Did
you know that there are gigantic pictures of animals and plants
etched into the ground in southern Peru?
Some
people have speculated that ancient humans could not have created
such huge drawings and would have had no reason to do so—because
who would ever get to see them? There were, after all, no airplanes
in ancient Peru!
Those
people often go on to suggest that aliens arrived in Peru via
spacecraft, and then built airfields. I suppose this suggestion is
supposed to explain the many straight lines and geometric figures
that accompany the creature pictures—after all, why would the
aliens' runways would look like Earthly monkeys and hummingbirds?—but
there isn't a shred of evidence that aliens were involved.
In
actual fact, the Nazca lines and figures can be seen from atop
the surrounding foothills. Indeed, they were first discovered by a
Peruvian archeologist named Toribio Mejia Xesspe when he was hiking
in those foothills. Also, there seems a pretty good chance that the
Nazca Indians who created the figures meant to communicate with their
gods, who might be presumed to see them from on high. The
“technology” used to create the pictures was super simple:
reddish pebbles were removed, uncovering whitish/grayish ground
beneath the pebbles.
Maria
Rieche, who was born in Germany on this date in 1903, worked in Peru
with American historian Paul Kosok. The two were the first scholars
to study the Nazca lines, and Rieche ended up succeeding in getting
the government to recognize the lines' importance. Thanks to her, the
land on which the lines appear has been preserved, and Rieche even
lived long enough to see (when she was 92 years old!) the Nazca Lines
declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
National Geographic Kids suggests a way to create your own large-scale
drawings.
This preview of Philip Day's “Nasca Lines: The Buried Secrets” gives
a pretty good view of many of the Nazca lines and hints at what
archeology tells us about the people who created them. (I wonder if
the entire documentary is available on Netflix? It is available on
DVD from National Geographic Store.)
Also
on this date:
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