The Nazca Geoglyphs

A Pictographic Creation Story

BY DARREN IAMMARINO

THE NAZCA GEOGLYPHS—POPULARLY KNOWN AS THE Nazca Lines—of southern Peru were first discovered in the 1920s and made public in the 1930s immediately became the subject of awe and controversy. The more speculative theories as to the origin and purpose of these enigmatic lines and biomorphic glyphs have ranged from ancient alien runways to some form of sacred geometry. This article will not deal with these fringe explanations as no scientist takes them seriously. Instead it: (1) critically examines the more recent and credible theories about the Nazca Geoglyphs, many of which revolve around the importance of water, and (2) proffers a novel argument about the purpose, function, and meaning of the biomorphic figures, as well as the more complex geometric shapes. The thesis is that the geoglyphs— specifically the figural geoglyphs on the San Jose Pampa—represent a permanent pictographic record of the creation myth(s) of the Nazca culture. Further, I propose that the figural geoglyphs were used in a religious and ritualistic fashion in at least two ways. First, they may have been used to re-enact key aspects of the creation myth for the purpose of restoring order to society through the production of rain or predictable floods. Second, the labyrinthine nature of the geoglyphs may have been used to induce trance states and allow access to the powers of various deities or important deceased ancestors. Reconstructing this creation myth I will attempt to bring back to life for the first time in nearly two thousand years an ancient Peruvian origin story.

I. Previous Scholarship

The history of Nazca scholarship is plagued by the same issues that obscure most academically informed fieldwork—a lack of interdisciplinary knowledge and interdepartmental communication. As scholars we can know only so much and often we are told to know more and more about less and less to the point that we know nearly everything about nearly nothing. An engineer might focus on how an ancient site was constructed, while an astronomer will, not surprisingly, believe an ancient site is astronomically aligned, but without the insights of a cultural anthropologist, both the engineer and the astronomer may project Western biases and miss the holistic picture. This is precisely what happened with the Nazca Lines.

The first two people to provide a lengthy and detailed account of the Nazca Lines were Paul Kosok and Maria Reiche. Maria Reiche has become something of a cultural icon as a champion for the living descendants of the original Nazca. For this reason her theory based in archaeoastronomy has exerted a strong impact on later research, even though it is lacking in scientific support. Kosok and Reiche posited that the numerous lineal figures stretching across the San Jose Pampa were used as a sort of star map or calendar.1 The idea likely came to Kosok on a 1941 trip to Nazca where he witnessed the sun setting directly over one of the lines. After a later trip to Nazca Kosok said, “A number of the lines and roads were found to have a solstitial direction: a few with an equinoctial direction could also be identified. Moreover, various alignments were found to be repeated in several places.”2

The main thrust of the argument is that the lines were used to predict the coming equinoxes and solstices. This knowledge was important since the Nazca people relied so heavily on farming, water, and their harvest. The biomorphic figures, rather than pointing to anything, represented the various constellations in their appearance and disappearance on the horizon. The major problem is that there are hundreds to thousands of lines going in all directions. It stands to reason that, statistically, “a few with equinoctial direction” would inevitably be found if that is what one is looking for. Why would the Nazca people make so many lines, make them so long and have so many seemingly unnecessary animal figures all over the desert floor? The ambiguities inherent in Kosok’s research did little to faze Reiche. Enlisted by Kosok to help in his research, she spent the next 40 years expounding on the ancient astronomical calendar theory.

The Nazca Lines, Trapezoids and Geoglyphs

(Names for the geoglyphs vary greatly, especially for bird-like figures.)

The initial critique of Kosok and Reiche came from fieldwork by Gerald Hawkins, and later by Anthony Aveni. Hawkins, an astronomer commissioned by National Geographic, pointed out that the lines of Nazca show no statistically significant results when compared with key astronomical events, specifically, solstices, equinoxes and lunar standstills. In addition, there were found to be no statistically significant alignments to astronomical bodies, such as the 45 brightest stars, including the brightest star of the Pleiades, which is known to be of importance in Andean cosmology. The result of Hawkins’ survey was definitive: “The lines as a whole cannot be explained as astronomical nor are they calendric.”3

Hawkins’ research had some additional fortunate implications derived from the numerous finds of classic Nazca pottery only in the archeological protected zone of the pampa, the area containing the vast majority of the biomorphic geoglyphs. Hawkins and Reiche had found early Nazca pottery in the protected zone, which suggests that the animal images, as well as some of the larger rectangular and trapezoidal shapes, may be from an early period of Nazca culture, specifically around 100-200 C.E. The interesting point is that when the finds of Hawkins and others within the protected zone are compared with the rest of the surrounding pampa, a radically different picture emerges.

Two famous Nazca Geoglyphs: (Top) The Monkey located at 14 42’24.93 S 75 8’18.40 W. (Bottom) The Owl-Man, also known as the Astronaut, Spaceman, or Priest is located on a hill at 14 44’42.71 S 75 4’47.24 W.

The impressive fieldwork of Persis Clarkson outside the protected zone has demonstrated that the majority of the “lineal figures” have pottery in and around them that is much later—900-1,000 C.E.— than that found in the protected zone.4 This finding is further evidence against the astronomical calendar theories of Kosok and Reiche because the lines likely did not exist until centuries after the biomorphic geoglyphs. Aveni offers this intriguing fact: “One surprising result is that the lines and figures may have represented at least two separate and unrelated efforts portrayed on a single canvas.”5 Reiche believed that the fact that many of the lines ran straight through the biomorphs suggested that the lines were connecting that biomorph to a constellation.6 However, if the lines were not there originally, that is clearly impossible. This insight—that the majority of lines and ray centers date to late Nazca and post-Nazca—will play an important role in my own argument.