It never rains on the peruvian coast, and that is why the fantastic line sand drawings on the Nasca plain have survived for so many centuries, giving rise to the strangest of the theories as to why they were made in the first place.

When Peru was Spanish colony the Nasca lines where unknown, ignored by the zealots attempting to eliminate the indigenous population's pagan beliefs.

They were only discovered with the advent of aviation, which confirms that they were intended to be viewed from the air.

The archaeologist Toribio Xesspe was the first to write about the lines in a scientific journal. At first it was thought that they made up a gigantic astronomical calendar, a theory supported by Kodok and Maria Raiche, who tried to solve the problem mathematically. Reiche has given a simple explanation of how the lines were made, using cord and stakes and removing the stones from the plain, which can be seen, piled alongside.

In 1968 the Smithsonian Institution sent mathematician Gerald Hawkins, together with other scientists, to make a survey and collect astronomical data. For several seasons the team made several measurements, but they concluded that the lines were not used as a calendar. Hawkins thought they had a religious significance.

This hypothesis led to a search for the reason why the ancient inhabitants of Nasca invested so much effort in producing lines and images on the great plain.

The answer is giving by three chroniclers: Lopez de Gomara, Zarate and Gutierrez de Santa Clara. They tell how, in the remote past there was a god named Kon, who had no bones but could fly from the topmost peaks to the deepest valleys.

The coast at that time was green and fertile, but the behavior of the inhabitants so displeased Kon that he turned the region into a desert as a punishment, leaving only a few rivers so that the people had to work very hard to survive. Kon, the god responsible for the absence of rain on the coast, became associated with the supply of water from the mountains, which fed the coastal rivers and enabled the people to grow food.

As Kon was a flying god, the faithful wanted to assure him that they were worshipping him in the appropriate manner, with sacrifices and festivals, so they drew the lines and images on the great Nasca plain. There the people and their priests would perform their rites and break jars, which accounts for the pottery shards found on the lines.

As far as the animal images are concerned, these perhaps represent the different tribes and groups of artisans of the region. The soothsayers, for example, were represented by the image of the spider, a creature that they used to predict the future, the enormous spindle with its yarn zigzagging as far as Aja creek represented the spinners or weavers. The large number of images is perhaps because different tribes migrated to Nasca, whilst others disappeared leaving only their images behind. Equally, some figures may only have been used for a short time so that others had continually to be designed.

The ceremonies held here may have coincided with the appearance of water in the rivers - water brought by Kon. The god may have been a constellation visible at the beginning of the rainy season in the mountains. The chronicler Calancha wrote that the coastal people did not worship the sun or the moon, but the constellation Pleiades, known in the north of Peru as Fur.

It is suggested that the god Kon was a divinity of the Paracas and Nasca people. In the textiles and ceramics of these cultures we find representations of a winged character in flight, with a large ring through his nose and carrying in his hands or claws food plants or trophy skulls.

The priests who directed the construction of the Nasca lines must first have climbed to the top of one of the hills and made the drawings on a piece of clothes before they were transferred to the ground. It is interesting to note that at other places on the coast -perhaps following the travels of Kon- images and lines can also be found. They are not as impressive as those at Nasca, but are linked to the cult of the divinity Kon, in the valley of Chillon River at the north side of Lima for example.