The Nazca Lines, Peru

The Nazca Lines are large animal and abstract geoglyphs made from rocks in a desert in northern Peru. Created by people of the Nasca culture, the Nasca Lines were made between AD 400 and 650. Essentially, the lines were made by moving or turning desert-varnished rocks so that their lighter underside is visible. 

The Nazca Lines are traced on San José and Socos desert plains, between the 419 and 465 km. of the South Pan-American Highway, with an extension of 450 square km., near the Nazca city.

These lines form drawings of several kilometers in length and approximately 0.4 and 1.1 km in width, with animal, geometric and trapezoidal forms; some of which can only be seen in all their magnitude from an airplane. The figures of the spider, the monkey, the dog, the small lizard, the hummingbird, the condor, and the astronaut, among others, stand out.

The Nazca Lines were investigated scientifically for the first time by the Prof. German Paul Kosok, along with the Peruvian archeologists Julio C. Tello and T. Mejía Xesspe, denominated these lines as 'the biggest astronomy book of the world '.  María Scholten carried out investigations to determine the mathematical unit of measure that was used in the construction. Their main investigator was Dr. Maria Reiche.

The Nazca Lines were discovered accidentally from an airplane in flight in 1927. By the end of the 1980's new lines were discovered.

On the Pan-American Highway some observation towers can be found, which allow a limited vision of the lines. The only possible way to appreciate them in all their magnitude, given their gigantic size, is flying over the area on a light plane.