37 Miles of Alien Runway

Near the Nazca valleys of the Peruvian desert lie an ancient phenomena that have captured the imaginations of people for years: enormous line drawings in the rock. Nearly every "Strange but True" list or book on "Mysteries of the World" includes references to the giant geoglyphs (geometric patterns) and bioglyphs (plants and animals) etched in the surface of the earth. The Nazca (or Nasca) people flourished during the period 200BCE-600CE and are recognized in the archaeological and historical communities for many things, including their pottery and intricate fabrics, but the "Nazca Lines" are their legacy that generates the most controversy.

Many explanations for these lines exist, from the common but highly implausible theory of alien runways to the reasonable but statistically improbable explanation of astronomic markers. Researchers, anthropologists, and historians all over the world have spent time creating sites explaining their own interpretations of the lines and disproving the interpretations of others. Here are just a few:

The Hall of Maat regularly examines "alternative history" to test its possible accuracy. In her piece on the Nazca, Katherine Reece debunks Jim Woodman's theory that the lines indicate hot-air balloon technology among the Nazca. Woodman suggests that paintings, legends, and cloth, as well as aerial views, point to the development of such technology but provides little detail or support for his arguements. Reece finds much of his evidence to be faulty, misconstrued, non-existent, or irrelevant, and points out that an archaeologist on foot discovered the pictures. They can be viewed on the surrounding hills without ever leaving the ground.

The Minnesota State University webpage on the the Nazca disagrees with Reece and asserts that the pictures are only visible from air. This site stands by a religious and ecologic interpretation of the lines: they relate to water. Many of the geoglyphs, particularly the straight lines, transport water today, while the biomorphs include animals associated with faithfulness, hope, fishing, and rain. Here the interpretation concludes that the lines served the pragmatic function of irrigation while affirming faith in the gods and praying for more water.

Don Proulx further explores water as motivation in The Nasca Lines Project, a research project undertaken with David Johnson. Johnson studied the area and hypothesized that the geometric lines correlated with underground water sources, and found many instances where this was true. In the end, although there exists evidence of a possible relation between water and the geoglyphs, the data was not statistically significant.

The UnMuseum, a collection of information on "fringe" history, examines in its article "The Lines of Nazca" several possibilities, including alien landing strips, astronomic calendars, and underground water maps, but concludes that all are unsatisfactory. They contend that a reasonable explanation is religious shrines, burial ritual sites, or worship sites based on the size and correlation of significant architectural works with religion in other cultures.

The Skepdic reaches a similar conclusion to that of the Unmuseum: religious grounds are the most plausible explanation for these enormous pictures. The Skepdic primarily attempts to demonstrate the ways many explanations fail to adequately solve the mystery, and proposes that scientists be the ones to set forth theories, not "alienated psuedoscientific spectators".

Overall, it appears that many people believe in supernatural explanations because they don't believe the "primative" Nazca capable of designs of such epic proportions. While archaeology provides evidence of how the Nazca may have built them, there still remains no good answer as to why these images are so big. At this point, the most agree-upon explanation has something to do with water and religion, connected in some way.