Nazca on the dry, southern coast of Peru, is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world. The desert drawings there were already known to Peruvian archaeologists and the Peruvian Air Force by the early twentieth century, but archaeologists Alfred Kroeber and Toribio Mejia Xesspe the first scholars to highlight their significance (in the 1930s). As at Sajama, the lines appear to have been carved into the earth by removing rocks and topsoil from the surface to reveal lighter soils below. The Nazca lines cover some 550 square miles and, according to Aveni, if “laid end to end would run nearly 1,000 miles” (Aveni 2000:29). The desert plains of Nazca also have large, elaborate ground drawings – such as figures of a monkey, a fish, and a hummingbird – each constructed from a single, unbroken path.

Sensational conclusions about these lines, such as the lines delineating landing strips for alien spacecraft, have been debunked by serious scholarship done by scholars such as Maria Reiche, Gerald Hawkins, Tony Morrison, Johan Reinhard, Helaine Silverman, and Anthony Aveni. These scholars highlight indigenous Andean cultural explanations, grounded in the region’s history and landscape, for the construction, use, and maintenance of the Nazca lines.

The Nazca lines form a complex network, often with numerous lines crossing one another. The lines have been described as being “like an unerased blackboard at the end of a busy day of class, cluttered with overlapping but unrelated markings” (Aveni and Silverman 1991:39). The first academic to study the lines was Peruvian archaeologist, Toribio Mejía Xesspe, who, in 1927, attributed the drawings to ancient ceremonial roads or pathways. Paul Kosok, who studied the lines in 1941, concluded (1965:52) that the lines “had some connection with early calendrical and astronomical observations” and that they comprised “the largest astronomy book in the world” (1965:49). For Kosok, the lines served as a map for the celestial phenomena that appeared on the southern desert coast of Peru. Maria Reiche, who studied the lines for some 40 years, also believed that the lines comprised a huge astronomical calendar, indicating various constellations and/or locations of the sun on particular days. She reasoned that the lines overlapped because of precession – the gradual shifting of the azimuth of stars over time.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, astronomer Gerald Hawkins attempted to disprove the astronomical alignment theories of Kosok and Reiche. He compared the azimuths of 21 triangles and 72 linear features to numerous celestial phenomena, such as solstices, equinoxes, and stellar positions. Hawkins mapped a great number of celestial phenomenon and concluded that the small number of alignments that he did find were simply coincidence based on the large number of celestial phenomena studied.

Hawkins' conclusions were based on the same methodology that he used to calculate the astronomical alignments of Stonehenge several years earlier. For Nazca, there was no grey area in Hawkins' mind, as all the lines or none of the lines would have to point to celestial phenomena. Insistent on a "unified postulate such as the rising and setting of the sun and/or moon at key dates in the calendar, or the rising and setting of the brighter stars" (Hawkins 1969:27), Hawkins' work was underscored by the conclusion that the lines were constructed for a single purpose. Aveni (2000:104) argues that "such a reductive strategy-the singe-cause hypothesis that explains everything-could ever yield decisive conclusions about the Nazca lines." Drawing upon another great archaeological phenomena, the Inca capital of Cuzco, Aveni (2000:104) demonstrates how "astronomy is often a component (rarely the sole factor) in the design of Native American sacred structures." The ramifications of such conclusions imply that the lines at Nazca could have had multiple functions, such as pointing to sources of water or ritual pathways, as well as indicating to celestial phenomena.

Johan Reinhard, who has studied the lines since the mid-1980s, proposed a practical function for the lines. He identified one of the geoglyphs to be the warrior storm god. In the dry desert of coastal Peru, Reinhard witnessed a procession where offerings were made to mountain gods. Later, Reinhard observed a ceremony in a remote Bolivian village that gave offerings to provoke the mountains for water. Work done by Anthony Aveni and Helaine Silverman (1991:41) also suggest that "the markings may have played some part in ceremonies designed to summon water from its sources underground or high into the mountains." Recently, David Johnson and colleagues have show that some lines actually mark natural geological faults that carry below ground water. It is quite understandable that a source of water in the dry desert would be extremely vital. Comparision of the Sajama Lines to the Nazca Lines have been discussed by Morrision (1988) and Reinhard (1986). The similarities between the ceque system of Inca Cuzco and the Sajama Lines have been discussed by Morrision (1988), Michel (1996),and Bauer (1998).

References-->

| introduction | context | hypotheses | proposal | process | resources |