“Or they could have believed a god would see them from above. We often make the mistake of thinking primitave people were incapable of the visualizing and calculating required to do such things.”
Is there another example of this anywhere? Obviously everything is speculation, but I am not aware any other major religious constructions on the planet which were designed to be utterly invisible to everyone living there iow no payoff to the mortal authorities commanding it to be built. Maybe a mad theocrat took over the tribe for the years/decades over which the lines were built and caused this to happen.
I just try to work out the thought process - hey lets draw lines to god(s). After getting political approval (whatever form that was in) Well first they have to figure out how to draw them (moving the rocks around iirc), THEN figure out how to handle the drawing of complex geometric objects/animals without being able to see them (There are a few examples of mistakes being worked around in the lines), then corral enough people into doing it, year after year after year, with presumably no answer? My mind doesn’t see that scenario happening, even past the drawing of the first line.
but as I said, all we have is speculation. Nazca remains/goods do not shed any light on this, iirc.
There are a lot of earthen indian mounds here in the USA that are nothing more than low hills when seen from the ground. When they’re viewed from above we find that they’re animal shapes. They’re all across the midwest.
The only real difference is in scale but that can be explained by the fact that the Nazca makers didn’t have to deal with forests. Also there’s the fact that desert preserves these things better.
The Hopewell indians seem to have been especially active in making them.
In the Amazon rainforest, there are miles of raised mounds forming lines in the middle of swampy land, thought to have been used both for agriculture and as roads by ancestors of the local Amerindians.
Maybe the Nasca lines makers were just their more artsy-fartsy cousins, and at that time the desert was more fertile. After all, Caral is considered to be the start of civilization in South America, and is now desert. So too with Egypt, even though when Egypt started, the country was wetter.
Just sort of joking. The Nazca lines are intriguing not only because of their extent, but also their shapes.
Here are some links, in any case, but without pretty pictures:
and a Wikipedia one: