The Nazca lines are large designs drawn on the ground in the Nazca Desert of southern Peru. They were created between 500 BC and 500 AD by people who dug shallow marks in the desert floor, removing small rocks to show the different-colored dirt underneath. There are two main time periods for the Nazca lines: the Paracas phase, from 400 to 200 BC, and the Nazca phase, from 200 BC to 500 AD. In the 21st century, archaeologists used drones to discover several hundred new figures, and they believe more may still exist.
Most of the lines are straight, but some show pictures of animals and plants. Together, the lines are more than 1,300 kilometers long and cover an area about 50 square kilometers. The lines are usually 10 to 15 centimeters deep. They were made by removing the top layer of reddish-brown pebbles to reveal yellow-grey soil underneath. The width of the lines varies, but more than half are slightly more than 33 centimeters wide. In some areas, the lines are as narrow as 30 centimeters, while in others, they can be as wide as 1.8 meters.
Some of the Nazca lines form shapes that are easiest to see from the air at a height of about 500 meters. These shapes are often made with one continuous line. The longest of these shapes are about 370 meters long. The lines have been well preserved because the area is isolated and has a dry, calm climate. However, very rare weather changes can temporarily affect the designs. By 2012, the lines were reported to be damaged due to people living on the land without permission.
The figures vary in complexity. Hundreds are simple lines and geometric shapes, while more than 70 are designs of animals, such as hummingbirds, spiders, fish, condors, herons, monkeys, lizards, dogs, cats, and humans. Other designs include trees and flowers. Scholars have different ideas about the purpose of the designs, but most believe they have religious importance. The Nazca lines were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.
Location
The dry, high area spans over 80 kilometers (50 miles) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of Lima. The PE-1S Panamericana Sur highway runs alongside it. Most of the designs are found in a rectangle that is 10 kilometers (6 miles) long and 4 kilometers (2 miles) wide, located south of the village of San Miguel de la Pascana. Here, the most famous geoglyphs can be seen.
Recorded history
The first written record of the Nazca Lines was made by Spanish explorer Pedro Cieza de León in his 1553 book. He described them as markers for trails. In 1569, Luis Monzón reported seeing ancient ruins in Peru, including the remains of "roads."
Although the lines could be seen from nearby hills, the first people to report them in the twentieth century were Peruvian pilots, both military and civilian. In 1927, Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejía Xesspe saw them while hiking through the foothills. He talked about them at a conference in Lima in 1939.
American historian Paul Kosok is known as the first person to study the lines in detail. While in Peru in 1940–41 to learn about ancient irrigation systems, he flew over the lines and noticed one shaped like a bird. Another observation helped him see how the lines aligned with the horizon during the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.
Kosok began studying how the lines might have been made and their purpose. He worked with Richard P. Schaedel, an American archaeologist, and Maria Reiche, a German mathematician and archaeologist from Lima, to understand the purpose of the Nazca Lines. They suggested the figures were used as astronomical markers to show where the sun and other celestial bodies rose on important dates. Many experts, including archaeologists, historians, and mathematicians, have studied the lines to learn their purpose.
Finding out how the lines were made has been easier than finding out why they were made. Scholars think the Nazca people used simple tools and surveying equipment to create the lines. Archaeological surveys found wooden stakes at the ends of some lines, which supports this idea. One such stake was dated using carbon dating and helped determine the age of the design complex.
In the early twenty-first century, Joe Nickell, an American investigator who studies paranormal and religious artifacts, recreated the figures using tools and technology available to the Nazca people. This work disproved a 1969 idea by Erich von Däniken, who claimed ancient astronauts built the lines. Nickell showed that a small group could recreate even the largest figures in a few days without needing help from the air. Scientific American called Nickell's work "remarkable in its exactness" when compared to the existing lines.
Most of the lines are made by digging shallow trenches, 10 to 15 cm (4 to 6 inches) deep. These trenches were created by removing reddish-brown pebbles covered in iron oxide from the surface of the Nazca Desert. When the pebbles are removed, the light-colored clay beneath becomes visible, creating clear lines. This clay layer contains high amounts of lime, which hardens with morning mist to protect the lines from wind and erosion.
The Nazca people used this method to create hundreds of large, simple figures of animals and humans. The entire project covers nearly 450 km (170 miles), and the largest figures can be up to 370 meters (1,200 feet) long. Some figures have been measured: the hummingbird is 93 meters (305 feet) long, the condor is 134 meters (440 feet), the monkey is 93 by 58 meters (305 by 190 feet), and the spider is 47 meters (154 feet). The dry, windless, and stable climate of the Nazca region has helped preserve the lines.
In early 2011, a Japanese team from Yamagata University announced the discovery of two new small figures. One looks like a human head and is dated to the early Nazca culture or earlier. The other, undated, is an animal. The team has been working in the area since 2006 and found about 100 new geoglyphs by 2012. In March 2012, the university announced plans to open a new research center at the site in September 2012 for a long-term study of the area over the next 15 years.
A June 2019 article in Smithsonian magazine described work by a Japanese research team that identified or re-identified some bird images. The team noted that birds are the most frequently depicted animals in the Nazca geoglyphs. They believe some bird images previously thought to be native species more closely resemble exotic birds from non-desert areas. They suggested the choice of exotic birds might be connected to the purpose of the etching process.
In 2019, Yamagata University and IBM Japan announced the discovery of 143 new geoglyphs on the Nazca Pampa and nearby areas. One was found using methods based on machine learning.
In 2020, a line shaped like a cat was discovered on a hill. The figure is on a steep slope, which made it hard to see until archaeologists carefully studied the area. Drones are helping find more sites for research.
By 2022, 358 Nazca geoglyphs were known. Drones are now helping anthropologists study the area and are expected to find many more.
In 2024, a team from Yamagata University's Nazca Institute, working with IBM Research, used artificial intelligence (AI) to find 303 previously unknown geoglyphs near the Nazca Lines in Peru. These include parrots, cats, monkeys, killer whales, and even severed heads.
The field survey took place from September 2022 to February 2023 and was done on foot with permission from Peru’s Ministry of Culture. It required 1,440 labor hours and confirmed 303 new geoglyphs. Researchers also sorted 1,309 potential geoglyphs into three categories. A total of 1,200 labor hours were spent reviewing photos of AI-identified geoglyph candidates.
Speculation regarding purpose
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Paul Kosok and Maria Reiche proposed that the lines were created for purposes related to astronomy and cosmology, similar to what has been found in other ancient cultures. These lines were intended to act as a kind of observatory, pointing to the places on the horizon where the sun and other celestial bodies rose or set during the solstices. Many prehistoric indigenous cultures in the Americas and other parts of the world built earthworks that combined astronomical observations with their religious beliefs, such as the late Mississippian culture at Cahokia and other sites in present-day United States. Another example is Stonehenge in England. Newgrange in Ireland has tombs that are aligned to let light in during the winter solstice.
Gerald Hawkins and Anthony Aveni, experts in archaeoastronomy, concluded in 1990 that there was not enough evidence to support an astronomical explanation for the lines.
Maria Reiche believed that some or all of the figures represented constellations. By 1998, Phyllis B. Pitluga, a student of Reiche and a senior astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, had concluded that the animal figures were not shapes of constellations, but rather represented the dark areas within the Milky Way. She said the giant spider figure is an anamorphic diagram of the constellation Orion, and that three of the straight lines leading to the figure were used to track the changing positions of the three stars in Orion's Belt. Aveni later criticized her analysis, pointing out that she did not consider all 12 lines of the figure and did not use the archaeological data collected by Clarkson and Silverman. Her analysis did not fully consider other information about the coastal cultures, except for using Urton's representations of constellations from the highlands. As historian Jacquetta Hawkes might ask: was she getting the pampa she desired?
Some scholars suggest that shamanistic rituals within the Nazca culture may have influenced the creation of these geoglyphs in southern Peru.
Henri Stierlin, a Swiss art historian who specializes in Egypt and the Middle East, published a book in 1983 that linked the Nazca Lines to the production of ancient textiles found wrapping mummies of the Paracas culture. He argued that the people may have used the lines and trapezes as giant, primitive looms to make the long strings and wide pieces of textiles typical of the area. According to his theory, the figurative patterns (smaller and less common) were used only for ritual purposes. This theory is not widely accepted, although some scholars have noted similarities in patterns between the textiles and the Nazca Lines. These similarities are thought to come from the shared culture.
The first systematic field study of the geoglyphs was conducted by Markus Reindel and Johny Cuadrado Isla. Since 1996, they have documented and excavated more than 650 sites. They compared the iconography of the lines to ceramics from the cultures. As archaeologists, they believe that the figurative motifs of the geoglyphs can be dated to between 600 and 200 BC.
In 1985, archaeologist Johan Reinhard published archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data showing that the worship of mountains and other water sources was important in Nazca religion and economy from ancient to recent times. He theorized that the lines and figures were part of religious practices involving the worship of deities connected to water, which was essential for the success of crops. He interpreted the lines as sacred paths leading to places where these deities could be worshiped. The figures were symbols representing animals and objects meant to call on the deities to provide water. The exact meanings of many individual geoglyphs are still unknown.
Based on geophysical investigations and observations of geological faults, David Johnson argued that some geoglyphs followed the paths of aquifers from which aqueducts (or puquios) collected water.
Theories have suggested that the geometric lines could indicate water flow or irrigation systems, or be part of rituals to "summon" water. Spiders, birds, and plants may be symbols of fertility. It has also been theorized that the lines could function as an astronomical calendar. Alberto Rossel Castro (1977) proposed a multi-functional interpretation of the geoglyphs. He classified them into three groups: the first appeared to be tracks connected to irrigation and field division, the second are lines that are axes connected with mounds and cairns, and the third was linked to astronomical interpretations.
Nicola Masini and Giuseppe Orefici have conducted research in Pampa de Atarco, about 10 km (6 mi) south of Pampa de Nasca, which they believe reveals a spatial, functional, and religious relationship between these geoglyphs and the temples of Cahuachi. In particular, using remote sensing techniques (from satellite to drone-based remote sensing), they investigated and found "five groups of geoglyphs, each of them characterized by a specific motif and shape, and associated with a distinct function." They identified a ceremonial one, characterized by meandering motifs. Another is related to a calendrical purpose, as proved by the presence of radial centers aligned along the directions of the winter solstice and equinox sunset. As earlier scholars have suggested, the two Italians believe that the geoglyphs were venues for events linked to the agricultural calendar. These also served to strengthen social cohesion among various groups of pilgrims who shared common ancestors and religious beliefs.
Using a deep neural network trained on ImageNet and fine-tuned on so-called "relief-type" geoglyphs, a 2024 paper classified geoglyphs by walking route (either trail or road) and whether they were geometric (namely linear or areal) or figurative (whether line-type or relief-type). The authors hypothesize that, "since the main motifs of the line-type geoglyphs are wild animals, it is probable that ceremonial activities related to these animals were performed during pilgrimages" and that the line-type "can be regarded as planned public architecture." They also find that the relief-type geoglyphs, typically half the length of the line-type, could be recognized from walking trails: "The main motifs of the relief-type geoglyphs were humans, livestock, and human sacrifice, all of which depict scenes with humans or things modified by humans. Repeatedly observing relief-type geoglyphs from the trails probably facilitated sharing information about human activities related to these scenes."
Swiss pseudoscientific writer Erich von Däniken was fascinated by Nazca and was also a strong believer in extraterrestrial visitations. Von Däniken published a best-selling book titled Chariots of the Gods? in 1968. In this book, he describes his theory that the lines were used as landing sites for UFOs. Däniken claimed that the Nazca lines site reflected visits by astronauts from other worlds, who became the creators of ancient civilizations. According to Von Däniken, Sanskrit literature describes a story in which an aircraft landed on Earth, and the local people watched in amazement as "human-like beings with golden, shimmering skins" walked, mined for metals, and then flew away in their ship. These ancient astronauts supposedly soon returned, where they built landing tracks and then eventually left forever. The amazed Native Americans then considered Nazca a place of pilgrimage, and generations of their people built more figures and runways as an invitation for gods to return.
Preservation and environmental concerns
Conservationists who work to protect the Nazca Lines are worried about dangers like pollution and erosion in the area. The lines are shallow, measuring only 10 to 30 cm (4 to 12 in) deep, and could be washed away by heavy rain. The region rarely receives much rain, but global weather changes have increased the risk of heavy rainfall. This could harm the lines if they are exposed to strong rain.
— Viktoria Nikitzki of the Maria Reiche Centre
In mid-February 2007, after flooding and mudslides occurred in the area, Mario Olaechea Aquije, an archaeological resident from Peru’s National Institute of Culture, and a team of experts examined the region. He reported that the mudslides and heavy rain did not cause major harm to the Nazca Lines. However, he noted that the nearby Southern Pan-American Highway suffered damage, and the damage to the road showed how delicate the lines are.
In 2012, people who lived on land without permission occupied an area, damaging a Nazca-era cemetery and allowing their pigs to enter parts of the land.
In 2013, machinery used in a limestone quarry destroyed a small part of a line and caused damage to another section.
In December 2014, a controversy happened when Greenpeace activists placed a banner inside one of the geoglyphs, harming the site. Greenpeace apologized for the incident, and one activist was found guilty and fined for their role in the damage.
The Greenpeace event also brought attention to other damage to geoglyphs outside the World Heritage area, which occurred in 2012 and 2013 due to off-road vehicles from the Dakar Rally. This damage is visible in satellite images.
In January 2018, a truck driver was arrested but later released because there was no proof of intent beyond a mistake. The driver left large tire marks across an area of about 46 m by 107 m (150 by 350 feet), damaging three geoglyphs.
In 2025, the Ministry of Culture reduced the land area of the Nazca Lines reserve by 42%, from about 5,600 square kilometers to roughly 3,200 square kilometers, based on new archaeological research. This decision was criticized because of concerns about informal mining in the area. The ministry later reversed its decision.
Palpa glyphs
The Paracas culture is believed by some historians to have influenced the creation of the Nazca Lines. In 2018, archaeologists used drones to discover 25 geoglyphs in the Palpa province, which are now being linked to the Paracas culture. Many of these geoglyphs are older than the Nazca Lines by about 1,000 years. Some of the geoglyphs show differences in their subjects and locations, such as being drawn on hillsides. Luis Jaime Castillo Butters, one of the people who found them, says many of these newly discovered geoglyphs appear to show warriors. The Paracas culture is also connected to the famous geoglyph known as the Paracas Candelabra.
Chinchas glyphs
Other glyphs from the Chincha culture have also been found in areas north of the Nazca, in the Palpas region, and along the Peruvian coast.