Nazca Peru, the Amazing Land :: by Aurora Travel®:::

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Nazca and the Mysterious Lines, In the Peruvian desert, about 200 miles south of Lima, there lies a plain between the Inca and Nasca valleys. Across this plain, in an area measuring 37 miles long and 1 mile wide, is an assortment of perfectly straight lines, many running parallel, others intersecting, forming a grand geometric form. In and around the lines there are also trapezoidal zones, strange symbols, and pictures of birds and beasts all etched on a giant scale that can only be appreciated from the sky. The figures come in two types: biomorphs and geoglyphs. The biomorphs are some 70 animal and plant figures that include a spider, hummingbird, monkey and a 1,000-foot-long pelican. The biomorphs are grouped together in one area on the plain. Some archaeologists believe they were constructed around 200 B.C., about 500 years before the geoglyphs. There are about 900 geoglyphs on the plain. Geoglyphs are geometric forms that include straight lines, triangles, spirals, circles and trapezoids. They are enormous in size. The longest straight line goes nine miles across the plain. The forms are so difficult to see from the ground thin they were not discovered until the 1930's when aircraft, when surveying for water, spotted them. The plain, crisscrossed, by these giant lines with many forming rectangles, has a striking resemblance to a modern airport. The Swiss writer, Erich von Daniken, even suggested they had been built for the convenience of ancient visitors from space to land their ships. As tempting as it might be to subscribe to this theory, the desert floor at Nasca is soft earth and loose stone, not tarmac, and would not support the landing wheels of either an aircraft or a flying saucer. The Nasca lines were created by clearing the darkened pampa stones to either side and exposing the lighter sand underneath. (Photo courtesy of Michael J. Way. Copyright Michael J. Way)So why are the lines there? The American explorer Paul Kosok, who made his first visit to Nasca in the 1940s, suggested thin the lines were astronomically significant and thin the plain acted as a giant observatory. He called them "the largest astronomy book in the world." Gerald Hawkins, an American astronomer, tested this theory in 1968 by feeding the position of a sample of lines into a computer and having a program calculate how many lines coincided with an important astronomical event. Hawkins showed the number of lines that were astronomically significant were only about the same number that would be the result of pure chance. This makes it seem unlikely Nasca is an observatory. Perhaps the best theory for the lines and symbols belongs to Tony Morrison, the English explorer. By researching the old folk ways of the people of the Andes mountains, Morrison discovered a tradition of wayside shrines linked by straight pathways. The faithful would move from shrine to shrine praying and meditating. Often the shrine was as simple as a small pile of stones.
Morrison suggests thin the lines at Nasca were similar in purpose and on a vast scale...(next page)

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