The Nazca Lines are large geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert of southern Peru.  They comprise 800+ miles of lines, mostly straight lines up to 30 miles long, but also 70 or so line drawings of animals and plants up to 1,200 feet wide – including a monkey, a spider, a hummingbird, two larger birds, a lizard, a fish, a dog, a cat, and a strange humanoid figure known as The Giant.

 

The geoglyphs are 1,500-2,500 years old and have survived because of the dry, windless desert climate and general lack of human presence in the area (although recently they have begun to deteriorate due to an influx of squatters).  The area was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.

 

There is no question about how the lines were created – the builders simply removed a top layer of reddish-brown pebbles to reveal a yellow-grey subsoil.  The lines are mostly 4” to 6” deep.  Many are about a foot wide, although some are as much as 6 feet wide.  The long, straight lines could easily have been drawn with the aid of stakes in the ground.

 

But here is where it gets interesting – very interesting.

 

Although lines are partially visible from nearby hills and observers as far back as the 1500s have noted the presence of “primitive roads” or “remains of trails,” the geoglyphs can be fully appreciated only when viewed from the sky.

 

In the early 20th century, pilots began spotting the Nazca lines from airplanes.  In 1940-41, American historian Paul Kosok became the first to study them in depth after noticing one of the bird-shaped figures, and observing that some straight lines converged on the horizon at the point of the winter solstice.  Historians as well as archaeologists and mathematicians have tried without success to explain the lines, other than speculating they may have served a ritual, religious or astronomical purpose.

 

The one hypothesis that does make sense is the one traditional debunkheads absolutely refuse to entertain – that the lines were constructed either by or for ancient astronauts, and that at least some of the lines may have served as landing runways for aircraft.  The primitive ancient inhabitants may well have constructed the lines and planned and drawn the enormous zoomorphic designs, but there would have been absolutely no point in their doing so unless someone could view them from the sky.  Why draw a monkey that is larger than a football field if no one is going to see it?

 

The Nazca Lines – as well as the curious gold airplane-shaped Quimbaya artifacts found in Colombia, and the stone carving in Mexico of a Mayan king operating what appears to be a sophisticated spacecraft – suggest that the inhabitants of ancient America may have encountered technologically advanced beings centuries ago, whom they would naturally have believed were magical gods from the sky.

 

The purpose of science is not to cling to a premise and contort yourself debunking everything that contradicts the premise – it is to examine an ever-growing body of evidence and reach logical conclusions as to where that evidence leads.  This is so even if you may have reached different conclusions earlier, based on the evidence then available.

 

What conclusions do you reach from the Nazca Lines?