Monday, April 16, 2012

Nazca Lines

This month Minnie is exploring the alphabet by digging out the unusual, often unexplained and alternative way of thinking. Stories of creatures, places and mysteries that have been passed down to us through centuries tease our imagination, live in our dreams and dare us to explore the impossible. Join Minnie each day as she discovers something unusual in the alphabet.

 
The answer to everything unexplained is simple...ALIENS!"

In the Peruvian desert there lies a plain between the Inca and Nazca valleys. Across this plain in an area measuring 37 miles long and 1 mile wide is an assortment of perfectly straight lines, many running parallel, others intersecting to form a grand geometric form. In and around the lines there are also trapezoidal zones, strange symbols and pictures of birds and beasts all etched on a giant scale that can only be seen from the air. The forms are so difficult to see from the ground that they were not discovered until the 1930s when a plane flew over the Nazca plateau and saw this gigantic art book. The figures include some 70 animals and plants include a spider, hummingbird, monkey, whale, some kind of being, and a 1000 foot long pelican.
Nazca Spider

The spider just happens to be one of the rarest spiders in the world, so rare that it has only been found in remote and inaccessible parts of the Amazon. How did these primitive people travel so far from their homeland, crossing the formidable barrier of the Andes to catch a specimen? They even duplicated details of the spider’s anatomy, normally visible only under a microscope. The whale and monkey are also out of place in this desert environment. There are 900 forms on the plain. These include straight enormous lines, spirals, triangles, and circles. The longest straight line goes nine miles across the plain. How were they made? Somewhere, someone most likely has a perfectly logical explanation, where abouts…uknown.

8 comments:

shelly said...

There's a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of narrow-minded people.

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Siv .. the Nazca lines are quite extraordinary .. and how they knew to 'draw' the creatures at all is amazing - and quite challenging to work out 'the how' ..

Great post .. whereabouts - will we ever know - I doubt it .. Cheers Hilary

Lynn Proctor said...

that is amazing, especially about the whereabouts of the spider

Unknown said...

Incredible. People can speculate, but I doubt we'll ever know the real facts.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

We're back to that alien theory.

Nancy Thompson said...

Amazing story!! How far does that date back?

Unknown said...

You write so beautifully. Love the post too, very interesting. Discovery channel covers this topic quite often.

Sean McLachlan said...

I got to see these a few years back and even took a small Cessna to fly over them. Wonderful!
Making them isn't too hard, since you just have to remove the weathered, darkened stone to reveal the lighter sandy soil underneath. Creating them so large isn't too challenging either, since you can create a small picture and make it big simply by even expanding all the dimensions.
The enduring mystery, however, is WHY???