The Nazca Lines of Peru

The area in the Peruvian desert where the Nazca Lines were drawn is located inside that area called the Pampa Colorada, of southern Peru; these fascinating lines or drawings are believed, by most archeologists / anthropologists, to have been drawn by the native Nazca Indians sometime between 200 BC and 600 AD.

They exist today because conditions of the landscape upon which they were drawn are a bit unusual: The desert is extremely dry with very little to no rain or wind; the temperature is typically around 75 degrees (that’s 25 Celsius) the entire calendar year; the soil which makes up the surface is not sand (as in a traditional desert environment) but made up of a top layer of dark red soil and stones with a much lighter colored second layer (some might say, a sub-soil) beneath / below the top layer … The lines were drawn by clearing away a portion of the top layer so as to expose or display the second, lighter layer.

Some of these lines are over six (6) miles long and others display such images as monkeys, birds, lizards, and spiders (to name a few) which can only be viewed in there entirety from the a considerable height because they are so large, the largest ones being over 650 feet wide (more than 200 meters) in fact.

It wasn’t until the 1930s that they were even noticed as possessing some unknown or significant meaning, and only then because flying over the remote area became quite frequent; only then did anthropologists start studying them, with a focus on trying to understand how they were created and why.

Just as you would expect, most scholars hold opposing views when it comes to interpreting the purpose of the designs, but primarily they attribute a religious significance to them.

There is however at least one other line of thought that disagrees with the “religion explains all things” theory; as you  have probably by now guessed, that other theory has most recently been called the “Ancient Astronaut” Theory.

Sources …

http://peru-facts.co.uk/nazca-lines-facts.html                          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines                                          http://en.bestpicturesof.com/nazca%20lines%20of%20peru/4#Google