Importance of the Nazca Lines

It is one of the world heritage sites, declared by UNESCO, for being one of those many places on the planet that are of substantial cultural and natural relevance and therefore must be preserved and protected.

Cultural and natural heritage of Peru

The geoglyphs, or figures that compose them, and that have highlighted the Jumana pampas, located in the Nazca desert (Peru), and only 400 km. from the capital Lima, are an expression of one of the most relevant ancestral cultures of this region that existed between the 1st and 7th centuries.

Sacred route? Ritual center? Sophisticated system of aqueducts?

They represent enormous and very precise figures of animals, human beings, elements of the nature, and figures, on the ground, that would have served the aforementioned civilization as a solar and lunar calendar, used by the astronomers of those times and lares, and that allowed them to predict with great certainty the season of precipitations and thus plan the crops.

On the other hand, it has also been pointed out that they used to be sacred routes, or that they are the result of the intense ritual activity of this culture and other neighboring ones.

Those who support this hypothesis consider that it is a route that this civilization used to make a pilgrimage to a temple.

Studies on the raison d'être of these impressive figures made on the ground have never ceased since they were discovered and allowed them to continue wielding hypothesis about its use, as one of the most recent that was carried out from the analysis of the images obtained via satellite and who says that the lines represent underground water channels that were part of a highly advanced system of aqueducts.

This civilization would have used the underground water to irrigate the land and thus favor their agricultural activity.

Today, an inescapable tourist attraction

The truth is that they are currently one of the must-see tourist attractions if you set foot on Peruvian soil.

So much so that there are special tours that offer to fly over the area in which they are located because it is the best and only way to appreciate these incredible drawings.

disappearance threats

Despite being a heritage culture, in recent years, have suffered notable damage that threatens their conservation and puts them at some risk of disappearance.

Human intervention, once again, is responsible for this situation in its eagerness to build new roads, such as the highway of the Panamericana, looting, informal mining, and the constant circulation of all-terrain vehicles without proper caution.

Nor can we ignore environmental factors such as erosion and weather, which also affect its deterioration.

Fotolia images: Galyna Andrushko, Aliaksei, Adwo, David