04x19 - Unlocking the Secrets of the Nazca Lines

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Tonight

They've been called

the world's greatest

archeological 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 Lines

were ritual battlefields,

but I don't think

that's all they ever were.

They found a collection

of severed heads,

and this really suggests

that the Nazca Lines

could be connected

to ritual human sacrifice.

This is why

we think the Nazca Lines

may have been repurposed.

Can new research

finally unravel their secrets?

Researchers make

a shocking discovery

and, if this theory is correct,

they might have solved one

of archeology's

greatest riddles.

What is the true

purpose of the Nazca Lines?

September, 1926.

Nazca, Peru.

Archeologist

Toribio Mejia Xesspe

leads an expedition

in the Peruvian desert.

Xesspe 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.

Xesspe 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,

Xesspe 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.

Xesspe 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 them 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,

Xesspe puts his mummy research

on hold to investigate.

One of the things Xesspe

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 Xesspe

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 realize 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 number.

Over 800 Lines total,

hundreds of geometric shapes

and at least 100 animals

are present in this area.

Some of the Lines

are thousands of meters,

all the way up to 25 miles,

and this 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 Xesspe

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,

rocks that have

this black patina on them.

When you scrape away

this darker layer,

you 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,

Xesspe presents his findings

at a conference in 1939.

This conference is

the first time that people

from outside of Peru

have heard of these Lines.

Xesspe'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 their irrigation systems.

Inspired by Xesspe'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 struck

with a sudden epiphany.

Kozok realizes

that the Line he's charting

points directly at the sunset

over the horizon.

Kosok 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.

Kosok returns to Lima

with this incredible story

of discovering what might be

the largest astronomy textbook

in the world, etched

into the sands of the desert.

There, Kosok consults

with a German mathematician

named Maria Reiche,

to figure 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 in exploring

in much more detail

how these figures could work

from an astronomical

perspective.

On her first

trip to Nazca in 1941,

Reiche identifies 16 lines

that point directly

at the rising

or setting sun

on the dates of the solstice.

Reiche also thinks she knows

why the Lines' creators

might have made

this calendar to begin with.

One of the things Reiche

did really well

was track a large number

of correlations

between the different figures

and different elements

of astronomical importance.

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 knowing 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 their 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 season,

and when the Pleiades

leave the sky later in the year,

that's when you know

it's time to start your harvest.

Reiche reports

her findings to the press,

providing the first published

theory on the Nazca Lines.

To this day,

Reiche'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

was designed to predict

astronomical events.

His work was a sensation

around the world,

and inspired a new branch

of science,

known as archeoastronomy.

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 Reiche 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.

Reiche and Kosok,

when they see the findings,

they don't disagree with them.

I 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 purpose to be used

as a celestial calendar,

but there must also be

a much larger and grand purpose

to the design that they haven't

figured out yet.

When Peruvian archeologist

Toribio Xesspe 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 be 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 them,

would have been

an impossible viewpoint.

It doesn't make sense.

Unless the Lines were

designed for another purpose.

In 1968,

Swiss author Eric 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

that once visited

the Nazcans from the heavens.

One of the first Europeans

to see the Lines is

a magistrate named

Luis de Monzon in 1586.

He initially suspects

that they are traces

of ancient roads,

which, of course,

we know isn't true these days.

When he asks

the locals about them,

he's told of a legend.

In very old times,

the Nazcans were visited

by people

they called the Viracochas.

They 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 Däniken believes

these legends are a reference

to extraterrestrials.

One of von Däniken's

key thesis and beliefs

is that the ancient people

saw these extraterrestrials,

these aliens, as gods.

Von Däniken believes

that when the Viracochas,

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,

basically an airstrip

for these alien ships.

We don't know if these aliens

ever made any return visits,

but von Däniken believes that

eventually they stop 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 Däniken's 1968 book,

"Chariots of the Gods,"

turns the Nazca Lines

into an international

phenomenon.

When von Däniken

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 100ft

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 Owl Man.

It's a humanoid figure,

but clearly not entirely human.

It features large, round eyes,

and it seems to be

waving hello

to someone in the skies.

A thousand years

after the creation

of the Nazca Astronaut,

the Inca build a 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

Xesspe 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 infants' 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 all.

They look like

they're covered in plaster,

but Korotkov explains,

"This is just 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 anything 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

inspects the mummies,

they're proven to be 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 mutilated

to 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 appearance.

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.

Veryone focuses

on the Nazca Lines

because of just how massive

and perplexing 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 dry.

In fact, some of these mummies

are way better preserved

than what we even see

in ancient Egypt.

Dry conditions are

one part of the reason,

but the other is

the technique they used.

While the Egyptians used

fine linens, the Nazca mummies

are wrapped in very 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 Lines

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 that they are made

from a single piece

of cotton thread,

which can be dozens

of miles 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 textiles.

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 Stierlin's theory,

the operation may have

expanded beyond the mummies.

The Nazca Lines 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.

You 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 archeological

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 ceremonial center

called Cahuachi.

An Italian archeologist

named Giuseppe Orefici

has been in charge

of excavations there since 1984.

He's working closely

with an American archeologist,

Helaine Silverman.

At Cahuachi, Silverman

and Orefici have found

lots of chambers that we now

believe to be workshops

for making textiles,

with remains of weaving

materials found there.

When Silverman

first publishes her work

in the "Journal of Field

Archeology" in 1988,

she finds that Cahuachi

is the center for the production

of these elaborate costumes

worn by the Nazca priests

and where the rituals

are performed.

In other words, Cahuachi 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 they could have been

a place to reflect

while that process

was happening nearby.

The entire area, both the Lines

in the valley and Cahuachi,

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 Cahuachi

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 mysterious 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.

There's 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 50ft long

up to over 1,200ft,

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

and 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 it 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

the rather obvious monkey

and llama,

they identify a frigate bird,

a pelican, a guano bird,

and even a k*ller whale.

The hummingbird,

they identify it

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 believes 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 so dry.

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 Cahuachi is not an accident.

There's actually a river

that runs through the area

and across this stretch

of desert,

the river runs underground.

It only emerges above ground

again as it enters the lowlands,

right on the spot

where Cahuachi's 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 Cahuachi.

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 hopes

that these mystical animals

swould bring along

their region's rain.

Keep in mind, they're not

actually praying for the rain

to fall in the desert,

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 Cahuachi 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 panpipes.

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 shells,

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 a 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 the 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 fifth century,

this culture suffers their

most extreme drought of all.

It's so bad

that Cahuachi 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 after?

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 this region

and he is the first

to really recognize these large,

almost well-like structures

in the desert,

that we call puquios.

The puquios

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 really connected

with the ending

of this massive drought

that decimated the area.

Johnson realizes

there's a connection

between the Nazca Lines

and these puquios,

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 his 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 next

to faults and that there's

usually a puquio 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

Nazca 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 water,

instead of just

leaving it up to chance,

as to whether or not rain

or runoff will show up.

These puquios 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 puquios

still in use

in the Nazca Valley.

But it really takes a lot

of constant repair and work.

So many are falling apart

and, you know, are out of use,

but they are still usable

where they've been

taken care of.

Johnson shares his insight

with archeologist Donald Proulx

and hydrologist Stephen Mabee.

From 1996 to 2000,

they form

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 the 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 archeology'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 puquios are

an incredible achievement,

and the Nazca Lines

are a huge part

of what makes them

function as a system.

People still thrive

in a desert area

because of the knowledge

they receive from the Lines.

A map for survival

written in the sands.

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 designs.

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 Kroeber,

an anthropologist,

was studying in 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 find

in 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 were 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 during w*r,

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 Nazca.

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 person

was 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 archeologists

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 archeologists

Donald Proulx

and Corina 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 w*r or battle.

These are people who have freely

participated in the process

and in the ritual

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 losers of battle

are sacrificed to the gods

to help with that fertility.

This is all part

of a religious attempt

to draw in water.

As the team dates

the trophy heads,

they feel more confident

about this theory,

because, right when the major

drought hits the region

the number of trophy heads

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 k*lled

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 trance-like state

and prepare them to engage

in the ritual battle.

At the end of the battle,

the trophy heads would then be

buried with the 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 all they ever 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 beneath 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, and that's okay.

That's what's exciting

about them.

But one thing we definitely know

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 ability

to build amazing 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 Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching

"History's Greatest Mysteries."