Jessie Stone's List: Nazca Lines research

• • uncalibrated radiocarbon date of AD 525 +/- 80 and 490 +/- 80

• Joe Nickell of the University of Kentucky, have reproduced the figures using the technology available to the Nazca Indians of the time without aerial supervision.
• Many scholars believe that their motivation was religious, making images that only gods in the sky could see clearly. In 1985 the archaeologist Johan Reinhard published archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data demonstrating that worship of mountains and other water sources played a dominant role in Nazca religion and economy from ancient to recent times. He presented the theory that the lines and figures can be explained as part of religious practices involving the worship of deities associated with the availability of water and thus the fertility of crops. The lines were interpreted as being primarily used as sacred paths leading to places from which these deities could be worshiped and the figures as symbolically representing animals and objects meant to invoke their aid. However, the precise meanings of many of the individual geoglyphs remain unsolved.

  • Johan Reinhard- my guy for religious/ceremonial purpose
• David Johnson. Johnson has spent long hours researching the Nazca Lines and their apparent connection with underground waterways
• dowsing

  • dowsing?! not a valid means of obtaining scientific information...
• eclipsologist Robin Edgar has theorized that the Nazca Lines, particularly the biomorph geoglyphs that depict animals, human figures, birds and "flowers" are almost certainly an ancient response to the so-called "Eye of God" that is manifested in the sky during a total solar eclipse. An unusual series of total solar eclipses over southern Peru coincided with the time period during which the Nazca Lines and geoglyphs were created. The totally eclipsed sun distinctly resembles the pupil and iris of a gigantic eye looking down from the sky thus providing an explanation as to why the Nazca Indians created gigantic geoglyph artworks that are best viewed by an "Eye in the Sky".
• Jim Woodmann) have proposed that the Nazcan lines presuppose some form of manned flight

  • assumes too much- (along with ufo explanation)
    think Occam's Razor!
• Another theory contends that the lines are the remains of "walking temples," where a large group of worshipers walked along a preset pattern dedicated to a particular holy entity, similar to the practice of labyrinth walking. Residents of the local villages say the ancient Indians conducted rituals on these giant drawings to thank the gods and to ensure that water would continue to flow from the Andes. This take on the Nazca lines' purpose and importance is far more likely, as it correlates with the purposes of other North American geoglyphs. It also ties in with the extensive network of underground canals and waterways found dating from the same period.

  • "walking temples" - find out more
    ceremonial purpose

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• s much as the lines awe me, I marvel equally at the imagination of the people who have sought explanations for them.
• Water, walking, astronomy, kinship, division of labor and ceremonial responsibility, cleansing and sweeping, radiality: there is a place for all of these human actions and concepts in a complex, but nonetheless believable story of the Nasca lines. Above all, I think the lines were made to walk upon; they were pathways. I have no doubt that some sort of ritual on the ray centers and trapezoids, wherein people assembled for reasons connected to the ritual acquisition of water, was involved.

• to understand the Nasca lines we need to escape from the straitjacket of our own universe of discourse. The maze of lines and figures etched across the desert floor in a seemingly confusing manner is neither whimsical nor chaotic. The pampa isn't just a conglomeration of dysfunctional doodles on a gigantic scratchpad. There is order--a pattern and a system behind the geoglyphs--and it tells us about the people who lived there.

    

  Anthony F. Aveni is the R

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• You do not have to be in an airplane to appreciate the lines; most can be viewed from ground level, even better from nearby foothills
• "...the ceque system was a highly ordered hierarchical cosmographical map, a mnemonic scheme that incorporated virtually all important matters connected with the Inca world view."

• In an article in the October 1955 issue of Fate, James W. Moseley suggested that since the markings were largely invisible from the ground, the Nazca people must have "constructed their huge markings as signals to interplanetary visitors or to some advanced earth race... that occasionally visited them."
• Still, nothing in the nature of these lines points to such a purpose. In fact, a critic of von Daniken stated, "It hardly seems reasonable that advanced extraterrestrial spacecraft would require landing strips," adding that Nazca’s "soft, sandy soil" was hardly suitable for an airport.

• G. von Breunig thinks the lines were used for running footraces
• Paul Kosok
• Maria  Reiche
• gigantic calendar
• collecting  data to show that the lines represent the Nazca's astronomical knowledge
• However, there are  so many lines going in so many different directions that not finding many with  interesting astronomical alignments would have been miraculous.

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• • A geoglyph is a drawing on the ground, a large motif, or a design produced on the ground, either by arranging clasts (stones, stone fragments, gravel or earth) to create a positive geoglyph, or by removing patinated clasts to expose unpatinated ground (negative geoglyph)
    Nazca lines are examples of negative geoglyphs
• The Nazca Lines are a series of geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert
• Since it is presumed the Nazca people could never have seen their work from this vantage point, there has been much speculation on the builders' abilities and motivations.
• There are several hundred simple lines and geometric patterns on the Nazca plateau, as well as over seventy curvilinear animal, insect, and human figures.
• • example of experimental archaeology
• The archaeological explanation as to who made them and how is widely accepted; namely that the Nazca people made the lines using simple tools and surveying equipment
• Wooden stakes in the ground at the end of some lines (which were used to carbon-date the figures) and ceramics found on the surface support this theory. Furthermore, researchers such as Joe Nickell of the University of Kentucky, have reproduced the figures using the technology available to the Nazca Indians of the time without aerial supervision
• Reasons
• Many scholars believe that their motivation was religious, making images that only gods in the sky could see clearly. Kosok and Reiche advanced one of the earliest reasons given for the Nazca Lines: that they were intended to point to the places on the distant horizon where the Sun and other celestial bodies rose or set. This hypothesis was evaluated by two different experts in archaeoastronomy, Gerald Hawkins and Anthony Aveni, and they both concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support an astronomical explanation.

  • look for more information about the research of Kosok and Reiche as well as Hawkins and Aveni
• He presented the theory that the lines and figures can be explained as part of religious practices involving the worship of deities associated with the availability of water and thus the fertility of crops. The lines were interpreted as being primarily used as sacred paths leading to places where these deities could be worshiped and the figures as symbolically representing animals and objects meant to invoke their aid. However, the precise meanings of many of the individual geoglyphs remain unsolved.
• Johan Reinhard
• David Johnson. Johnson has researched the Nazca Lines and their apparent connection with underground waterways

  • alternative hypothesis
• That being said, this information should be taken with a lot of care since Johnson used the very unscientific method of dowsing to locate the purported watering holes. ^[1]
• eclipsologist Robin Edgar
• An unusual series of total solar eclipses over southern Peru coincided with the time period during which the Nazca Lines and geoglyphs were created. The totally eclipsed sun distinctly resembles the pupil and iris of a gigantic eye looking down from the sky thus providing an explanation as to why the Nazca Indians created gigantic geoglyph artworks that are best viewed by an "Eye in the Sky".
• Some (for example Jim Woodmann)
• Another theory contends that the lines are the remains of "walking temples," where a large group of worshipers walked along a preset pattern dedicated to a particular holy entity, similar to the practice of labyrinth walking. Residents of the local villages say the ancient Indians conducted rituals on these giant drawings to thank the gods and to ensure that water would continue to flow from the Andes. This view correlates with the purposes of other North American geoglyphs.

  • using present day data to confirm
• (Seismic Electric Signals).
• Perhaps the most controversial theory was put forward by Erich von Däniken in his book Chariots of the Gods, who proposed that the lines were in fact landing strips for alien spacecraft. His argument is similar to Woodmann's, claiming that the designs are so large and complex that they could only have been constructed using flying machines.

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