Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries (22 page)

In August 2004, two French amateur Egyptologists, Gilles Dormion and
Jean-Yves Verd'hurt, claimed to have
found a previously unknown chamber
underneath the Queen's Chamber in
the Great Pyramid. The pair had been
using ground-penetrating radar and
architectural analysis and believe that
this chamber may well be the final
resting place of King Khufu. However,
requests to excavate the feature were
rejected outright by Zahi Hawass, representing the Egyptian Supreme
Council of Antiquities.

It seems that only now, with the aid
of 21st century technology, are we beginning to really probe the secrets of
the Great Pyramid. However, whether
modern investigations will reveal the
body of Khufu, a Hall of Records, or a
cache of ancient treasure is anyone's
guess. When the Egyptians constructed this vast, complicated edifice
at least 4,500 years ago, it was their
likely intention to build an enigma in
stone, an inscrutable symbol of the
mysteries of life and death. In this,
they succeeded admirably.

Blank Page

Photograph by Bjarte Sorensen. (GNU Free Documentation License).

Aerial photo of the hummingbird drawing at Nazca.

Etched onto the surface of the
desert in a remote part of southern
Peru, the Nazca Lines are the world's
most remarkable inscriptions. Covering an area 37 miles long and one mile
wide, the patterns are only clearly
visible from the air. The lines consist
of 300 figures made of straight lines,
geometric shapes, and pictures of animals and birds. These lines are known
as geoglyphs-figures or shapes produced on the ground by clearing or
arranging stones. For years, scientists
and archaeologists have debated why
these lines were constructed, and various theories (from the plausible to the
extremely implausible) have been put
forward. Suggestions have included
that the lines functioned as an astronomical observatory, as ritual path

ways, a calendar, a landing strip for
alien spaceships, or that they were
used to map underground water supplies. The investment in time and effort required to draw the shapes in the
desert floor so precisely surely indicates that the lines had a vital role in
the lives of the Nazca culture. But why
are they there and what purpose did
they serve?

The Nazca Lines were rediscovered
when commercial airlines began
flights over the Peruvian desert in the
1920s. Although Julio Tello, the
founder of Peruvian archaeology, had
recorded the designs in 1926, it was
not until American historian Dr. Paul
Kosok and his wife first visited Nazca
in 1941 that serious research began on
the enigmatic inscriptions.

The Nazca Desert is a high arid plateau located 250 miles southeast of
the Peruvian capital Lima, between the
Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains.
The desolate plain containing the art is
called the Pampa Colorada (Red Plain)
and covers an area of about 280 square
miles stretching between the towns of
Nazca and Palpa. Running across this
plain is an array of perfectly straight
lines of varying widths and lengths, the
longest more than 8 miles in length, the
shortest just a little more than 1,640 feet.
There are also enormous geometric
forms including triangles, spirals,
circles, and trapezoids, as well as 70
extraordinary animal and plant figures
including a hummingbird, a monkey,
a spider, lizard, and a pelican of more
than 900 feet in length. Anthropomorphic figures are rare at Nazca, though
there are a few examples etched onto
the slopes of steep hillsides at the edge
of the desert, the most well known of
which is called the Astronaut, a 105
foot long glyph discovered by Eduardo
Herran, chief pilot at Aerocondor, in
1982.

Since the discovery of the lines,
many theories have been put forward
regarding their construction. Because
many of the glyphs are so large and
complex and can only be appreciated
from the air, it has been proposed by
some that manned flight was required
to aid in the the planning of the lines.
Perhaps the best known proponent of
this view is Jim Woodman, a writer
and publisher from Miami. In 1974,
Woodman, along with English balloonist Julian Nott, tested the theory
that the lines had been created with
help from the air, by building and flying a balloon made of materials available to the Nazca culture, including

reeds for the gondola and cotton for
the envelope. The two men managed a
short, 300-foot-high flight, and thus
proved that it was theoretically within
the abilities of the Nazcans to have
flown, though there is no evidence
whatsoever of such flights.

How the lines were made is actually no great mystery. The iron oxidecoated stones that cover the surface
of the desert were simply removed to
reveal the underlying lighter colored
soil. In this way, the lines were drawn
as a groove of a lighter color contrasting with the darker red of the surrounding desert. Sometimes the lines were
outlined with stones to provide emphasis to the shape. The Nazca desert is
one of the driest places on earth and
this, in combination with the flat, stony
ground, means that there is very little
erosion, so whatever has been drawn
onto this giant natural sketchpad has
usually remained there. There are fairly
simple methods for the creation of
straight lines over long distances. One
method is to align two ranging poles or
wooden stakes in a straight line by eye,
which are then used as a guide for the
placement of a third stake along the
line. It is easy enough if one person
sights along the line of the first two
stakes and directs another person in the
placement of the next stake. This can
then be repeated until the desired
length is achieved.

The more intricate symbols were
probably begun by creating scale drawings and then dividing these drawings
up into parts by using grids. These
grids could then be recreated on
the desert floor and worked on one
square at a time. Perhaps even simpler methods could have been used. In
1982, writer Joe Nickel (along with two family members) produced an exact replica of the 440 foot condor figure, in a
field near their home. Using primitive
technology available to the Nazcan culture, they created the glyph in nine
hours, sighting the lines by eye without any aerial help. In his 1987 book
Lines to the Mountain God: Nazca and
the Mysteries of Peru, Evan Hadingham
describes an attempt made with Dr.
Anthony Aveni, professor of Astronomy
and Anthropology at Colgate University, to recreate a desert drawing. The
small team, sighting by eye and using
such basic equipment as ranging poles
and string, produced an impressive
spiral glyph in just over an hour. Aveni
and his group concluded from their experiments that the creation of one of
the most spectacular Nazca Lines, the
2,624 by 328 foot Great Rectangle,
could have been accomplished in two
months by a team of 100 people. Even
so, this is not to say that the construction of the lines did not involve a great
deal of planning, ingenuity, and imagination by their creators.

The Nazca Lines are believed to be
the creation of the Nazca culture, who
lived in the region from around 300 B.C.
to A.D. 800. The connection between this
culture and the lines is based on Nazcan
pottery found in association with the
lines, the remarkable similarity between the stylized figures on the desert
floor and those from Nazca art, and a
radiocarbon date of A.D. 525 from one of
the wooden stakes that were used to
mark the termination point of some of
the longer lines. Lying just south of the
Nazca Lines is Cahuachi, a major ceremonial city of the Nazcans, which extends across 370 acres. The city was
built about 2,000 years ago and abandoned 500 years later, probably after

a series of natural catastrophes. The
permanent population of the city was
fairly small, but as it served as a center
for pilgrims, the amount of people
would have increased significantly during major ceremonial events, which
were probably connected with the Nazca
Lines. But could this ritual function
have been the only reason for the creation of the magnificent desert glyphs?

Perhaps the best known researcher
associated with the Nazca Lines is the
late Maria Reiche, a German mathematician and archaeologist who began her
work at Nazca in 1946. Reiche devoted
her life to the study and preservation
of the lines, living in the desert at Nazca
for 50 years. Her theory about the Nazca
glyphs, developed from ideas put forward by Paul Kosok (for whom Maria
had worked as an assistant) was that
they served as an astronomical calendar, and the Nazca plain itself was a
huge observatory. In 1968, this theory
was tested by American astronomer
Gerald Hawkins, well-known for his
work on the possible astronomical significance of Stonehenge. Hawkins fed
the positions of a sample of the lines
into a computer to find out if they
matched solar, lunar, or stellar alignments. His results showed that only a
minority of the Nazca lines had any
astronomical significance, about the
same amount as would have occurred
by chance, making it unlikely that the
lines served any significant astronomical purpose. Soon after the beginning
of the flying saucer craze in the late
1940s, the Nazca lines began to attract
people's attention as an indication of
some sort of connection between Earth
and hypothetical alien visitors. In the
October 1955 issue of Fate, an article
by James W. Moseley proposed that, as the markings were only visible from
the air, Nazcans must have created
their massive glyphs in order to signal
alien visitors. This idea was continued
by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier
in their book The Morning of the Magicians published in the early 1960s. (The
original was published in French in
1960.) But the best known proponent
of the ancient astronaut theory is Swiss
author Erich von Daniken. In his 1968
best-seller Chariots of the Gods,
Daniken suggested that the Nazca
Lines had been constructed by ancient
astronauts as a landing strip for alien
space vehicles. Apart from why supposedly advanced alien space vehicles
would require miles of landing strips,
another objection put forward to this
theory by Maria Reiche, was that with
desert's soft clay soil any heavy vehicle,
such as a spaceship, would simply sink
into the desert on landing. Such speculations that aliens were responsible for
the creation of the Nazca Lines are usually indicative of the belief that a supposedly primitive native Nazcan
culture had neither the intelligence nor
the technology to plan and carry out
such sophisticated tasks themselves.

That the lines were constructed by
the Nazcans for a ritual purpose is now
considered the best explanation. As the
Nazca Desert only receives about half
an inch of rainfall per year, some researchers have proposed that the lines
are pathways connecting shrines which
would have been walked-perhaps by
priests-in a ceremony that included
praying or dancing for rain. Anthony
Aveni believes the lines were created
as sacred pathways, maintained by
local kin groups, and connected with
the ritual acquisition of water. Aveni's
research has shown that many of the