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What Are the Nazca Lines, and Where Are the Lines Located?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Nazca Lines<\/strong> are in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. The desert is a dry, arid region that gets little rainfall. This has helped preserve the lines over the centuries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lines are found in the plains of Peru, some 200 miles southeast of Lima, near today’s modern town of Nasca<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The simple geometric designs include trapezoids, straight lines, rectangles, triangles, and even some swirls that form animal shapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you consider all the sequences present, there are 800 straight lines, 300 geometric figures, and approximately 70 animal and plant designs, which some would call biomorphs.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some lines run up to 30 miles, while the biomorphs can range from 50 to 1,200 feet in length. For context, that is as tall as the Empire State Building<\/strong>. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n From the air, observers could see the land was desolate, scarred and crumpled, and full of dried-up stream beds and river gorges. The plains are hot and unforgiving and are a place where there is no vegetation, birds, or insects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s rarely any wind and scarcely any rainfall, with only 0.02 inches a year of rain<\/a> on the pampa.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The arid plane where the Nazca lines are is in the middle of a strip of fertile land that hugs the Pacific coast and is crowded on the other side by the tall Andes mountains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, this leads to conditions that make the plains desolate and unfit for anything else. The Nazca Lines are approximately 2,000 years old<\/a> and were constructed by a pre-Inca civilization<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While it is rumored that travelers in the 1500s came across the Nazca Lines, it’s unclear what they discovered about them. We know they believed them to believe a complex system of roads from a vanished civilization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn’t until 1926 that a Peruvian archaeologist named Toribio Mejia Xesspe<\/strong> happened across the markings and observed the furrows in the valley. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They tried to study them but soon realized the massive size of these lines and that it would be nearly impossible to identify them from the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The public wasn’t truly aware of this marvel until the 1930s when commercial airplanes flew over the Peruvian plains and witnessed the mysterious lines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, it wasn’t until 1941 that another archaeologist, Paul Kosok<\/strong>, an American professor, gained a different perspective on the lines. He discovered the Nazca people created these lines with a deep understanding of astronomy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He did this by studying the sun’s position after the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere and discovered that one of the lines was pointing directly to the sunset. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After further study, he declared the Nazca Lines “the largest astronomy book in the world.”<\/a> A German observer named Maria Reiche<\/strong> also studied the lines and fought so hard for her theories of an astronomical and calendrical purpose that she even received a grant from National Geographic in 1974.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s also another secret if you happen to be walking along the pampa. While no one believes that the marks are there naturally, there’s evidence that an ancient civilization vanished long before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Observers will notice fragmented pottery pieces and ruins of buildings made out of stone and adobe bricks. In addition, there appear to be stone tombs and even bleached skeletons wrapped in cloth scattered through the desert. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With the plains’ current condition, how would the ancient civilization that used to live here survive long enough to create the Nazca Lines?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s not surprising that some of the first theories about the Nazca Lines’ origins were of spiritual or extraterrestrial nature. After all, how could ancient people create perfectly straight lines that stretch for miles without modern technology or the ability to fly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only way to see the Nazca Lines for the longest time was from the air, which only fueled more speculation. Some believe that the people created these lines based on instructions from extraterrestrials to build landing strips or attract more aliens to the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fans of this theory say biomorphs like the “Astronaut,” a humanoid figure with a bulbous head like a person in a spacesuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Furthermore, archaeologists found well-preserved mummies with elongated skulls that didn’t appear human. So, did aliens have something to do with the Nazca Lines? Most likely not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.historydefined.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Li\u0301neas_de_Nazca_Nazca_Peru\u0301_2015-07-29_DD_49-1024x681.jpeg\")
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nHow Old Are the Nazca Lines, and Who Was the First to Discover Them?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Toribio](\"https:\/\/www.historydefined.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/article-0004.jpeg\")
What Are Some Theories About the Nazca Lines and How Did They Come to Be?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Supernatural Origins<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What We Know About the Nazca Lines<\/h2>\n\n\n\n