Once back everybody did as he pleased — Gisela and Felix went shopping, and I hopped into a car and went to see Maria Reiche’s hut that is now a small museum.<\/p>\n
The Nasca Lines<\/h1>\n
The Nasca lines are formed by trenches that were scratch into the surface and\u00a0 are about 10 to 15 centimetres deep. In the process, the pebbles lying on top of the desert floor were removed, and the clay beneath was exposed. The lighter colour of the clay contrasts with the reddish-brown pebbles making the lines visible. The Nasca left several hundreds carvings (the desert is virtually littered with them), and choose mostly animals and human figures as motives. Most of the lines date from 200 BC to 600 AC while the oldest figures were carved from 800 BC – 200 BC during the Parcas culture that preceded the Nasca culture.\u00a0The biggest figures measure up to 270 meters.<\/p>\n
The start of construction of the Nasca lines coincides with a climate change that left the Parcas and Nascas with reduced water supplies and occasional catastrophic\u00a0 floods and mud slides. It is hence assumed that\u00a0 the lines were used for ritual purposes as procession streets, such\u00a0as asking the deities for water.<\/p>\n
Pedro Cieza de Leon is the first to mention the lines in 1553 mistaking them as trail markers. With the beginning of the aviation age, passengers and crews of the first commercial flights crossing the Nasca desert spotted them in 1924. This did however not spark a wider interest. It was only in 1927 that the archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe rediscovered them while hiking through the foothills. The first serious study of the lines was conducted in 1940 – 1941 by Paul Kosok, an American historian teaching at the Long Island University. He was to first to realize that the lines actually represent animal figures when flying over them. Trailing him was Maria Reich, an mathematician and archaeologist, who devoted the rest of here life in researching, preserving, and advocating the Nasca Lines as well as\u00a0 her particular interpretation of them as star calendar. The research and preservation effort goes on until today.<\/p>\n
The desert is among the driest of the Earth, and the temperature remains around 25 \u00b0C all year around. This and the lack of wind\u00a0 preserves the lines and keeps them uncovered and visible.<\/p>\n
While it is undisputed that the lines where carved with wooden tools into the ground, there are several hypothesises on how this collaborative effort was organized. Some scientist suggest that the Nasca had hot air balloons that allowed them to direct the construction from above. Others think that architects with basic mathematical skills oversaw the construction.<\/p>\n
Interesting is the theory of Henri Stierlin, a Swiss historian. He theorizes that the lines where used as giant looms to produce\u00a0 the long strings and wide textiles\u00a0 found in the area. Not surprisingly, this theory is not widely accepted.<\/p>\n
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