Nazca Lines: The Giant Desert Geoglyphs of Southern Peru

The Nazca Lines are enormous drawings, known as geoglyphs, scraped into the surface of the desert plains of southern Peru between about 500 BC and AD 500. They include straight lines running for kilometres, geometric shapes such as trapezoids and spirals, and figures of animals and plants, among them a hummingbird, a monkey and a spider. Made mostly by the Nasca culture, they form one of the largest and most puzzling groups of ancient artworks in the world and have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994.

Background: the Nasca culture

The Nasca (also spelled Nazca) culture flourished on the south coast of Peru from about 100 BC to AD 600, in the river valleys of the Ica and Grande drainage, including the Nazca and Palpa valleys. It grew out of the earlier Paracas culture, famous for its textiles and burials.

The Nasca people were farmers who grew cotton, beans, maize and other crops with the help of irrigation. In the dry valleys they built puquios, underground channels that tapped groundwater, some of which still work. They are also known for finely painted polychrome pottery showing gods, animals and plants.

Their main ceremonial centre was Cahuachi, a complex of adobe mounds close to the plain where many lines were drawn. Most archaeologists think Cahuachi was a pilgrimage site rather than a large city, and its activities were closely linked to the geoglyphs.

What the lines are

The geoglyphs cover an area of about 450 square kilometres on the plains between the towns of Nazca and Palpa. UNESCO and many studies commonly cite more than 800 straight lines, around 300 geometric figures and about 70 large animal and plant figures, though recent discoveries have greatly increased the number of known figures.

The straight lines are the most numerous. Some are only a few metres long, while others run for many kilometres across the plain, often crossing valleys and hills almost perfectly straight. Many radiate from small hills or natural features, forming what researchers call line centres.

The geometric figures include large trapezoids and triangles, some hundreds of metres long, as well as zigzags and spirals. These are often the most visible features from the air.

The biomorphs, figures of living things, are the best known. They include:

• a hummingbird about 90 metres long;
• a monkey with a spiral tail, around 90 metres long;
• a spider about 45 metres long;
• a condor with outstretched wings, about 135 metres long;
• a pelican-like bird nearly 300 metres long;
• a hillside figure popularly called “the astronaut”, about 30 metres tall, which is better described as an owl-headed human figure.

Many of the animal figures are drawn with a single continuous line that never crosses itself. Some scholars think this was meant to be walked as a path.

How they were made

The desert plain is covered with small stones that have been darkened over time by iron and manganese oxides, a coating sometimes called desert varnish. Below them the ground is lighter in colour, yellowish or grey.

The Nasca people made the lines by removing the dark surface stones and piling them along the edges, exposing the paler ground underneath. The resulting lines are usually only about 10 to 15 centimetres deep, and rarely more than 30 centimetres. Their contrast with the surrounding desert makes them visible from a distance.

The plain’s extreme dryness has preserved them. The region receives almost no rain in most years, and the stony surface retains heat, which creates a cushion of warm air that reduces wind erosion.

Experiments have shown that the lines could be made with simple tools. In 1982 the American investigator Joe Nickell and a small team reproduced a large condor figure using wooden stakes, string and a simple coordinate system, without any aerial view. Wooden stakes have been found at the ends of some lines, and specialists think the Nasca enlarged smaller designs by measurement or laid figures out by eye.

Who made them and when

Most geoglyphs are attributed to the Nasca culture, based on the style of the figures, which match images on Nasca pottery and textiles, and on broken pots found on and beside the lines. Some lines have been linked to activities in which pots were deliberately broken as offerings.

Research near Palpa by German and Peruvian teams, led by Markus Reindel and Johny Isla, has shown that the tradition began earlier. Paracas people made figures, often human-like, on hillsides from around 400 BC or somewhat earlier, and the large drawings on the flat plains became common in the Nasca period. Construction continued for centuries, with lines often added or reworked.

Theories of their purpose

The meaning of the Nazca Lines has been debated since they came to wide attention in the 1930s and 1940s. Several explanations have been proposed, and they are not mutually exclusive.

Astronomy. In 1941 the American historian Paul Kosok observed the sun setting over the end of a line at the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere and called the plain “the largest astronomy book in the world”. The German-born mathematician Maria Reiche, who studied the lines from the 1940s until her death in 1998, developed this idea further. However, a statistical test carried out by the astronomer Gerald Hawkins in 1968 found that the lines pointed to astronomical events no more often than would be expected by chance.

Water and fertility. In the 1980s the anthropologist Johan Reinhard argued that many lines were connected with the worship of mountains and the supply of water, the most precious resource in the desert. Lines often point towards sources of water or follow the direction of underground water flow, and many figures, such as the spider and the hummingbird, have associations with rain and fertility in Andean belief.

Ritual paths. The astronomer Anthony Aveni and others found evidence that people walked along the lines, which show signs of foot traffic and are linked to the line centres. On this view, the lines were used in processions and ceremonies, perhaps organised by kin groups, much like the later Inca system of ceque lines radiating from Cusco.

Most specialists today see the lines as ritual spaces connected with water, fertility and social identity, used and remade over many generations, rather than as a single coded message.

Myths and facts

The best-known myth is that the Nazca Lines were made by or for visitors from outer space. In his 1968 book Chariots of the Gods? the Swiss writer Erich von Däniken suggested that the lines were landing strips. Archaeologists reject this idea: the lines are shallow scratches in soft ground that could not support aircraft, and the archaeological evidence links them firmly to the Nasca and Paracas peoples.

Another common belief is that the figures can only be seen from the air. Many are visible from nearby hills, and the people who made them could walk the lines, lay them out by measurement and see their shape on the ground. Seeing them as a complete picture may not have been the purpose at all.

It is also often said that the lines were discovered from aeroplanes in the 1920s. Local people knew of them, and the Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejía Xesspe studied them on foot in 1927. Commercial flights over the area in the late 1920s and 1930s helped bring them to world attention.

Modern study and protection

Maria Reiche spent decades mapping, measuring and protecting the lines, often sweeping them by hand. She campaigned against road building and settlement on the plains, and her work helped bring about legal protection. In 1994 UNESCO inscribed the Lines and Geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa (now often written Nasca and Palpa) on the World Heritage List.

The lines remain fragile. The Pan-American Highway cut through part of the area in the 1930s, damaging a lizard figure. In 2014 activists from Greenpeace damaged an area beside the hummingbird when they placed a banner there, and in 2018 a lorry driver drove across part of the site, leaving deep tracks.

New figures are still being found. A team from Yamagata University in Japan, led by Masato Sakai, has carried out surveys since 2004 using aerial images and drones. In 2020 a cat-like figure about 37 metres long was uncovered on a hillside, and a 2024 study using artificial intelligence reported 303 newly identified figurative geoglyphs, nearly doubling the number of known figures.

By the numbers

Timeline

• c. 400-200 BC: Paracas people make early hillside figures near Palpa.
• c. 100 BC - AD 600: The Nasca culture flourishes; most plain geoglyphs are made.
• 1927: Toribio Mejía Xesspe studies the lines on foot.
• 1941: Paul Kosok observes a solstice sunset aligned with a line.
• 1946: Maria Reiche begins long-term mapping and protection work.
• 1968: Erich von Däniken’s alien theory is published; Gerald Hawkins tests the astronomical theory.
• 1994: UNESCO inscribes the site on the World Heritage List.
• 2014: Activists damage the area near the hummingbird figure.
• 2024: An AI-assisted survey reports 303 new figurative geoglyphs.

Why it matters

The Nazca Lines show how an ancient Andean society transformed a desert landscape into a vast ritual space. They are a reminder that the Nasca, like their neighbours at Chavín de Huántar, built complex beliefs around water, mountains and the sky, and that careful archaeology, not speculation, continues to reveal their meaning.