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The word Nasca is associated all over the World with the huge geometrical figures that hundreds of years ago were scratched on the extensive plains of the Peruvian coastal desert. The Nasca lines and figures hold many secrets and mysteries, still without explanation. However, there is some relative information that in a certain way allows us to approach the unanswered questions.
THE LINES
For many years, local inhabitants and diverse travelers that passed through the San Jose Plains in Nasca, were aware of the existence of some mysterious lines that were called "Inca trails", assuming that they were the remains of the old and forgotten Inca walkways. They had not reached fame until 1941, when they were "discovered" by the American professor Paul Kosok. In the afternoon of June 21st, the winter solstice in southern hemisphere, Kosok, while measuring one of the "Inca trails", noticed that the sun was shining exactly upon one of the lines he was observing. He deduced that it must have been a solstitial line, drawn in order to indicate this important date in the agricultural calendar.
Later on, carbon dating was done and it revealed that the lines were constructed between the years 300 BC and 800 AD. Thus, the lines were not made by Incas, but by the local pre-Inca culture, which is known as Nasca.
Maria Reiche, upon the request of Kosok started the thorough study of these figures and lines: discovering, measuring, photographing, drawing and preserving them. This is, for many scholars, her main contribution.
THE MEANING OF THE LINES
There are many theories that try to explain the meaning of these lines. Even though some sound more logical than others, none has thoroughly been proved. The most extravagant theory affirms that it was a huge extraterrestrial landing site. This idea is based on the facts that the lines and great trapeziums look like landing strips, that can only been seen from the air, and that the figure called "the owl head man", would be in fact the portrait of an alien.
Paul Kosok and Maria Reiche raised the hypothesis that the figures and lines were related to constellations, solstices and equinoxes, and that their purpose was to serve as a giant astronomical calendar. This theory has been the most common, and even accepted as a based hypothesis, for a long time.
Its purpose, according to Maria Reiche, was to last through generations in order to permit the observation and preserve the knowledge of permanent space alterations. Reiche adds that the great majority of the straight lines "were constructed in association with the astronomical phenomena (.) registering the appearance of the stars".
Permanent stars appear and disappear on exact dates of the year due to the Earth's orbit, therefore these dates must have had a profound religious meaning; rituals and propitiatory sacrifices must have taken place. In regard to the Moon, Reiche points out that due to the great influence that this has on men behavior, the "Nascas constructed giant systems that look like grates and spirals, in order to be able to predict the Moon cycles", which could announce the arrival of sowing and harvest periods.
The astronomical observation was common and necessary for all the ancient cultures. Thanks to them, the agricultural periods, on which ancient people depended, could be predicted. Thus, according to Kosok and Reiche, the Nascas considered the constellations as the creators of natural phenomena. The creators (gods) that could be influenced by the means of cult, worship and even sacrifice. This way, the Nasca lines and figures were an astronomical calendar and, at the same time, a worship temple.
The critics of Reiche and Kosok have refuted their theories pointing out that, in the case of the lines, these do not have any mathematical relation between each other, and that they cannot be generalized to the study of space and constellations due to the variation of their measurements. Nor, they claim, is it possible to scientifically demonstrate that the whole complex of the lines is related to planets and stars or constellations, taking into account the movement of the universe components.
With respect to the figures, like the monkey, flamingo, dog, hummingbird, etc, the critics of this theory assign a great sense of imagination to Kosok and Reiche for having associated them with the constellations, as they do not keep any scientifically proven relation. For the researcher Alberto Rossel, the figures represent choreographies either of sacred dances or of an ancestor cult rituals, while Marlene Dobkin links the Nasca Lines and figures with the use of hallucinogenic plants by shamans, in order to later symbolically represent deities or mythological beings.
Johan Reinhard, an American researcher suggests that the purpose of the Nazca Lines and figures was to invoke the water (rain in the high Andean part of Nasca) by means of fertility rituals, in the permanent fight of the Nasca to survive in the desert.
In what all the Nasca lines researches agree on is that the zigzag and spiral figures were intimately related to the cult of the water. The zigzag could represent lightening or rivers, while the spirals are similar to the seashells that were found in abundance on these plains.
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