The Nazca Lines

On the arid Pampa de Nazca, 400 kilometres south of Lima, an ancient civilization left its mark on a colossal scale. Between 200 BCE and 500 CE, the Nazca people etched massive figures into the desert floor by carefully removing dark, iron-oxide-coated pebbles to reveal lighter sand beneath. This created high-contrast lines forming giant shapes like a hummingbird, a spider, and a monkey with a spiral tail, some spanning hundreds of metres. The region’s unique climate, with very little wind or rain, has preserved their work for millennia. For centuries, however, their full scale and complexity remained largely unrecognized until they were first viewed from aircraft in the 1920s and 1930s.