The Nazca
On our way out of Arequipa, we took a side trip to the town of Nazca, situated on a sandy strip of land between the Andes and the Pacific in what is today southern Peru. Nazca was the home of a culture that is today mostly famous for its enigmatic geoglyphs which can only be readily appreciated from the air despite the fact that the Nazca probably did not possess any flying machines. This fact has led to many wild speculations about the Nazca, many of which involve aliens or strange lost technologies, but the reality of this culture, partial as our knowledge may be, is much more interesting than even the wildest of these theories suggest.
(Be sure to scroll through to the end this post as it has more than one gallery)
We should provide a bit of context to the narrative that we are about to tell. The Precolumbian history of the Andes region can roughly, and simplistically, be divided into three periods. The first of these was marked with the development of small, regional cultures that spanned a valley or two. The second is the formation of the first great Andean States, such as Tiwanaku or Huari (aka, Wari). The third is the rise of the Inca (aka, Tahauntinsuyu) world.
The Nazca culture was in the first of these periods, lasting from around 300 BCE to 400 CE. From an artistic and technical standpoint, it was also one of the two most advanced of these early regional powers (the other being the Moche culture on the north coast). Their culture was initially centered around the ceremonial city of Cahuachi, some 28 km from the modern city of Nazca. This city featured no fewer than 22 adobe pyramids ranging from 12 to 40 meters in height, the purpose of which is not yet really understood.
Three kilometers in front of this ceremonial complex lies the field of the most famous of the giant Nazca lines, those which depict various animals, plants and a few anthropomorphic figures. To the west of the complex lie some less famous but equally impressive trapezoid figures, at the edges of which archaeologists have found shattered ceremonial pottery. Between the city and the trapezoids is an extensive necropolis, today littered with human remains and the remains of textiles, preserved by the dry climate and lain bare by modern grave robbers.
At some point, probably in the 4th or 5th century, the ceremonial center was abandoned and its inhabitants moved to the modern location of Nazca, probably due to repeated, devastating floods. However, the new site lacked the small but adequate streams that the old one had. This lead the Nazca to the height of their engineering achievements: they built aqueducts to bring water from an aquifer to their fields. These aqueducts still provide the valley's water today, functioning perfectly after 1500 years of floods, earthquakes and erosion.
The Nasca also reached heights in painting that were unequaled in the region until the rise of the Inca brought a renaissance in artistic expression, but they were eventually dominated and completely subsumed by the war-like Huari culture in the 7th century. Their homeland was incorporated into that of the Huari and then the subsequent cultures.
We started our visit in Nasca with a somewhat obligatory overflight of the famous Lines. It was a gut-wrenching (and pricey) experience in a Cessna 207, but a really worthwhile time:
We followed this up with a visit to the Pyramids of Cahuachi. The site suffers from a double problem: on the one hand, it is not funded by the government, meaning that excavations are going very slowly; at the current rate it will take an estimated 112 years to complete. Secondly, grave robbers and treasure hunters are plundering the remote site at an alarming rate despite the guards. However, it is still an interesting place to visit. It has some things that we had never seen before, preserved by the dry climate, such as underground storage wells that still contain grains of 1600 year old corn, vegetable fiber rope littering the ground and, of course, shards of pottery everywhere.
Next, we headed back towards the modern Nasca to take a look at the one of the aqueducts, this one known by the name of the aqueduct of Cantallo, about two kilometers from the town. The most striking feature of this subterranean aqueduct were the spiraling access ports every five or ten meters, up to 15 meters deep, which today continue to serve their designed purpose for the locals who clean the ducts every spring.
Finally, we stopped by the Inca-period site of Paredones. While not strictly part of our Nasca tour, this site is interesting in that it shows what became of the Nasca culture within the super-cultures that conquered it: namely, it disappeared. Although badly damaged by recent earthquakes, this 15th century control post remains remarkable in that it clearly demonstrates a cookie-cutter Inca outpost, with no real local influences. (In the gallery, you might note some more lines... we put them here because they are visible from the Inca ruin)
As a final note, we wanted to include a couple of examples of Nazca art just to give an idea of what it looked like. You can see here some wonderful examples of Nasca painting on their pottery (the Nasca pottery itself was a bit mundane, it was the Mochica that brought this art to its American zenith). These pictures are from the Precolumbian art museum in Cuzco, but they are pretty appropriate here:
Anyway, thanks a lot for reading and until next time!
August 19th, 2010 - 10:48
Questions, questions…. These are amazing and it does make you wonder what their intention for the lines were. But, I want to know, what are the lines made up of that they have lasted so long? Are they rock or??? Just, wow!!
August 19th, 2010 - 20:30
The lines are made by clearing the rock from the surface, which reveals the light-colored earth below; essentially, they just tilled the sand over. They used stakes and string to survey for their work, the remains of these have been found. I saw a clip on youtube of a National Geographic show in which an American archaeologist used technologies the Nazca were known to have, and he and a couple of undergrads (who are not known to be hard workers) were able to make similar geoglyphs in a couple of days.
They last so long because the desert is so dry, so there is no erosion or plant life to degrade them (seriously, in the pyramids there is 1600 year old corn still in the pots, and it looks edible). There is also very little wind in the area.
Their purpose is unknown, but we have seen some pretty crazy constructions in the name of religion over the last year, and these seem to fit that profile. Archaeologists have found what appears to be ritually sacrificed pottery near and on the lines, too. I would venture a guess that these kinds of things were common in the ancient world, it is just that only the Nazca valley had the right combination of conditions to preserve them.
Venla has another hypothesis: she thinks that it was a contest for the village kids to keep them occupied and out of trouble. Seems pretty reasonable to me.