2nd day in Peru is a long day… I had decided the day before to discover the Nazca culture, by going further South to the Nazca city, surrounded by the famous Nazca lines.
While should have been a 2h drive to allow me visiting a museum & cemetery to get good background on the culture before to see the lines, got transformed into a 3h drive and 2h useless wait, so I end up "just" seeing the lines before to head back to Ica in the afternoon.
Anyhow... Aside this logistic issue, back to Nazca: what are the Nazca lines?
Wiki intro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines)
The Nazca lines are a series of ancient geoglyphs, (...) designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 (...). Although some local geoglyphs resemble Paracas motifs, scholars believe the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca culture between 400 and 650 AD. The hundreds of individual figures range in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, orcas, and lizards.
The lines are shallow designs made in the ground by removing the reddish pebbles and uncovering the whitish/grayish ground beneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes; more than seventy are zoomorphic designs of animals such as birds, fish, llamas, jaguar, monkey, or human figures. Other designs include phytomorphic shapes such as trees and flowers.
So yes, basically lines drawn on the ground... so what the hell would you tell making this a touristic attraction? Well, while the what & when are known, the why is still quite unclear, so they are various theories on the topic. I would summarized them as follow:
- welcoming "airport" landing signs to aliens spaceships - euh... ok, why not!? ;-)
- astronomy & cosmology tools to study the sky - well, not sure then why there are animal shapes!
- representations of constellations / stars - the drug to see the shapes still have to be identified ;)
- sacred paths linked to religious practices of deities involving water & crops - the figures would be symbols representing animals and objects meant to invoke the gods' aid in supplying water, why not, but still not 100% clear.
Net, this is a human-made art / monument, and this is interesting! To discover all this, I am jumping into a small plane to have a 45mn ride above the area, and watch from the sky. It is said that the Nazca could contemplate part of the lines by hiking the surrounding mountains... some would say that it was to be seen from the aliens' spaceships - choose your side!.
There are about 15 drawings to be seen, but I am just posting few pics of the best icons:
- the alien (really wonder how they could imagine this!)
- the monkey
- the dog
- the spider
- the condor
- geometric lines
Despite a constrained logistic day, I enjoyed seeing this special @ ancient cultural "tracks", this is so different of anything we have in Europe! I wish I had more time to discover also the cemetery with its toms and mommies, as well as the ceramics museum, where more background on the Nazca culture and its cultural habits would have been explained… next time!
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| The Nazca valley and the Andes |
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| A summary of the various drawings to be seen from the flight |
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| The plane to fly over the lines. Where is the business class? ;-) |
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| Nazca valley from above |
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| Around the valley, it is dry. Really dry! |
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| The alien. A copy-cat of the gods visiting the Nazca? ;) |
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| The monkey |
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| The dog |
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| The spider |
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| The condor |
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| Geometric lines... spaceship landing platforms? ;-)) |
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