Nazca is famous for the Nazca lines. These are set of 12 geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert. They believed to have been created between 500 BC and 500 AD by the Nazca people. Without any tools, (that could be found) they were made by depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor and by removing pebbles and leaving different-colored dirt exposed. The top layer is a brownish/red iron oxide, but underneath it is a yellowish/gray subsoil. There has been no maintenance made to them since and the are still very clearly visible. And some of them are massive, with the largest one being 370m long.
We opted to the recommended way of viewing the lines, from the air. So we booked ourselves a morning flight and we got spend 35 mins flying between 500-750 meters above the ground viewing all the lines. For those plane buffs, we were is a Cessna 207, that fitted 6 passengers plus the pilot and co-pilot. It was quite old school as each of us had to be weighed in, so that they could place us correctly on the plane. Once we were up, the view was spectacular. We got to see all the 12 main geoglyphs, and the scale of some of them is amazing.
It is unknown what the purpose of these geoglyphs are, but one of the theories is that it was a way for the locals to communicate to their Gods. Hence why they were so large. An alternative theory is that they were made by aliens (just like the pyramids in Egypt). Unfortunately with not written records found, nor any tools, this will remain a mystery. While its very interesting to see the from the air, those who created them would not have had that luxury and its a wonder how they knew what they were drawing on such epic scales.
People lived in this area for a long period, long before the Inca’s arrived even. The pre-Inca’s were known as the Nazca people. It seems to be quite the centre as in the 1950’s the temples were discovered, buried underneath sand dunes. Only 4 temples have been uncovered, and from ground penetrating radar work, there are still another 30 temples to be unearthed. These are called Cahuachi, or also known as the Nazca Pyramids (very loosely resembling pyramid shapes on hilltops). People from all around travelled here to give offering, these included simple objects like pottery or textiles, to animal sacrifices and even human sacrifices. Again due to the lack to tools found and written records, very little is known of why and how the temples were build. The scale of which is also very impressive. Cahuachi is thought to be the biggest and possibly oldest religious ceremonial location in South America.
Close to the temples we stopped by an ancient cemetery (basically holes in the ground), but unfortunately it was desacrated by grave robbers in the 1940 and 1950’s (it was the grave robbers that found the buried temples). They chucked out the mummified remains to get to the pottery, textiles and jewellery underneath. So all the old bones, wraps and mummified muscles/skin have been scattered across the surface. It became a bit of a biology lesson to identify the various bones. It was very sad when we came across a large number of baby skeletons. Hitting home that the child mortality rates back in those days was very high. Robyn had an amazing time and was even teaching our guide about the human skeletal anatomy!
The last thing that we got to experience in Nazca was a pottery barn, where they recreate the pottery from the Nazca era (using the same methods). The main difference from European and Asian pottery is the that they only fire the pottery once rather than twice. So while the pottery is made, and has dried out a bit, they use a semi-precious stone, and some sweat, to smoothen the surface of the pottery before they painting it with natural minerals. The oven is has the pottery on the bottom of the kiln and the fire on top. The resulting pottery is has a very smooth surface with very bright colours.
In the pottery shop, we got to see a lot of examples of pottery made in the ancient style. There were lots of decorative items, including some very X-rated pieces that were definitely not anatomically correct! Beautifully made plates, but our favourite were the musical instruments. This included wind instruments, and drums all made out of clay. Definitely works of art.
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