NAZCAIn 1927, a Peruvian Airforce pilot is flying over the south of Peru, when, in the Nazca desert, which is stretched out below him, he sees some strange tracks on the ground : curves and long, straight lines several kilometers long, among which there are some very precise figures shaped in the form of animals and people. The mystery behind the history of the Nazcan people has just been born.Scientists and historians immediately look into the issue. However, it is not until 1939 that Paul Kosok, an American archeologist, comes to carry out the first systematic samples of these figures. They showed to be arranged in three distinct groups : straight, zigzagged, or spiral lines, geometric figures, and representations of people and animals. All these figures, among which there are some that are more than 135 yards long, cross the landscape as if they were not there. The most incredible thing about these figures, which spread out across about 400 square yards, is that they can only be seen from the sky. How did the Nazcans, who lived more than five centuries before our era, used to draw them? Maria Reich, who, since 1945, dedicates her life to the upkeep and the study of the Nazca figures, claims that the Nazcan indians worked from sketches that they enlarged. This was the only hypothesis until an American adventurer of the name Jim Woodman discovers, on Nazca pottery, drawings of balloons with a nacelle in the shape of a gondola. Does that mean that almost 2000 years ago before the historic beginning of the aerial adventure, the Nazcans had invented the precursor of the airship? This would have allowed them to visualize the line of all these figures, whose meaning still remains a disturbing enigma today. Maria Reich's hypothesis, which states that the straight lines form an astronomical calendar which allows dates and seasons to be calculated, does not stand up to the study carried on computer in 1968 by Gerald Hawkins. Simone and Jack Waisbard, respectively ethnologist and computer scientist, had the idea to study all the drawings together as a homogenous entity rather than study each figure separately. They noticed that even though they are situated and oriented in a very precise manner in relation to each other, so as to form meteorological calendar rather than an astronomical one, helps to know and foresee the rhythm of the seasons. For Tony Morisson, English explorer and moviemaker, there is a religious meaning to the lines : The lines are sacred paths linking altars and the drawings of the illustrations of their gods. As for Erich von Daniken, a Swiss, he is categorical : Nazca's lines are the airport runways which had been used by extra-terrestials who came to visit the Incas' ancestors.
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