Original subtitles

Tonight, they've been called the world's greatest archaeological enigma.

Everyone focuses on the Nazca Lines because of just how mysterious they are.

2 ,000 -year -old drawings so massive, they can only be seen from the air. But

what are they and why were they created?

We know they didn't just appear out of thin air, but there is virtually no

historical record of previous societies in Peru.

Now. We examine the top theories behind their mysterious origins.

Maybe the lions were ritual battlefields, but I don't think that's

were. They found a collection of severed heads, and this really suggests that

these Nazca lions could be connected to ritual human sacrifice.

This is why we think the Nazca lions may have been repurposed.

Can new research... finally unravel their secrets.

Researchers make a shocking discovery, and if this theory is correct, they

have solved one of archaeology's greatest riddles.

What is the true purpose of the Nazca Lines?

September 1926, Nazca, Peru.

Archaeologist Toribio Mejia Cespi leads an expedition in the Peruvian desert.

Cespi and his team have been drawn here by a discovery of a giant underground

acropolis full of hundreds of mummies.

When most people think of mummies, they tend to think of Egyptian mummies. But

in fact, the oldest mummies in the world are from northern Chile and southern

Peru. Dating back over 7 ,000 years, They're known as the Chinchorro mummies.

Zespi examines some that are wrapped in thick layers of expertly woven cotton

textiles covered in vibrant images of mystical figures and animals.

One day, while taking a break from his work, Zespi hikes up a nearby hill.

He gets to the summit, looks out over the desert plain, and he's met with a

stunning sight he can barely believe.

Zespi sees a series of thick lines carved into the rocky desert.

Some stretch as far as his eyes can see.

These lines are incredibly long, perhaps miles.

And they're straight as a ruler.

At first, he thinks they're trails or roads. But he notices that several of

plow right over the mountains and other rugged terrain.

Not exactly what you would do if you were building a road.

Eventually, he realizes a lot of these are forming geometric shapes. You know,

kind of standard rectangles, spirals, squares, triangles.

Some of them as big as a football field, to put it in perspective.

Intrigued, Zespi puts his mummy research on hold to investigate.

One of the things Zespi realizes would be useful is to get a better look at

these from higher up. So he calls in the Peruvian Air Force to get that overall

aerial view. They can fly over it, see what's really going on.

When they reach altitude, the pilots can't believe their eyes.

The lines and shapes cover an area that stretches for hundreds of square miles.

Far beyond what Thespi originally saw, there are spirals, zigzags, there are

drawings of birds, spiders, monkeys, immense in scale.

These images are impossible to see in their entirety from the ground. So the

pilots realized they're probably the first people to ever truly witness the

scale of this unusual formation.

The strange markings become known as the Nazca Lines.

When you look at how many lines are actually there, it's an incredible

Over 800 lines total, hundreds of geometric shapes, and at least 100

present in this whole area.

Some of the lines are thousands of meters, all the way up to 25 miles, and

is quite incredible.

The precision of these lines is super impressive, even by modern survey

standards, because many of them are just dead straight.

And for 100 years now, ever since CESPI first spotted them, They've been a

mystery. Who made them? When were they made? Why?

What's the purpose of them?

Initially, it's believed the Inca are responsible.

Beginning in the 12th century, the Incan Empire eventually rules a large area of

South America until Spain conquers them in the 1530s.

But scientists eventually date the lines to between 300 BC and 800 AD, which

means all of them predate the Incas.

In fact, Some of the lines are almost 2 ,500 years old.

We know they didn't just appear out of thin air, but there is virtually no

historical record of previous societies in Peru because the Incas, and later the

Spanish, made it a policy to suppress and destroy every trace of the cultures

they conquered.

And so who built them remains one of the biggest mysteries.

But how they were made is much easier to answer.

The ground is covered with a desert varnish. It's these small pebbles and

that have this black patina on them. When you scrape away the darker layer,

reveal a lighter layer underneath.

It's a stark contrast, like a negative image. So that's the method they used.

The region is also one of the driest on Earth.

It receives only a millimeter of rain a year. And because there's no rain in

this area, these lines were able to survive for thousands of years.

After 13 years researching the lines, Zespi presents his findings at a

conference in 1939.

This conference is the first time that people from outside of Peru have heard

these lines.

Zespi's work has been mostly cataloging and measuring them. He doesn't suggest

an overarching purpose for the lines.

But it gets a lot of people excited.

Among those intrigued, a scholar named Paul Kosok.

Kosok is a history professor from Long Island University in Brooklyn, and he's

in Peru studying pre -Columbian society and culture, particularly focused on the

irrigation systems.

Inspired by Zespi's work, Kosok travels to Nazca to try and solve the puzzle.

In June of 1941, he's charting several of the shapes in the vast desert plain.

As he contemplates their purpose, he glances up at the setting sun and is

with a sudden epiphany.

Kosciuk realizes that the line he's charting points directly at the sunset

the horizon.

Kosciuk has a revelation about what these lines could be.

It's late June in Peru, just about the time of the winter solstice in the

southern hemisphere.

It strikes him that these lines could be an astronomical calendar.

Kosciuk returns to Lima.

with this incredible story of discovering what might be the largest

textbook in the world etched into the sands of the desert.

There, Cossack consults with a German mathematician named Maria Reiche to

out more specifically what the calendar is tracking.

So Reiche works at the National Museum of Lima and is a restorer, and she hears

about this and really gets interested.

and exploring in much more detail how these figures could work from an

astronomical perspective.

On her first trip to Nazca in 1941, Rika identifies 16 lines that point

directly at the rising or setting sun on the dates of the solstice.

Rika also thinks she knows why the lines creators might have made this calendar

to begin with.

One of the things Rika did really well was track a large number of

between the different figures and different elements of astronomical

Two examples are a line on the spider figure that points to Orion and a set of

lines on another figure that point to the Pleiades.

Many ancient civilizations are based around agriculture and farming, and

when to plant or when to harvest is vitally important.

Often these times would coincide with atmospheric patterns like rain, but what

do you do in a place where it never rains?

Most of this region's water comes from periodic runoff from the surrounding

mountains. So a farming culture with an environment with virtually no rainfall

would rely heavily on a celestial calendar to determine planting times for

survival. When that water comes, you need to be ready.

So one constellation you can use in this fashion is the Pleiades. When they show

up in November, you know you're really close to the rainfall up in the

mountains. You're about to get your runoff, so you start your planting

And when the Pleiades leave the sky later in the year, that's when you know

time to start your harvest.

Rika reports her findings to the press, providing the first published theory on

the Nazca lines.

To this day, Rika's interpretation of the lines dominates the public's

perception of them.

She's dubbed the Lady of the Lines.

There's plenty of reason to believe this theory, because...

There are examples of many other prehistoric cultures of earthworks being

constructed to aid in astronomical sightings and calendars.

The famed Stonehenge may be one such example.

In the 1960s, an astronomer named Gerald Hawkins calculated the positions of its

standing stones using an early IBM computer and announced that the monument

designed to predict astronomical events. His work was a sensation around the

world and inspired a new branch of science known as archaeoastronomy.

In 1968, Hawkins visits Nazca to study the lines using the same computer

matching technique.

In particular, what Hawkins looks at is 21 triangles and 70 or so lines and

really asks, okay, how well correlated are these with astronomical phenomena?

His conclusion?

The connections Riker found were only coincidental.

One of the issues is that there are just so many of the lines and in such a

large variety and in so many directions that... To suggest all of them, or even

most of them, are connected to astronomy is a clear stretch.

Rika and Kosak, when they see the findings, they don't disagree with them.

mean, the computer findings are pretty solid. But they do point out that this

isn't necessarily conclusive. It doesn't rule out that some of the lines aren't

astronomical. They believe there are some alignments which are done on

to be used as a celestial calendar.

But there must also be a much larger grand purpose to the design that they

haven't figured out yet.

When Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Zespi discovers the Nazca Lines in 1926,

the first thing that strikes him is their incredible scale.

When you look at these shapes and features, they're so huge they can only

viewed from above and very high in the sky. So this does mean that the culture

that built them would actually never be able to see them directly.

We know there weren't planes or other flying vessels 2 ,500 years ago when the

lines were first created, but...

Somehow these people decided to craft designs meant to be seen from what to

would have been an impossible viewpoint.

It doesn't make sense.

Unless the lines were designed for another purpose.

In 1968, Swiss author Erich von Däniken claims he knows the reason. The lines

aren't built for anyone on Earth.

Instead, they're built as a landing guide to an extraterrestrial species

once visited the Nazcans from the heavens.

One of the first Europeans to see the lines is a magistrate named Luis de

in 1586.

He initially suspects that they are traces of ancient roads, which of course

know isn't true these days.

When he asks the locals about them, he's told of a legend. In very old times,

the Nascans were visited by a people they called the Viracochas.

They're referred to as saintly persons.

The locals tell de Monzon that the paths were actually built for them.

Viracocha is also the name of a Nazcan god.

This deity dates back to around 3000 BC, and the legend says that he came from

the sky in a golden boat, from the other side of the Milky Way, to be specific.

In the oldest depictions, he's pictured with a cone -shaped skull and only four

digits on his hands and feet.

Von Daniken believes these legends are a reference to extraterrestrials.

One of Von Daniken's key theses and beliefs...

is that the ancient people saw these extraterrestrials, these aliens, as

Von Daniken believes that when the Viracoches, or aliens, first visit, they

teach the Nazca people how to make these lines.

The earliest lines are built as a landing pad or navigational marker,

an airstrip for these alien ships.

We don't know if these aliens ever made any return visits, but Von Daniken

believes that eventually they stopped coming, and the Nazca decide to get

creative.

They want the Viracochas to return back as soon as possible, so they start

building more and more elaborate Nazca lines.

Von Daniken's 1968 book, Chariots of the Gods, turns the Nazca lines into an

international phenomenon.

When Von Daniken first came out with his book, this really generated a lot of

interest, a lot of excitement, a lot of buzz. It was a very, very intriguing

idea that maybe aliens had visited.

And in fact, some people look at one of the Nazca geoglyphs in particular and

believe it may prove von Däniken's theory.

Known as the astronaut, this figure covers nearly 100 feet of a hillside

overlooking the desert.

Some call it the astronaut because it looks like it's wearing a space helmet,

which, of course, is a modern interpretation.

Most historians refer to him as the Owlman.

It's a humanoid figure.

but clearly not entirely human. It features large, round eyes, and it seems

be waving hello to someone in the skies.

A thousand years after the creation of the Nazca astronaut, the Inca built the

statue of Viracocha in Cusco, raising his right hand much like the astronaut.

Scholars believe the Nazca astronaut could be an image of the same god.

We don't currently have any way to know if the Nazca astronaut is an alien.

There are no records from this society apart from the Nazca lines themselves.

But one ancient practice might offer more insight.

Remember those ancient Peruvian mummies Vespé was examining?

Well, shockingly, many of them have elongated skulls.

Today, it might be seen as a strange and disturbing look, but it's believed that

the natives did this on purpose by attaching wooden boards to their

heads. Several mummies are even found with these boards still attached.

The question is, why?

We've seen Viracocha represented with an elongated head and many representations

of aliens with a similar head shape.

Well, perhaps they're trying to emulate the appearance of their gods who had

similar features.

A 2017 discovery takes this claim a step further.

Dr. Konstantin Korotkov, professor of biophysics at St. Petersburg Federal

University, shows the press these mummies that he believes aren't human at

They look like they're covered in plaster, but Korotkov explains this is

calcification and protective material.

They have elongated heads, large, round eyes, and just three digits on their

hands and feet. He calls it, quote, another creature, different from

else in our fossil record.

These mummies are made famous by a web series claiming to investigate their

authenticity. Millions of people watch as stupefied scientists declare them to

be the genuine article.

The body they examine is indeed organic, and it dates back 1 ,700 years.

But when another team of scientists inspect the mummies, they're proven to

fake.

They discovered that these were mummies that were modified for this hoax, and

really... Turns out to be quite disturbing.

These bodies are made from real indigenous mummies which have been

make them look like aliens.

Their ears and noses are sliced away and the alterations are covered up with a

white plastery powder.

But the other mummies with the elongated heads remain genuine.

Those are humans who most definitely gave themselves an otherworldly

Why? We don't know.

I think everyone would like to know the answer to that question.

Maybe they were trying to connect with another culture that once visited them

from above. Or maybe they just heard stories of some visit from long ago and

were inspired.

Nazca, Peru, is home to two incredible ancient phenomena, the Nazca Lines and

a necropolis of South American mummies several thousand years old.

Everyone focuses on the Nazca lines because of just how massive and

they are. But we can't lose sight of the mummies because the two may be

intricately linked.

Mummification here dates back 7 ,000 years.

That's a full 2 ,000 years before the first Egyptian mummies.

In Egypt, they used different techniques to dry out the body before they would

wrap it. In this region, they didn't do anything artificial.

The mummies were able to preserve because this desert environment is so

In fact, some of these mummies are way better preserved than what we even see

ancient Egypt.

Dry conditions are one part of the reason, but the other is the technique

used. While the Egyptians used fine linen, the Nazca mummies are wrapped in

long, thick cotton and wool textiles, which are embroidered with a skill and

quality that's unmatched by any other civilization.

In 1983, Swiss historian Henri Stierlin thinks he knows their secret.

Stierlin is an art historian, and he realizes what it would take for these

ancient people to craft these textiles. They would need a lot of space and huge,

long looms, essentially an ancient version of a factory to churn out this

incredible amount of cloth.

He looks around at what they have nearby, and he determines the Nazca

might be the place.

Stierlin writes a book called Nazca, the key to the mystery, which details his

theory. One of the most stunning discoveries about these mummy wraps is

they are made from a single piece of cotton thread, which can be dozens of

long. This idea of a single thread is reflected in the way the Nazca lines are

created too.

They're made with a single line, which starts and ends in the same spot.

So first, they need to make very long threads.

Stierlin believes they use the wide clearings within the geometric shapes as

sacred spaces for spinning the cotton fibers into these threads.

As the threads are made, Stierlin thinks the weavers would lay them out along

the Nazca line's animal designs.

According to Peruvian beliefs, each animal carries a different significance.

So depending on who they're burying, they would lay the thread in a different

Nazca line.

to infuse it with the power of that family's chosen animal.

For instance, the whale provides success in fishing. The hummingbird provides

fertility.

As far as the actual weaving, Stierlin thinks this takes place within the Nazca

lines themselves.

So Stierlin had this idea that the Nazca lines acted as a giant loom. Because

there are these posts within the Nazca lines, the people would...

take the thread and wind back and forth over the lines to create the textile.

There were posts found at the Nazca Lines.

That's actually how scientists are able to date them in the first place.

They test the remains of organic wooden posts discovered nearby.

Stierlin believes these posts could have been the framework to support this

giant loom system.

Stierlin also finds a connection in the drawings themselves.

So the designs on the mummy textiles are very similar to what we see in the

Nazca lines, a similar array of animals and plants.

These ceremonial shapes might have been a part of the entire process, from the

weaving through to the end of the mummification.

One single mummy shroud could have over a million stitches on the main panel and

another 800 ,000 or so on the borders.

This is a huge collaborative effort.

Making the mummies must have been a very sacred and important process to these

people. So why not build a sacred and important site to do it?

The Egyptian mummies were preserved and wrapped by priests and elaborate rituals

inside impressive temples.

This could have been a prehistoric version of the same thing.

According to Sperlin's theory, the operation may have expanded beyond

The Nazca Line's mummy factory may have eventually become a textile factory

serving the entire Andean coast and parts of the highlands.

It's interesting because while you can't grow many things in this environment,

you can grow cotton. It's one of the only useful crops they could have had.

have to wonder, how did they survive?

Well, if this was a place that could abundantly manufacture cloth, they could

have traded it.

But Stierlin's theory is really based off of a lot of speculation. There's no

archaeological evidence that any weaving was done on these lines.

He probably saw the posts and just had this idea because textile production is

so important in the Andes. And textiles, in fact, were more important than even

some of the precious metals like gold.

But a new discovery in 1987 challenges Stierlin's theory.

About two miles away from the Nazca Lines, up on a high plateau, is a

center called Kawachi.

An Italian archaeologist named Giuseppe Orefici has been in charge of

excavations there since 1984.

He's working closely with an American archaeologist, Helene Silverman.

At Kawachi, Silverman and Orofici have found lots of chambers that we now

believe to be workshops for making textiles, with remains of weaving

found there.

When Silverman first publishes her work in the Journal of Field Archaeology in

1988, she finds that Kawachi is the center for the production of the

costumes worn by the Nazca priests and where the rituals are performed.

In other words, Kawachi is the mummy and textile factory, not the Nazca lines

themselves.

But some believe... There's still a connection between the two locations.

The Nazca Lines might not have been a mummy factory or textile factory, but

could have been a place to reflect while that process was happening nearby.

The entire area, both the lines in the valley and Kawachi perched above, was

most likely a place of pilgrimage for natives throughout the region.

A kind of religious tourism site, which included a funeral parlor and textile

trading.

Visitors to Koachi would have had a fine view of some of the Nazca lines below,

and I don't think that's a coincidence.

Many scholars have studied the Nazca lines and speculated about their

designs. But it's not until 2019 that a Japanese research team takes a

closer look at some of the animal patterns.

Their findings unlock a new possible theory.

surrounding these shapes.

The animals represented in the Nazca Lines are referred to as biomorphs.

over 70 of these.

They represent a wide range of animals, insects like spiders, monkeys, dogs, and

a wide range of birds.

The animals range in size from about 50 feet long up to over 1 ,200 feet, almost

as tall as the Empire State Building.

For about 100 years after these were first discovered,

no one really thought carefully about the animals. They just classified them

noticed, oh, there's animal biomorphs. The reality is that these animals are

shocking because they don't exist in this area. And so really asking the

question, why these animals, why here, becomes critical.

Researchers from Hokkaido University in Japan attempt to answer these questions.

For the first time ever, these Japanese researchers take a scientific approach

to classifying the species depicted in the lines.

They want to identify precisely what species each drawing depicts and where

comes from, and then maybe they can find some sort of logic or pattern to figure

out the reason.

So one of the exciting things is there's at least 18 species that they're able

to identify.

There are a handful that they actually just can't associate or identify a

particular species for.

Along with a rather obvious monkey and llama, they identify a frigate bird, a

pelican, a guano bird, and even a killer whale.

The hummingbird, they identify as a hermit hummingbird, a species that lives

only in the tropics and subtropics far to the north and east.

The animals that the Japanese classify are all from places with lots of water,

like the coast or rainy jungle.

So sure enough, they seem to be identifying a pattern. And the team

that water is the key to understanding the purpose of the lines.

Throughout history, early civilizations rely on an abundance of water to grow

food. But the dry desert conditions of the Nazca region offer almost none.

The very reason these lines have survived so long is because the area is

It only gets rain for maybe 20 minutes a year.

20 minutes.

So what do you do in a place where you don't get any rain, yet you desperately

need it? For many ancient societies, you pray.

The Nazca are a priestly society, a deeply religious society.

We know this from the huge religious complex at Cahuachi, which is like the

Vatican for the Nazca people and the whole coast of Peru.

The geoglyphs that surround it seem connected to the complex and the rituals

performed there.

And the Japanese team believes all of it is centered around begging the gods for

rain. The location of Kawachi is not an accident.

There's actually a river that runs through the area. And across this

desert, the river runs underground.

It only emerges above ground again as it enters the lowlands, right on the spot

where Kawachi is located.

This is where the water is given back to the people, and so this is where they

establish their most important pilgrimage shrine.

According to the Japanese team, many of the Nazca lines are arranged in a path

that leads directly to Kowachi.

They're guiding the people to their sacred place for water rituals.

All along that pilgrimage route, they would be saying their prayers in the

that these mystical animals would bring along their region's rain.

Keep in mind, they're not actually praying for the rain to fall in the

That won't help them.

They're praying for it to fall in the surrounding highland and coastal areas

where they plant their fields.

They're also praying for the rain to come peacefully.

The climate along the Peruvian coast can be unpredictable and sometimes

catastrophic.

with wild deluges that cause landslides and flooding, wreaking havoc on the

farmers. So the whole belief system with this pilgrimage along the Nazca Lines

is centered around creating a friendly, working relationship with the gods who

control the weather.

These gods are invoked and pleaded with within the sacred spaces of Kauachi and

the biomorphs.

The team identifies the same species on rock art, ceramics, and textiles from

the area.

They even made musical instruments out of pottery.

It must be quite an elaborate and celebratory process.

You can imagine hundreds of people in colorful costumes, performing ritual

processions or dances along the Nazca Lines, accompanied by drums and

It's quite a spectacle.

There seems to be one more connection between the lines and water.

The last thing they find is that there are several rock altars at the edges of

some of the clearings, right by the Nazca Lines.

And inside the altars, there are crayfish claws, crab skeletons, mollusk

the remains of sea creatures here in the desert at 4 ,000 feet above sea level.

That's a bit surprising.

They're bringing these materials from the largest body of water, the ocean, as

way of asking the gods for water.

Once again, this supports the Japanese theory.

The Nazca Lines were a place for pilgrims to journey from all around in

hopes of summoning their most sacred resource.

In 2019, Japanese scientists revealed their belief that the Nazca Lines were

created as a prayer for rain, a plea that unfortunately failed.

In the early 5th century, this culture suffers their most extreme drought of

all. It's so bad that Kauachi is abandoned.

There's no more sacred city for their rain and water rituals.

No place for a pilgrimage.

But after the drought, there are still artifacts and human remains that suggest

people were still coming to the Nazca Lines.

So I think when you start to make theories about the Nazca Lines and their

purpose, you have to split them into two distinct periods.

What were they used for before the drought, and what were they used for

I think before the drought, the 2019 theory about the prayers for rain is

probably one of the best options.

That seems to check all the boxes.

As for their use after the drought, a scientist in the mid -1990s thinks he's

figured it out.

So in 1996, David Johnson, who is an American scientist, traveled down to

region, and he is the first to really recognize these large, almost well -like

structures in the desert that we call pukios.

The pukios are the spiral -shaped stone staircases around a hole that leads

underground to stone -reinforced tunnels under the earth.

lined with waterproof clay.

The locals really talk about these as connected to an irrigation system, a way

of getting water to flow throughout the area. One of the interesting things is

how old they are. They date back at least to the 6th century, and they're

connected with the ending of this massive drought that decimated the area.

Johnson realizes there's a connection between the Nazca lines and these Pukios

and starts working on a theory of his own.

He believes after the drought...

the Nazca people repurposed their famous lines and created a map for one of the

world's most sophisticated systems of water management.

Johnson finds two underground water sources in the Nazca Desert to support

theory. The first are rivers, which flow down from the mountains before going

underground through this region.

The second are geological fault lines that run north to south that bring up

their own water from deeper beneath the water table.

When you look at this area, not only is it one of the driest, it's also one of

the most seismically active areas, and so there's actually a lot of fault lines

in this region.

Johnson notices lots of this area's ancient settlements are located right

to faults, and that there's usually a pukeo system there in that spot to tap

into its water source.

And right on top of the faults, in almost every case, he finds there are

lines marking their paths.

The geometric shapes were designed to track and locate underground water

sources.

So in this process, it's a way for the Nazca people to take control of the

instead of just leaving it up to chance as to whether or not rain or runoff will

show up.

These pukios ensure a reliable supply of water year -round, meaning they're able

to turn this arid desert into arable farmland, strictly through their own

ingenuity.

This method is not just relegated to antiquity.

Johnson is impressed the locals are still using the system the Nazca created

some 1 ,500 years later.

There are around 30 of these Pukios still in use in the Nazca Valley.

But it really takes a lot of constant repair and work. So many are falling

and, you know, are out of use, but they are still usable where they've been

taken care of.

Johnson shares his insight with archaeologist Donald Pru and hydrologist

Mabey.

From 1996 to 2000, they formed the Nazca Lines Project, plotting the course of

several faults to look for correlations with the lines.

And they're able to confirm Johnson's ideas.

In almost every case they study, they find Nazca Lines charting the path of

faults and pointing to where the faults cross adjacent ridges.

As they finished it, they really came away feeling like they had solved one of

archaeology's greatest mysteries.

If this theory is correct, the Nazcans have created a map of the underground

water sources which they can now tap into to survive.

It's like your local water utility map on a one -to -one scale.

This is a complex but effective way of recording knowledge onto the Earth for

later generations to use.

But what about the animal shapes?

This is why we think the Nazca lines may have been repurposed. The animal shapes

began as symbolic prayers or offerings to bring rainfall.

According to Johnson, they eventually become part of the system as well.

While the most important mapping of the irrigation system is done with geometric

shapes, Johnson writes that the animal figures might have been used to name the

different water sources or indicate where they change direction.

These fukyos are an incredible achievement, and the Nazca lines are a

of what makes them function as a system.

People still thrive in a desert area because of the knowledge they receive

the lines, a map for survival written in the sand.

Over the last century, the world has marveled at the many impressive

achievements of the Nazca people.

The lines themselves are incredible, but we can't forget about all of the other

interesting artifacts.

and features that have been found in this region.

There are some of the world's finest textiles with incredibly elaborate

There's beautifully made pottery.

There are hundreds of mummies that are way better preserved than what we even

see in ancient Egypt.

And there's a centuries -old underground water management system that works so

well, it's still in use today.

But there's also a much more disturbing discovery.

About 90 years ago, Alfred Lewis Crowbird, an anthropologist, was

the area, and what he found was a collection of severed heads.

So these heads are really well preserved, much like the mummies that we

this region because of the lack of rain. But what's interesting about them is

that they have holes in the center of their forehead.

And what we think these holes are for is to put a string so that the head could

be carried.

Experts have long believed that these are trophy heads taken from rivals

war and then carried around and put on display.

Some heads are even found next to full mummies, and researchers believe that a

person might be buried along with the trophy heads they collected in life.

For nearly a century, these heads are thought to belong to enemies of the

But years later, a team of scientists in 2009 undertook some studies on these

trophy heads by using strontium analysis, which can tell you where a

originally born, how that water in the ground was incorporated into their bones

and into their teeth. They were able to tell where these heads originated.

Come to find out, the severed trophy heads come from other Nazcans.

The finding leads some archaeologists to completely rethink the Nazca lines.

We have a feeling the lines are linked to rituals or spirituality somehow.

And we have a feeling they are linked to the precious resource of water.

This new theory takes all of that into account, plus the fact that we now have

evidence of local natives being beheaded.

What does this mean? Well, according to archaeologists Donald Pru and Karina

Kellner, What you have is a situation where the Nazca lines could be connected

to ritual human sacrifice.

If you examine the images on pottery and textiles from the Nazca, trophy heads

are everywhere.

Sometimes they're shown with plants sprouting from them, which indicate they

were likely buried to increase agricultural fertility.

As we know now, these are local Nazcans. They're not people from other areas, so

they presumably were not taken in war or battle.

These are people who have freely participated in the process and in the

to help their own community.

According to this theory, the venue for these rituals is the Nazca Lines.

When we look at the geometric figures, we realize there are these giant open

spaces, and these are potentially the arenas for these ritual sacrifices,

whether they were battles that were played out or other ritual actions.

In the Andean culture, warfare is actually linked to fertility, and the

of battle are sacrificed to the gods to help with that fertility.

This is all part of the religious attempt to draw in water.

As the team dates the trophy head, they feel more confident about this theory,

because right when the major drought hits the region, the number of trophy

increases dramatically.

They start doing this ritual more and more in desperation.

In 2022,

A Polish research team finds further proof to support this theory.

This team tests hair samples from the Nazca trophy heads and finds that before

their deaths, the victims ingested San Pedro cactus, which contains mescaline.

Right before the victims were killed or sacrificed, as part of the ritual, they

were given this hallucinogen to prepare them.

You find images of the San Pedro cactus everywhere in Nazca iconography.

This plant is clearly important to their religion, and now we have proof that

it's involved in their rituals of taking trophy heads.

The idea is that the Nazca would gather at the lines in these ritual spaces.

They would participate in the rituals, ingest the hallucinogenic drug. This

would put them in a translight state and prepare them to engage in the ritual

battle. At the end of the battle, the trophy heads would then be buried with

hopes of inspiring the gods to bring water to the area.

But this is far from the final word on the Nazca Lines.

Maybe the lines were ritual battlefields, but I don't think that's

were. There's a good chance they serve multiple functions.

It's like roads today.

Yes, they move people from one place to another, but we also stage parades down

them. We block them off for music festivals. We bury our water pipes

them. This seems like a more logical way to view the Nazca Lines.

Are we ever really going to know what the lines were used for? Probably not,

that's okay. That's what's exciting about them. But one thing we definitely

is the amazing feat of engineering that these lines represent.

They were clearly very, very important to the people of the time. They cared

deeply about them, went to great lengths to build them, and it is a real

testament to human ingenuity, creativity, and our ability to build

things.

Despite their 2 ,000 -year -old history, more Nazca lines are still being

discovered. A never -before -seen cat figure was found as recently as 2020.

Perhaps new evidence can finally reveal their true purpose.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.