Join me as I explore the Nazca lines of Peru, one of the most enduring historical mysteries. We'll talk about the Nazca people including all of the juicy details... like pooping in people's mouths? Yeah. We'll also explore some of the prevailing theories as to why the Nazca put so much effort into etching these gigantic lines, shapes, and pictures into the desert floor, everything from solar calendars to ancient aliens.
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Join me as I explore the Nazca lines of Peru, one of the most enduring historical mysteries. We'll talk about the Nazca people including all of the juicy details... like pooping in people's mouths? Yeah. We'll also explore some of the prevailing theories as to why the Nazca put so much effort into etching these gigantic lines, shapes, and pictures into the desert floor, everything from solar calendars to ancient aliens.
Sources:
Support the show!
The Nazca valley stretches between the southern coast of Peru and the Andes mountains in South America. It’s one of the driest places on Earth with an incredibly unique landscape. These desert plains, called pampas, go on for miles with very little vegetation. Here, the lighter colored desert floor is covered with loose, darker colored rocks and sediment. It truly looks like a different planet. But this unique landscape - darker colored rocks on top of a lighter colored desert floor - provided a sort of canvas for the Nazca people that once called this area home. By removing the darker surface rocks to reveal the lighter sediment below, they etched hundreds of lines, shapes, and figures into the desert landscape. And because there’s almost no rainfall or wind in this region, these works of art have remained for well over a thousand years. But, from the ground, it doesn’t look like all that much - a line here, a large area removed there - they were clearly up to something but no one knew exactly what that was until airplanes started flying over the region in the 1930s. Imagine the surprise of the airplane pilots staring down at the Nazca valley from the air for the first time ever expecting to see random crisscrossing lines and blobs and instead finding a collection of very recognizable pictures - a monkey, a bird, a spider. They weren’t just doing this for the heck of it, they were drawing pictures on the desert floor like it was a gigantic chalkboard. But why? What was the purpose of the Nazca lines? Did you know that, to this day, experts have not been able to answer that question? That the Nazca lines of Peru remain one of the most enduring historical mysteries? Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I have a true mystery for you today, which is always fun. I’ll share with you what little we know about the Nazca people and then we’ll get into some of the many theories that have been proposed for why they undertook the massive project of etching these lines and figures into the desert floor. And I do mean massive. Some of the animal shapes are over 1,200 feet long. That’s about the height of the Empire State Building. How one makes a spider look like an actual spider when it’s that big and you can’t even see what you’re doing from the ground is beyond me. They clearly put a lot of effort into this. But why? The theories are all over the place, from a giant solar calendar or a way to mark underground water sources all the way to landing strips for alien spacecraft.
The Nazca lines are in an area of Peru that is around 200 miles southeast of the capital city, Lima, near the modern day city of Nazca. The geography of this place is one of a kind. A cordillera or mountain range runs along the coast there, from north to south. East of that is the Nazca valley and on the other side, the Andes mountains. So it’s basically trapped between these two mountain ranges. On top of that, the Humboldt current in the Pacific ocean prevents clouds from forming which means there is basically no rain in this area, only 4 millimeters of rainfall per year. The only above ground water sources were rivers that only ran for a few weeks out of the year during the rainy season when they would carry water from the Andes to the ocean. A few weeks. That’s it. Thousands of years ago this valley filled with loose rocks and sediment. And so this is how the Nazca created these geoglyphs, by removing the loose rocks and sediment to reveal the lighter surface below. In this way, they painstakingly created over 800 straight lines (the longest one stretching for over 12 miles), 300 geometric figures, and 70 animal and plant designs, or biomorphs, ranging from 50 to 1,200 feet long. So this is a massive scale, a scale too large to actually see from the ground. These geoglyphs were clearly meant to be seen from the air. But the Nazca people, as far as we know, could not actually see them from the air. Human flight, as far as we know, was not a thing when the Nazca civilization lived here which was from around 200 BC until 650 AD. The first time humans successfully quote “flew” was in the late 1700s with the invention of hot air balloons. And the first time they really flew, like in the way we fly today was in 1903 when Wilbur and Orville Wright flew the first heavier-than-air flying machine AKA airplane, about a mile from my house. As far as we know. So why create shapes, pictures, that no one can even see?
Humans had known about the Nazca lines since the Nazca created them, it wasn’t like someone discovered them one day, “like, oh, look, what’s this?” No, they had always just sort of been there, in the desert, and it was something people knew about. Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe (zess-pay) was the first to systematically study the lines in 1926 but even then, he’s just looking at lines in the dirt, measuring them, whatever. He can’t actually see that they are forming geometric shapes and intricate pictures. Then, in the 1930s, pilots start flying commercial airplanes over the lines and we finally, finally get to see them from above and I’m sure many a jaw dropped at the realization of what the Nazca had actually done, what they were capable of. And at that point, the burning question was and still is… why?
But before we try to answer that, let’s talk about the Nazca people. When we think about pre-columbian South America, the Inca come to mind, right, it’s like the Aztec, the Maya, and the Inca. The Inca are the South American ones. But the Inca civilization was not a thing until quite late in the game. That empire didn’t arise until the 12th century which means they were only even around for a few hundred years before they were conquered by the Spanish in the 1500s. But there were many civilizations in South America before the Inca. And many of these likely influenced Incan culture and religion. They were sort of absorbed by one another, all eventually feeding into the massive empire created by the Inca.
One of these pre-Inca civilizations was the Nazca but before the Nazca, it was the Paracas. The Paracas were actually the first to start etching lines into the Nazca valley. Their civilization arose around 700 years before the Nasca a little to the north in the Pisco and Ica valleys. According to a British Museum article quote, “Genetic studies of DNA samples have shown that the Paracas and Nasca were the same ethnic group, and archaeology has shown that they shared similar beliefs. For example, both cultures were conscious of the need to ensure the supply of water for agriculture and believed it was provided by their ancestors as givers of life. Towards the end of the Paracas culture, groups migrated from the north and highlands and settled in the southern valley of Nasca, where new cultural traditions were developed around the ceremonial center of Cahuachi.” end quote. So it appears that the Paracas people sort of gradually became the Nazca people, were absorbed by them. There wasn’t like a battle or event where the Nazca conquered the Paracas and took over, they just slowly changed location and customs, and culture to the point where, now, looking back, we call them something different. And something similar would eventually happen to the Nazca who were overtaken by the Wari people in the 5th century. And because of this, all we know is what we’ve pieced together from archaeological evidence and artifacts left behind undisturbed, which isn’t much. We have pottery, textiles, some graves with mummies, some ruins, and of course the Nazca lines.
But here’s what experts have managed to piece together. At its height, the Nazca civilization numbered only around 25,000 people spread across small villages that were built on terraced hills. They relied heavily on irrigation to grow anything because this area is so dry. So, to access water, they constructed puquios which are like wells basically, aqueducts for reaching groundwater, cause 4 millimeters of rain ain't gonna cut it. There doesn’t appear to be much centralization, no central city or town planning really, just small villages. This leads experts to believe that the Nazca civilization was most likely a collection of smaller chiefdoms that sometimes acted in unison for mutual interests but not as one unified state. But, based on their pottery and textiles and whatnot, all of the separate villages clearly had the same religion, culture, etc. Because this pottery and these textiles, they are like super ornate and unique, covered in images of animals and people and gods. It’s all very stylized. The Nazca had a very unique style.
We also know that they traded and had contact with people from other places, faraway places. They used llama and alpaca wool in their textiles but llamas and alpacas don’t live on the coast. They can’t survive in coastal areas. So they clearly traded with highland cultures to get this wool. Mummies have been found wearing headdresses made of feathers from rainforest birds. And remember this is like the opposite of a rainforest. This is the desert. So their trade network is quite large to be getting rainforest goods here. These mummies though, these graves, this is where a lot of this information, these artifacts are coming from. Because they’re so well preserved in the desert, much like the Egyptian mummies minus millenia of graverobbers. Graves were dug 4.5 meters deep so that’s like almost 15 feet deep, and accessed with a shaft. According to a worldhistory.org article by Mark Cartwright quote “Fine pottery and textiles were buried with the dead and with no particular distinction between male and female burials. The deceased is mummified, carefully wrapped in textiles and usually placed in a seated position, skulls sometimes display deliberate elongation, and we know the Nazca wore tattoos. Tombs, especially shaft ones lined with mud bricks, could be re-opened and more mummies added, perhaps indicating ancestor worship,” end quote. So a few interesting things to note there. No distinction between male and female graves. That’s an interesting cultural clue. Elongated heads - I have a picture of this, actually I have pictures of most of this stuff on my instagram @historyfixpodcast or my website historyfixpodcast.com. It really helps to see some of these visuals, the lines, the pottery, the heads to get a feel for what the Nazca were really like. They had tattoos. So we’ve got pottery, textiles, lines in the desert, tattoos, they were clearly a very artistic group of people. And despite living in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, they certainly had a lot of time for art which is very impressive. It suggests that they were doing quite well as a civilization in a place where not many other groups of people could have hacked it.
Cartwright goes on to say in his article quote “Caches of trophy-heads often accompany the mummy, many showing signs of trephination which allowed several to be strung on a single cord as illustrated in pottery designs. Trophy-heads are also frequently incorporated into textile designs, especially in miniature and as border decoration. There were also burials of what appear to be sacrificial victims. These have the eyes blocked and excrement was placed in the mouth which was then pinned shut with cactus needles. Alternatively, the tongue was removed and kept in a cloth pouch,” end quote. Okay and now I’m thinking maybe they had too much time on their hands. This is some freaky stuff. And I’m trying to keep it within its own context and not judge it based on my modern western European cultural worldview. Buuut the excrement in the mouth sewed shut with cactus needles is like beyond cultural context. I’m not totally sure what eyes blocked means, I guess like covered up. I’m looking at a photo of one of these heads and it looks like his eye sockets are like covered with cloth or something. It’s real creepy, he has huge cactus needles sticking through his lips and a string coming through a hole in the middle of his forehead. So they strung these heads together like some horrifying morbid strand of garland and they got buried under the desert so now they’re mummified and pretty amazingly preserved. It sort of reminds me of the skull racks they found in Mexico left by the Aztecs after their sacrifices but those were just skulls cause, it’s like the jungle, it’s wet, mummies don’t thrive in wetness. These are like actual severed heads with skin and hair and everything. It’s wild. Once again these photos are on my instagram and my website. Definitely my website. I don’t actually know Instagram’s policy on posting photos of severed human heads, we’ll find out. So they’re doing some freaky deaky stuff with these trophy heads which were enemy heads, right, they took these heads off their enemies during war, collected them. And then they were incorporated into religious rituals. The fact that they’re found in tombs suggests that they had ritualistic significance, involving pooping in someone’s mouth, apparently.
Music was also a big part of Nazca culture because we’ve found drums, whistles, and panpipes. Instruments like this would have been used during ceremonies where shamans dressed up in colorful clothing and masks and took psychoactive drugs like the san pedro cactus, which has mescaline in it. Mescaline causes hallucinations. During these rituals it was thought that the shamans gained supernatural powers and could communicate with the gods. The Nazca were polytheistic which means they had lots of gods but they did have a main god known as the “Mythical Being,” we see him or her or it appear quite a bit in pottery and tapestries. According to the British museum quote “This human-like being adopts the traits of different animals and can be recognised by its nose piece with feline whiskers, diadem (a type of crown) and necklace with trapezoidal (geometric-shaped) beads,” end quote. The gods are often depicted in flight or as living in the mountains which, I think, helps explain why many of the Nazca lines formations can only be seen from the air. That’s a bit of a clue as to who the intended audience was.
Ancestors were a big part of Nazca religion. We see the ancestors depicted quite a bit. The British Museum says quote “In this belief system, the deceased were transformed into ancestors who inhabited a parallel world of the divine. In Nasca society, ancestors were seen as intermediaries between the two worlds of the living and the dead, playing an important role in guaranteeing that resources such as food and water would be abundant. They are often shown wearing nose rings with feline whiskers or with other animal attributes such as those of the bird or whale,” end quote. So they believed very heavily in an afterlife that still interacted with the world of the living. And this explains why their tombs were so elaborate. But it also just really rubs in the whole poop in the mouth thing even more. Like, I know this guy is dead, you can do whatever you want to him, he’s not aware of it, he’s dead. But if you believe that he actually carries on, that his consciousness continues after death, but now he just has poop in his sewn shut mouth for eternity. Like, that’s somehow even worse. I know I’m probably misinterpreting that but, again, I’m grasping at straws to make that even halfway acceptable in any culture.
So what happened to the Nazca? They were clearly thriving, they’re moving rocks around, making shapes in the desert floor, doing mescaline and getting all psychedelic, pooping in mouths and stringing heads together. They’re weirdos but they’re thriving weirdos. But they’re thriving weirdos living in the desert with almost no rain and that ultimately becomes a problem. According to the British Museum quote “There were lots of reasons why the Nasca civilisation came to an end, including environmental and social changes. Recent studies suggest that although living conditions in the region were less extreme than today, they grew increasingly more difficult over time. Towards 100 BC, climate change resulted in a long process of desertification that eventually forced populations to abandon the lower lands and settle at higher altitudes – a process that may have led to the collapse of the culture. Human activity may also have contributed, whether through deforestation or increased fighting. We see the number of images of warriors depicted in art increases significantly towards the end of the Nasca culture, when pressure on their society forced populations to relocate,” end quote. So likely a combination of climate change and violence which was probably exacerbated by the stress of climate change and competition for resources. Eventually they were overtaken by other groups which were overtaken by other groups which were eventually overtaken by the Inca and then the Spanish and here we are, staring at lines in the desert wondering what the heck they were doing out there.
One of the earliest theories was proposed by an American professor named Paul Kosok. According to a National Geographic article by Jason Golomb, Kosok quote “found himself at the foot of a line on June 22, 1941—just one day after the winter solstice. At the end of a full day studying the lines, Kosok looked up from his work to catch the sunset in direct alignment with the line. Kosok called the 310 square mile stretch of high desert “the largest astronomy book in the world”, end quote. German mathematician and archaeologist Maria Reiche (Ry-sha) jumped on board with this theory and proposed that the lines were actually a giant solar calendar, marking locations of the sun and stars during different times. But she did so much more than that. She originally came to Peru to teach at a German school in Cuzco but she became so obsessed with the Nazca lines, for lack of a better word, she set up shop in a hut in the desert without electricity or running water where she studied the lines for 40 years. She became known as the Lady of the Lines. According to a Los Angeles Times article by Hilary MacGregor, quote “She spent her days climbing ladders, mapping the lines, cleaning them and doing endless mathematical calculations to try to figure out their significance. Locals thought she was either crazy or a witch… when they saw her in the desert moving stones, and they would leave her food,” end quote. I dig it. I’m digging the desert mathematician witch vibe. I can get on board with that. Because Maria did a lot to protect the Nazca lines and ensure that they survived. She assisted the Peruvian government in making the location of the lines a National Park in the 1950s and successfully fought off local and national entities that wanted to dig irrigation canals across the area. In 1994 the Nazca lines were named a UNESCO world heritage site, mostly thanks to Maria, and she died in 1998 at the age of 95 which is incredibly impressive. I mean she was blind by then and had skin cancer but still incredibly impressive. She lived alone in the desert without electricity or running water for 40 years. She did spend her later years in a nearby hotel cause, I mean, 95 year olds don’t need to be hauling water out of wells or whatever she even did to get water, blind. She gave lectures about the lines to hotel visitors weekly until the very end and this hotel is still there. It’s called Hotel Nazca Lines. Outside of Maria’s room at the hotel is a plaque with a quote that reads “If I had a hundred lifetimes, I would have given them to Nazca. And if I had to make a thousand sacrifices, I would have made them, if for Nazca.”
And I feel like she basically did all that. 40 years alone in the desert is equivalent to 100 lifetimes, it’s like dog years out there. That’s well over a thousand sacrifices too. But what was she actually doing? Lot’s of measuring and mathy stuff. She was trying to prove that the lines had something to do with astronomy and astronomical events. And she uncovered some compelling evidence. There is one geoglyph, one animal shape called the “condor,” cause it looks like a condor, a bird, with two straight lines running through it. One of these lines aligns with sunset during the December solstice which is actually the summer solstice in Peru but it’s the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere so I’m just going to call it the December solstice. The other line aligns with the June solstice. Right next to the condor is a large rectangle shape with piles of stones at the narrow sides. And the alignment between the piles of stones shows the rise of the Pleiades around 610 AD. The Pleiades is a group of stars in the constellation Taurus also known as Messier 45 which my 5 year old would be thrilled to tell you about. The figure of the spider also has a straight line running through it and this line points to the sinking of the star Rigel, which is one of the stars in the Orion constellation, in 100 BC. Adrian is also a big Rigel fan, he’s a bit of a space nut. And then there’s the heron, another bird, whose beak points in the direction of the sunrise during the June solstice. North of that there is a 2 ½ mile long line that Maria called the “Sirius line” because it pointed to the sinking of the star Sirius in the year 222 AD. In an Applied Sciences journal article called “Astronomical Investigation to Verify the Calendar Theory of the Nazca Lines,” the authors conclude quote “Overall, it can be said that all of the checked geoglyphs identified by Maria Reiche point to the celestial bodies indicated by her. However, this does not yet prove that the Nazca Pampa was actually a calendar system. It only shows that there are astronomically relevant geoglyphs,” end quote.
And it makes sense that some of this stuff would line up with the sun and stars and such. We know that astronomical events were important to many of the groups of people who lived in this area. The Inca worshiped the sun as a supreme god called Inti and many of their remaining structures are oriented towards the sun at special times, like solstices. We see this in a few of the buildings at Machu Picchu. But it wasn’t just the Inca. If anything, the Inca borrowed this sun worship from earlier groups. According to that Applied Sciences article quote “The astronomical alignment of temples and buildings can be observed in almost all pre-Columbian cultures in the area of today’s Peru,” end quote. So it makes sense that some Nazca lines would have astronomical significance and Maria’s calculations were correct, they’ve been double checked with modern technology. But it doesn’t really prove that they were used as a calendar or, as Kosok said, an astronomy book. They may have created the lines for some other purpose and, while they were at it, decided to align them with the sun or the stars or whatever. You know, if you’re going to create a 1,000 foot long picture of a heron that no one can even see, might as well make his beak point towards the sunrise on one day of the year, why not?
So that’s the solar calendar theory, one of the first proposed ideas. The next one is easily the most far fetched and pseudoscientific and that’s the ancient aliens theory. This was first proposed by some guy named Erich von Daniken in his 1968 book “Chariot of the Gods.” And I said some guy because von Daniken was not like an archaeologist or an astrophysicist or a scientist of any kind really, he was a hotel manager who was actually arrested for fraud the same year his book came out for falsifying hotel records in order to take out loans that he used to fund travel and research for his book. But even though they hauled the man off to prison, the book was a smashing success. In the book, von Daniken proposed that the Nazca people had contact with extraterrestrials, aliens. And that the aliens gave the Nazca advanced knowledge and technology before returning to their home planet. According to the theory, the Nazca constructed the lines as a way of communicating with the aliens, whom they viewed as gods. Some of the lines have been described as “landing strips” for spacecraft, like an airport runway. And there are claims that one shape in particular, “the astronaut,” which is a human-like figure, is actually an alien. I mean it does kind of look like an alien, it has a big head and giant eyes. But, the Nazca were known for their highly stylized, cartoony looking illustrations. It very well could just be a badly drawn human. But I mean also it’s massive and they can’t even see it while they’re drawing it. It’s a pretty good drawing considering.
Erich von Daniken didn’t just claim extraterrestrial influence on the Nazca though, he applied it to all sorts of ancient civilizations - the pyramids, stonehenge, Easter island. He described ancient artwork and artifacts as depicting astronauts, aircraft, extraterrestrials, and complex technology and believed that religions, belief in gods, was actually due to contact with extraterrestrials. And, hey, I get it, there’s a lot we don’t understand about these ancient civilizations, there’s a lot we don’t know and it’s easy to make these assumptions, plus ideas like this sell books. Most importantly, ideas like this sell books. But how much did Erich von Daniken, a fraudulent hotel manager, really know about extraterrestrials or ancient civilizations? That’s what kills this one for me. He had no credibility. In 1976, Ronald D. Story wrote a book called “The Space Gods Revealed” as a way of refuting von Daniken’s claims with a forward written by astronomer Carl Sagan. Sagan says quote “That writing as careless as von Däniken's, whose principal thesis is that our ancestors were dummies, should be so popular is a sober commentary on the credulousness and despair of our times. I also hope for the continuing popularity of books like Chariots of the Gods? in high school and college logic courses, as object lessons in sloppy thinking. I know of no recent books so riddled with logical and factual errors as the works of von Däniken,” end quote. Ouch. That bit about our ancestors being dummies, there is something a bit dangerous in that. I talked about this in episode 39 about Mayanism. By claiming that the Nazca or the Egyptians or the Maya or whoever had contact with extraterrestrials and that is where their advanced technology came from, you are taking credit for those achievements away from them. And I think a lot of the time this is subconscious, people aren’t intending to do that for the most part. It just doesn’t make sense that they would have been able to do these things. It doesn’t jive with the way we understand the world. And when I say we I mean people who were brought up in western European culture, a culture that attempted to take over most of the world which suggests a grandiose view of itself, to say the least, a superiority complex. When you think you’re more advanced than the rest of the world and then you roll up on the Great Pyramid or Chichen Itza or the Nazca Lines, it doesn’t make sense. So in trying to make sense of it, sometimes we have these far out theories like aliens. There’s no way these indigenous Peruvians could have done this in the year 400 or whatever without help. It must have been aliens. So, I mean, it’s a fun theory, I’ll give it that. People ate up Chariot of the Gods, so much so that it birthed a whole History Channel show, Ancient Aliens, and Erich von Daniken is actually on that show by the way. People love the ancient aliens theory and it is, it’s fun to think about, but we have to be careful that we aren’t giving aliens credit for things people actually did. Our ancestors weren’t dummies.
In the 80s, an American anthropologist named Johan Reinhard wrote a book called “The Nazca Lines: A New Perspective on Their Origin and Meaning.” And I got sucked in and read pretty much this whole book, it’s short and the whole thing is online for free. But anyway, Reinhard proposed that the lines had ritual significance as part of water and fertility cults, asking the gods to send rain. According to this theory, they worshiped mountain gods that controlled the weather. So they created these symbols, animals, to appease the gods. And then some of the shapes, the rectangles and trapezoid shapes were gathering places and the lines were paths that people walked along to reach these ritual gathering places. And there is some pretty good evidence to suggest all this. If we look at some of the animals - the hummingbird which was seen as a messenger that communicated with the mountain gods, the spider which, according to Reinhard, is seen in modern day Peru as a sign of rain. And then there are a bunch of rainforest plants and animals - a monkey, a lizard, flowers. Things that come from places with rain. So Reinhard theorized that all of this was part of these water/fertility cult rituals to the mountain gods. And physical evidence suggests this as well. According to the British Museum quote “Evidence of human activity has been found along the geoglyphs, including the discovery of ceramics, offerings and possible remains of building structures. Scientific analysis of the compacted soil in the Lines also shows that they were heavily walked upon,” end quote. Fellow anthropologist Anthony Aveni agrees with Reinhard saying quote “Our discoveries clearly showed that the straight lines and trapezoids are related to water … but not used to find water, but rather used in connection with rituals,” end quote.
But professor David Johnson disagrees, he thinks the lines were used to actually find water and not just for water rituals. Because this area, okay so they get pretty much no rain - 4 millimeters per year, that’s the equivalent of it raining for 20 minutes all year - and then they get water from the river for just a few weeks all year. So where is the water coming from the rest of the year? Underground it seems. The Nazca constructed a series of 30 some puquios which are like wells or aqueducts for reaching groundwater. And they’re pretty cool looking. They’re like these spiraling stone things with a spiral staircase that goes down to a hole with water in it. According to archaeologist Katharina Schreiber in a Discover Magazine article, the puquios were constructed in the 500s, around the same time as some of the most prominent straight lines were created which also coincides with a major drought.
In 1996 David Johnson arrived in the area to help the local people find clean water sources and found himself intrigued by the puquios, which still had a trickle of water flowing through them all these centuries after they were built. The local people told him the water came from the nearby rivers but as he explored the area he realized, the puquios ran parallel to the rivers. This made no sense if they were supposed to capture the east to west flow of water in the rivers. Johnson theorized that the puquios were capturing groundwater that came from underground aquifers. Jack McClintock explains in that Discover Magazine article quote “Natural aquifers enter the desert valley at various points where there are cracks in the bedrock. These geologic faults capture water as it flows down from the Andes and then carry it in deep fractures down the valleys, sometimes in a north-south direction. At first Johnson didn't associate his idea with the Nasca lines; his interest was water and nothing more. But then he noticed that whenever he found the source of an aquifer, he also found old habitation sites— and geoglyphs, especially giant trapezoids. When he topped the hill called Las Agujas… one day in July 1996, it came to him. The ancients knew where underground water was, settled near it, built aqueducts to capture it, and drew stone pictures on the ground to mark its location, extent, and direction of flow— the Nasca lines.
Johnson got a hydrogeologist named Steve Mabee to test and compare water samples from the rivers and also from higher up on the valley walls at faults and springs. Mabee reported, quote “In all cases, the conductivity, salinity, and temperature are different from that of the river. Some of the water seems to come from the sides of the valleys, where the faults are, and not from the river,” end quote. He also found that these faults, these cracks in the bedrock were typically near geoglyphs, presumably marked by geoglyphs. So, I mean, this all sounds pretty good to me. Marking underground water sources seems like a worthy cause in the desert. I’m not sure that you need to make it look like a monkey or whatever. But this theory makes a lot of sense to me. However, Johnson’s theory had a lot of skeptics, mostly because he used a method called dowsing to find supposed underground water sources. According to the United States Geological Survey quote “"Water dowsing" refers in general to the practice of using a forked stick, rod, pendulum, or similar device to locate underground water, minerals, or other hidden or lost substances, and has been a subject of discussion and controversy for hundreds, if not thousands, of years,” end quote. Dowsing is decidedly unscientific. So people were kind of like “hmm… this Johnson guy may be on to something here… oh he’s out there dowsing with a forked stick… nevermind.” That’s basically what happened. But, I don’t know, it doesn’t mean his whole theory is wrong.
Katharina Shrieber, who I mentioned earlier, she’s an archaeologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara who studied the puquios, she’s kind of a skeptic too although she does lend some credibility to Johnson’s theory, saying in that Discover Magazine article quote “I think Johnson is right about some things, but not to the extent he claims. His suggestion that faults direct water into the valley is correct in several instances. It does not, however, explain the sources of water of all the puquios. [Six of the 39 puquios] seem to derive their water from sources on the valley sides. Most of the rest begin right at, or under, the riverbed, indicating to me that an underground river is the primary source of water," end quote.
So, I mean I guess you decide. We’ve got the solar calendar, the aliens, the water ritual gathering places, and the marking underground water sources theory. Why did the Nazca put so much effort into creating these massive lines and shapes and pictures in the desert? They had to have had a lot of significance to be worth that kind of effort. And we typically only find that level of significance in things having to do with survival or religion. Which of these theories combines both? Hmm? That has me leaning towards number three, Johan Reinhard’s theory that the lines were associated with rituals where the Nazca gathered to ask the gods for water. Survival and religion. I rest my case. But, you know, who knows? Like so many things in history, we may never truly know.
Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix. I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow this podcast on whatever app you’re using to listen, and go ahead and tell a friend or two about it, that’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.
Information used in this episode was sourced from worldhistory.org, the British Museum, National Geographic, Applied Sciences, the Los Angeles Times, Discover Magazine, wikipedia, and nazcalinestour.com. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.