User:Obergj/Nazca Lines

Lead
There are two major phases of the Nazca lines, Paracas phase, from 400 to 200 BC, and Nazca phase, from 200 BC to 500 AD.

Article body
(Move from location to lead and completely rewritten because of information that UNESCO provides)

Location

Although the local geoglyphs resemble Paracas motifs, scholars believe the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca culture.

Rediscovery

Most of the lines are formed on the ground by a shallow trench, with a depth between 10 and 15 cm. Such trenches were made by removing for a portion of the design, the reddish-brown, iron oxide-coated pebbles that cover the surface of the Nazca Desert. When this gravel is removed, the light-colored clay earth exposed in the bottom of the trench contrasts sharply in color and tone with the surrounding land surface, producing visible lines. This sub-layer contains high amounts of lime. With moisture from morning mist, it hardens to form a protective layer that shields the lines from winds, thereby preventing erosion.

The Nazca used this technique to "draw" several hundred simple, but huge, curvilinear animal and human figures. In total, the earthwork project is huge and complex: the area encompassing the lines is nearly 450 km2, and the largest figures can span nearly 370 m (1,200 ft). Some figures have been measured: the hummingbird is 93 m long, the condor is 134 m, the monkey is 93 by, and the spider is 47 m. The very dry, windless, and constant climate of the Nazca region has preserved the lines well. This desert is one of the driest on Earth and maintains a temperature near 25 C year round. The lack of wind has helped keep the lines uncovered and visible.

(Going to work on another section later Purpose)

PURPOSE

Paul Kosok and Maria Reiche advanced a purpose related to astronomy and cosmology, as has been common in monuments of other ancient cultures: the lines were intended to act as a kind of observatory, to point to the places on the distant horizon where the sun and other celestial bodies rose or set at the solstices. EDIT A study by Chirstiane Richter, Bernd Teichert, and Karel Pavelka shows that only a minority, 569 of 2308 lines, of the straight lines that do not form a pattern, align with the Sun, more specifically the sunrise and sunset, or other celestial bodies and beyond that only a small subset, 99 lines, of those lines align with major solar events, such as the solstices or equinoxes, which at least partially refutes this theory. Many prehistoric indigenous cultures in the Americas and elsewhere constructed earthworks that combined such astronomical sighting with their religious cosmology, as did the late Mississippian culture at Cahokia and other sites in present-day United States. Another example is Stonehenge in England. Newgrange in Ireland has tombs that are oriented to admit light at the winter solstice.