in nature, indicating the cardinal directions or the days of the equinoxes.
Various drawings
Zigzags and whip-shaped figures are a peculiar decoration of large-scale sites of the Nazca plateau. Among 13,000 lines, 800 sites and hundreds of different spirals in the amazing and mysterious Peruvian desert, semantic drawings can be seen. These are three dozen figures of animals and birds, including:
- a lizard 200 meters long, crossed by a ribbon of the American highway, the builders of which did not notice the drawing;
- a bird with a snake neck, stretching for 300 m;
- one hundred meter condor;
- eighty meter spider.
In addition to these images, you can see fish and birds, a monkey and a flower, something similar to a tree, as well as a thirty-meter human figure, made not at all on the plateau, but as if knocked out on one of the steep slopes of the mountain.
From the earth, all these drawings are nothing more than separate strokes and stripes. You can admire the gigantic images only by rising into the air. These greatest secrets of history, the mysteries of the past, have not yet been clarified by scientists. How was an ancient civilization without aircraft able to create such complex drawings, and what are their purposes?
Features of Nazca drawings
The contour images of birds and animals have different sizes, ranging from 45 to 300 m. The width of the contour line of the drawings is from 15 cm to 3 m. All semantic images that can be seen on the Nazca plateau are concentrated along its edge, located above the river valley Ingenio.
Among the features of these figures can be identified:
- the execution of one continuous, nowhere intersecting and not closing line;
- the beginning and end of the deepening of the soil are located on the site;
- The “output” and “input” of the circuits are two parallel lines;
- there is an ideal pairing of curves and straight lines, which, as established by scientists, are made according to the strict laws of mathematics, which explains their harmony and beauty;
- mechanical execution (except for the image of a monkey), which deprives the figures of animals of any emotional coloring;
- the presence of asymmetry, which is explained by the imperfection of the work to increase the sketches;
- the presence of secant lines parallel to one of the contour segments, which is explained by the complex implementation of the internal space of the figure.
Assumptions and Versions
Who is the author of amazing creations in the Nazca desert? So far, scientists can only build their versions and put forward various hypotheses. So, many supporters of the assumption of extraterrestrial origin of geoglyphs. They suggest that the wide lines served as extraterrestrial civilization on the runways. However, such a hypothesis has many opponents who put forward their very significant argument - the nature of the drawings. Yes, they have impressive and far from earthly dimensions, but their plot suggests that they are made by people, and not aliens at all.
However, in this case, many unresolved mysteries remain. How were unknown masters able to create such gigantic images that are visible only from the air? Why did they do this? What techniques were used to maintain the proportions of giant models?
The hypotheses about the appearance of drawings on the Nazca plateau are diverse, and some of them are simply fantastic. However, there are among the existing versions and those that deserve special attention.
So, according to some scientists, the entire Nazca line system is a huge calendar. One of the first put forward this assumption Paul Kosok. This American scientist was the first to discover a mysterious pile of diverse shapes and lines. After that, his whole life was devoted to unraveling the secrets of the Peruvian desert. Once Kosok noticed that the setting sun had set directly at the intersection of the horizon with one of the straight lines. He also discovered a strip indicating a winter confrontation. There is also the assumption of Kosok that certain drawings correspond to one or another cosmic body. This hypothesis has existed for a long time. And it was supported by many famous scientists from around the world. However, it was later proved that the percentage of coincidence of Nazca's drawings with certain planets is extremely small to consider this system as a calendar.
There is another very believable version. According to her, the Nazca lines indicate the location of a branched system of underground water channels. This hypothesis can be confirmed by the fact that the location of the ancient wells coincides with the stripes dug in the ground. But it is possible that this is just a coincidence.
Or maybe the purpose of the Nazca lines is of a cult nature? Excavations by archaeologists have discovered ancient human burials and altars in the places of drawing drawings. However, all ritual objects were always built in such a way that they could cause certain emotions and affect a person. Pictures, viewed only from a height, do not cause any feelings on those on the ground.
Be that as it may, the one who created these amazing figures had the ability to somehow move through the air and had a wonderful orientation in space. Maybe ancient people knew how to build balloons and flew on them?
All existing hypotheses have not yet brought humanity closer to unraveling the mysteries of the Nazca desert. Maybe soon scientists will answer the question about the origin of amazing lines? Or maybe this mystery will remain unsolved ...