ETCHED IN TIME
Who created the Nazca Lines and why? Their ancient mystery is written in the earth.
>>> NAZCA, Peru — You look at the massive collection of lengthy grooves and geoglyphs in the bone-dry desert of southern Peru, and you know immediately they are one of the great unsolved mysteries of this Earth. ¶ Why are they here? What message are these 300 geometric figures and 70 plant and animal images supposed to convey? What prompted the Nazca people to create them by removing stones from the darkened desert f loor to reveal lighter-colored soil beneath? ¶ For many people, they’re a puzzle. For me, they represented an adventure that had long beckoned. Together with my sons, Theo, 12, and Benji, 10, and my husband, Jonathan, we headed south in June to explore the Nazca Lines, a riddle whose origins date back more than 2,000 years. ¶ Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe brought the lines to the world’s attention in 1927 when he spotted them during a hike in the nearby hills. ¶ But it was not until 1939, when a team of researchers f lew over the desert, that anyone recognized that some of the lines formed
the shapes of animals.
There are a condor, a hummingbird, a monkey, a dog, a spider and a lizard, among others. Mathematicians, archaeologists, scientists, hippies, con men, dreamers and tourists have been drawn here, creating a cottage industry of Nazca Line theorists.
Maria Reiche, a German mathematician who spent her life fighting to preserve the lines, thought they were an astronomical calendar.
Some archaeologists think they were created by a cult that begged the gods to bring water to this arid region, which receives only about an hour of rain a year.
There are anthropologists who believe they were used as huge running tracks for part of a ritual. And Swiss author Erich von Däniken believes that the lines were messages to aliens and that the desert was a giant extraterrestrial airport.
A tower on the Pan-American Highway north of Nazca offers a sketchy view of the lizard, tree and frog, but the only way to see the figures clearly is from the air.
There have been f lights over the lines since 1978; as the lines became more popular, the number of flyovers proliferated. In 2008, a crash occurred and five French tourists were killed. In 2010, two planes crashed in 12 months, killing 13 people.
Now there are eight airlines and two pilots per plane. Engines in the planes must be replaced every 1,000 hours. Every flight does the same prescribed 30-minute route for the same price ($80). The planes depart from Maria Reiche Neuman Airport outside Nazca at least six minutes apart at staggered altitudes.
There have been no accidents in the last five years. I thought the flight was safe enough to take my family.
We flew into Lima, Peru, and set off from there. Nazca is an eighthour bus ride from Lima — and there is no way around it. Many upscale Lima hotels offer marathon one-day trips that start at 3 a.m. and return late the same day. You can also hire a taxi to take you to Nazca for about $500 round trip.
We decided to make our Nazca adventure part of a larger trip, adding archaeological sites and a visit to a desert oasis. We bought the best seats on the luxury bus and settled in for the ride.