716 1700080002-4 -Approved For Release 2000108108: CIA-RDP96-00789ROO AM ~M MI IRE VSIUI U"f I h U MIA cie N AmkZC a LW 0 e A)"I Pjc,rURE STORY BY LOREN IWINTYRE PAGE ML11"R STRAIGHTand tack sharp,a, curious marking more than a mile long etches the desert in southern r l Peru. Wandering mule paths that cross it only emphasize the precision of its design. Throughout hundreds of square miles of arid. platcau, other markings abound, most of them concentrate(] between tile towns of Nazca and Palpa. Known as the Nazea Lines, they fortil a geometrical m6lange of quadrangles, triangles, and trapezoids; spirals and flowers; narrow lines that ex- tend more than five miles; and a desert zoo of giant creatures-birds, reptiles, and whales, a monkey and a spider. Because some of the figures resemble those decorating- Nazca pottery, arcbeol- ogists attribute the lines to the Nazcas, a coastal people whose culture rose, flour- isbed, and declined between-roughly speakingm-100 B.c. and A.D. 700. Making the marks must have been sim- pie enough, though time-consuming. Clear away a few million rocks to expose the lighter ground beneath them, pile the rocks in rows, and you have designs that, in this nearly rainless region, can last thousands of years. But. why (lid the ancients construct them? Nobody really knows. There have been many guesses---that the were pre y historic roads, farms, or sonic form of or offerings to celestial being.,;. Dr. Paul Kosok, tile first scholar to study the inarkings after they were first recog- nized from tile. air in the late 1920's, specu- lated that they constituted a giant astro- nornical calendar, air alnianac for farmers ai ixious to predict thin rcturn of water to valley streams, A 1968 study, financed partly by the National Geographic Society, ascertained that, sonic of the lines do indeed point to solstice positions of tile stin and moon in ancient. times, as well as to tile rising and setting points oil the horizon of sonic of the brighter stars. But, the study indi- cates, no more than could be expected by chance. And so the mystery remains, including the most tantalizing question of all: Why (lid the Nazcas create immense designs that they themselves could never see, designs that can be seen only from the air? Q7 lea .20 To -Pro Approved For Release 2000/08/08 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1700080002-4 _;I A---- 4_i 1! 1, $ pe, 11,4.z4r- JAW, ~Iw `41 Aw 4~b J4 f 1~ '0, 4~ SRI. Jw 79, ,V11 V AL 4'z I.Z 4:: Approved For Release 2000/08/08 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1700080002-4 1.716 lip CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1700080002-4 a P 'E Y2,4:,' .To v~/,, AG Aw cIrt Pforc 3jujif C5 'lit -0h pe, Awk v~ 14AGF 724 (Conter) -728 P AQ1 I 'A V- L -11var vnes s diydin rcd Naz a c U ~,111 1 s Approved For Release 2000/08/08 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1700080002-4 CIA-RDP96-00789RO01 700080002-4 -------- -- - 718 -ARPP OR MORE,rIIAN 25 YEARS Maria Reiche has photographed and charted F las lineas, striving to complete a map of the hundreds of designs and figures that 'score a tableland some 30 miles long, threaded by the Pur American Highway (map, upper left). A National Geographic Society grant. now aids her work. At her desk in Lima (left), the German- born mathematician glances up from a chart., where aziniuths of lines dart off in almost all the directions of the compass. During fieldwork Miss Reiche sleeps on it camp cot behind her car on the rocky, grassless Pertivian "pampa," rising be- fore first light for a breakfast of grapefruit and canned milk. Despite her 72 years, she then sets to work with a zeal its relentless as the noonday sun, With the reel of tape in her left hand, ShC has just Completed measuring one of the sides of a trapezoidal ficlo (right). Seen frorn the air (above), it negotiates a hillock, then branches otr o,topusiike over the pampa- Miss Reiche scorris the suggestion that such markin'-s may have, been airfields for oUter-space visitors to earth in pre- historic tinics. "Once you remove the stories, the ground is quite soft," she says. "I'm afraid the spacemen would have gotten stuck." Nalional Geographic, May 1975 ion i `2 Pj6e`R _66t'e - 000 _V~ 1, , . Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : C IA-RDP96-00789 ROO 1700080002-4 Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1700080002-4 IF DhSIGNED AND DRAWN by a mad geometrician, markings great and small litter the pampa K in configur,-itions that defy explana- Lion. They somethries ignore topogra- phy as well. Trapezoids congregate on a plateau that overlooks ;~e Ingenio Valley (above). Others march up--or is it down?-the slopes of an old wash beside farmers' fields (right), accom- panied by platoons of lines that appear to go nowhere. The looped pattern helow theni lacks the precision of ~20 many ancient lines and may be the remains of ari irrigation system. "Throughout the pampa," says Miss Reiche, "lines stretch for miles, cross- ing valleys and triWersing hills, never swerving from their courses. Survey- ors have been astonished by their str~iightness." How did the Nazcas achieve such exactitude? Along some lines the re- mains of posts have been found at intervals approaching a mile. Perhaps sighting stations with men standing in line, behind them? Perhaps. Approved For Release 2000/08/08 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO 700080002-4 lease,.2,OOD/0.8108 -RDP96-00789RO01 700080002-4 CIA HATES LITTLEHALES, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAIIIAI~ 177 F!, 7' 7 ONGER than a football field and cOmPlCt-ClY visible onlY from the air,a L monkey (left) leans to grasp- -nothing. Its left ]land measures more than 40 feet across (right). Miss Reiche stands within the whorled furrows that comprise its tail (above). 'File figure looks like any of several monkeys.- woolly, spider, o;cal)Llcbiii--- that live in tropical forests on tile cast slopes of tile. Andes, sorne 200 miles dis- tant. But N;izc,,.t artists, who probably learned of these inonkeys t1wough trade Contacts with forest poolAcs, weren't at- wavs accurate in anatomical detail. They ,,,ave their monhey four fingers oil one hand, five oil the other, an([ a prehensile tail that curves tit) instead of down. Mystery of'the Anciem Nazca Lines CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1700080002-4 723 0 -00:17 e6o.03 W4 % fdvillihud itc Approved For Release 2000/08/08 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1700080002-4 02-4 Approved For Release 2000/08/08 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO17000800 E~SERT AVIARY contains 18 bird figures, including that of a 0 hummingbird (left), an apparent duckling (right), and a sc~j 1.)ird al- most 450 feet Ion'. (below), whose beak is only partly shown. "We can't be sure what their mNining was, but we can be sure they h, ad meaning," says art his- torian Alan Saw cr. "jvfost figures y a1T composed of a single line that never crosses itself, pcrh~ aps the path of a ritual njaze. If so, wher, the Nazcas walked the line, thev could have felt they were absorbing the essence of whatever the drawil-Ig sYmbolized." BMH By GEORG GERSUR Approved For Release 2000/08/08 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1700080002-4 RAFTED with uncommon care, the Nazca Lines remained much as their makers 1-nade C them. For perhaps two thousand years a spi- der 150 feet long lay clearly in the sand, its out- line almost. undisturbed in a photograph taken in 1963 (right). Now it bears the scars of dune buggies, jeeps, and sightseers on foot (bclow). A similar fate threatens many of the markings. For years Miss Reiche has crusaded to preserve the lines, an effort. ackDowledged last January when the Peruvian Government allotted one rnil- lion sols (about $23,000) for the purpose. "I would like to see a viewing tower erected near the Pan American Highway," she says, "so that visitors will not be tempted to walk on the lines. I used to direct people to the sites. Now I direct them away, before all the ruins are ruined." 28 L to- :~J: SC 789R4017 '9 DATES I-111LEMALIES, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHER, AND SERVICIO AEROFOTOGRArICO NACIONAL ~DCLOW)