Some billions of years ago the earth's crust and surface figures began to form and shift into a semblance of what we know as the Earth planet today. The shape of the continents and the climate were quite different as well. South America began to form and then, at some point in the southern part of Peru, lush valleys, and gorges, began to appear, and between them all dry elevated plains. These plains were covered in dark red surface stones that would be polished by the desert wind.
About 2,000 years ago the Nazca people inhabited this area. Most people of today learn about them because of the famous geo-glyphys etched in the desert between the Ingenious (Ingenio) and Nazca River Valleys.
Stretching across the Nazca Plains -like a giant map or blue print left by a superior mind of ancient andean people, lie the famous geo-glyphs. They are also known as Nazca lines, figures, pictures, or images, and are shown in direction of the rising of important stars and marking planetary events like sun solstices.
The geo-glyphs are located in the Pampa region, the desolate plain of the Peruvian coast which comprises the Pampas of San Jose (Jumana), Socos, the Ingenious (el Ingenio), and others in the province of Nazca, which is 400km/640mi South of the capital city of Lima. They cover an area of approximately 450 square kilometers of sandy desert as well as the slopes of the contours of the Andes.
The geo-glyphs were first spotted when commercial airlines began flying across the Peruvian desert in the 1920s. Today people sometimes fly in hot air balloons to view the splendors of the geo-glyphs.
The plain is unique for its remarkably ability to preserve the markings upon it, due to the combination of the climate (one of the driest on Earth, with only 20 minutes of rainfall per year), and the flat, stony ground which reduces the effect of the wind at ground level. With no dust or sand to cover the plain, and little rain or wind to erode it, the geo-glyphs drawn here tend to stay drawn. In any other climate, these geo-glyphs would have been obliterated in months, but Nazca is one of the driest and most windless regions on earth.
These climate factors, combined with the existence of a lighter-colored subsoil beneath the desert crust, formed an enormous drawing board for the Nazca people upon which huge lines, trapezoids, and animal figures were etched, and the nature of their mind ideally suited to the ones who wanted to leave a mark for eternity.
The geo-glyphs are the most impressive ones in the world, because of their numbers, characteristics, dimensions, and cultural continuity as they were made and remade by removing the oxidised darker surface stones and top soil to expose the lighter colored underneath floor. In this way the geo-glyphs were drawn as furrows of a lighter color, even though in some cases they became prints. In other cases, the stones defining the lines and drawings form small lateral humps of different sizes.
About 300 figures made of straight lines, and geometric shapes, are etched in the surface of the desert pampa sand. The concentration and juxtaposition of the lines and drawings leave no doubt that they required intensive long-term labor as is demonstrated by the stylistic continuity of the designs, which clearly correspond to different stages of cosmological changes.
There appear to be two kinds of designs:
- One design consists of figures of various beings, trees, plants, flowers, objects (such as tripods, looms and fans) and other strange figures as yet unidentified, such as anthropomorphic ones (that include deformed animals) of colossal proportions made with well-defined lines. Examples of animal designs are a humming-bird, condor, monkey, llama, duck, lizard, spider, and even a killer whale.
- The other design forms lines that could be single (straight and curved) or in groups and could cross each other in complicated networks. The width and length of them could vary, one of the longest straight lines is 20 km long and the total combined length of the geo-glyphs has been estimated at over 1,300 km. Those lines used to describe a specific shape are generally composed of a single continuous line. Designs could be geometric shapes such as triangles, spirals, trapezoids, arrows, and zig-zags.
The geo-glyphs are an enigma, for their exact purpose and meaning remains unknown. It has inspired fantastic explanations like they were done by semi-gods, a landing strip for returning beings, a celestial calendar used for religious rituals related to cosmological dates and seasons, confirming the spirit embodied in the clans (ayllus) who made up the sacred population of Nazca people and to determine through rituals their religious functions held up by reciprocity and redistribution of the energy forces trusted to them, or a map of underground water supplies mapping the orientation of the cosmic energies trusted to them.
How were they created so precisely? Some of the lines continue for kilometers on end only varying by a few degrees. It is possible that these lines were created before the Nazca, but it is somehow difficult to prove it.
No comments:
Post a Comment