Opravy

What are the Nasca Lines?

They are that, stripes and lines drawn over the dry level (pampas).

The stripes have dimension that they go since little meters until the hundreds, apparently they started from nowhere and going to anyone.

For marking out these lines the Nasca designer approached the especial meteorological and geological conditions of that place.

Almost the total absent of rains (half-hour each 2 years) mixed with the wind and the ground that is rich in minerals, they made a thinnest dark layer, which to be removed it can be contrasted with the clear color of the subsoil.

Of this way, the expanded lines and figures appear as clear strokes over a dark background what is only they can be observed since a great height.

This has motivated the most variety guessworks.

Even the ridiculous proposal that they were marked you by aliens, denying symbolic capacity and mathematic abilities to the Nasca people.

Seem a miracle the lines and figures of Nasca, being only slight clefts on the ground they hadn’t been erased by the water or the wind.

As to the water, we repeat what we said: an average of half-hour of rain each two years become this place in one of the driest place of the world.

Moreover, the ground contain gypsum, which the contact with the morning dew helps to fix all elements (land and rocks) that there are in the ground.

By the other side, the strong wind sweeps the pampas and brings much sand, but no having an opposition in the plain it carry the sand hundreds of kilometers more to the north where the sand is placed making the great dunes.

The dark color of the ground and the inclement sun make a hot thin draught decreasing considerably the speed of the wind to few centimeters from the ground, protecting from the erosion produced by the effects of the light materials.

How it can understand, the Nasca pampas have particular natural characteristics that they made it ideal place for being expressed the believes of the Nasca ancients.

Since Dr. Kosok observed the Nasca Lines for first time, he saw in these stripes and figures an astronomic calendar and he considered “the biggest book of astronomy of the world”.

Therefore, it is for that, he motivated to María Reiche to study theses geoglyphs since a mathematic point of view.

The “in situ” experimentation led them to amazing discoveries.

They were in a place where left a lot of lines and they noticed the sunset of the 21th June, the winter solstice, finding that one of the lines coincided almost exactly since its point of observation with the place on the horizon where the sun set.

As a conclusion, they annotated that line was used to mark this date and therefore the others lines had been used for marking the movement of the others heavenly bodies.

This last concept is like a pendent thing to investigate.

Mark out the path of the heavenly bodies have no only a practical objectives, as in the agriculture, also it can exist the believe of the heavenly bodies influenced in the destiny of the men and empires.

A translation from the article of Arql.

Lizardo Tavera Vega