The Nasca lines are images made from lines of stones in Peru,
some over a mile long, in the shapes of birds and mammals,
including a hummingbird, a monkey and a man. There are also
geometric shapes, such as zig-zags and spirals. As with the
pyramids in Egypt and other great early structures, the
questions archaeologists ask are why did these early people
spend so much effort to make these monuments, and how did
they do it?
They are located 250 miles south of Lima and were made by
removing surface stones to reveal the lighter sand of the
desert beneath by the Nasca people, who lived there
between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago, before the invasion of
the Incas. How such large images could have been made
without being able to see them from the air remains a
mystery, but now anthropologists think they may have
answered the question of why they were made.
Donald Proulx, David Johnson, and Stephen B. Mabee,
researchers from the University of Massachusetts, have
studied the area for the past 5 years and believe these lines
indicate the location of underground water. "The spatial
coincidence between the geoglyphs and groundwater
associated with underground faults in the bedrock offers an
intriguing alternative to explain the function of some of the
geoglyphs," said Mabee. These underground faults can trap
and hold water so that it can be tapped by wells. The entire
city of San Antonio, for instance, gets its water from
underground caves known as aquifers. The team was able to
trace the sources of underground water in the Nasca area
and compare them to the location of the lines. "They always
seem to go together," Mabee said.
Dr. Proulx says, "?Trapezoids were found to lie directly over
the track of faults and the width of the trapezoids defined
the width of the fault zone capable of transmitting ground
water as concentrated flow. Triangles?pointed to areas
where the faults crossed the ridges or hilltops?.In contrast, a
zig-zag pattern located along the boundary of a geoglyph
system indicated there was no water."
We have an intriguing new explanation of why these
mysterious lines may have been created. The only thing left
to discover is how such primitive people were able to create
these large, complex images without being able to look down
on them from the air...unless, of course, they did.
Source:
UFOnews1:
Global Report - Dec. 2000, Vol. 1, No. 6, UFOnews@aol.com
