Now, Isla and Castillo have much more data to work with, thanks to National Geographic Explorer and “space archaeologist” Sarah Parcak.Īfter winning the TED Prize in 2016, Parcak founded the GlobalXplorer initiative, which trains citizen scientists to analyze satellite imagery for archaeological sites and signs of looting. Even fewer have been mapped from the air.Ĭastillo, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and the country's former vice-minister of cultural heritage, has long championed using drones and other aerial mapping techniques to catalog archaeological sites. Of the estimated 100,000 archaeological sites in Peru, Isla's colleague Castillo says only about 5,000 have been properly documented on the ground. Isla's work is extraordinarily difficult, and made even harder by spotty maps. to help hire Isla and his restoration team. In the resulting furor, Peru received a grant from the U.S. In December 2014, the environmentalist group Greenpeace staged a protest mere feet from the famous Nasca “hummingbird,” damaging the area. Ironically, the discovery of the new geoglyphs was only made possible because of threats to previously known Nasca lines. “This means that it is a tradition of over a thousand years that precedes the famous geoglyphs of the Nasca culture, which opens the door to new hypotheses about its function and meaning,” says Peruvian Ministry of Culture archaeologist Johny Isla, the Nasca lines' chief restorer and protector. Centuries before the famous Nasca lines were made, people in the region were experimenting with making massive geoglyphs. The new geoglyphs add crucial data on the Paracas culture, as well as the mysterious Topará culture, which marked the transition between the Paracas and the Nasca. “These ones could be spotted from a certain distance, so people had seen them, but over time, they were completely erased.” A View From the Sky and Space “Most of these figures are warriors,” says Peruvian archaeologist Luis Jaime Castillo Butters, the new glyphs' co-discoverer. The two cultures also pursued different artistic subjects: Nasca lines most often consist of lines or polygons, but many of the newfound Paracas figures depict humans. Unlike the iconic Nasca lines-most of which are only visible from overhead-the older Paracas glyphs were laid down on hillsides, making them visible to villages below. However, archaeologists suspect that the earlier Paracas and Topará cultures carved many of the newfound images between 500 B.C. Some of the newfound lines belong to the Nasca culture, which held sway in the area from 200 to 700 A.D. In addition, archaeologists surveyed locally known geoglyphs with drones for the first time-mapping them in never-before-seen detail. Now, Peruvian archaeologists armed with drones have discovered more than 50 new examples of these mysterious desert monuments in adjacent Palpa province, traced onto the earth's surface in lines almost too fine to see with the human eye. More than a thousand of these geoglyphs (literally, 'ground drawings') sprawl across the sandy soil of Nasca province, the remains of little-understood ritual practices that may have been connected to life-giving rain. Etched into the high desert of southern Peru more than a millennium ago, the enigmatic Nasca lines continue to capture our imagination.
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