See Newly Discovered Nazca Drawings That Depict Llamas, Human Sacrifices and More

With the help of artificial intelligence, researchers have found hundreds of ancient artworks carved into the pebbled ground of Peru’s Nazca Desert. Featuring decapitated heads, llamas, orcas holding weapons and more, these so-called geoglyphs were likely created by the Nazca culture, a pre-Inca South American Indigenous group known for creating the famed Nazca Lines.

The Nazca Lines were first recorded by scientists in 1927. Over the next near-century, researchers attributed around 430 figurative geoglyphs to the Nazca people. Now, a new A.I.-assisted survey published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found 303 additional geoglyphs in just six months. The drawings, made at least 2,000 years ago in an elevated desert in southern Peru, provide insights into the customs of the ancient Nazca civilization.

The Nazca people thrived between roughly 200 B.C.E. and 600 C.E., living in coastal desert settlements along the Nazca River. Archaeologists have found many painted ceramics linked to the Nazca over the centuries, but the civilization’s most enduring artifacts are by far their geoglyphs. The Nazca people carved the drawings into the ground by selectively removing the desert’s reddish surface rock to reveal lighter soil. Their largest glyphs showcase geometric shapes and patterns measuring up to 30 miles long, while their representative figures, which depict wild animals and plants, stretch to about 1,200 feet long.

To identify the new group of geoglyphs—which are older, smaller and less distinct than the previously discovered ones—the researchers employed an A.I. model trained to spot faint lines in satellite images of the desert. The A.I. can spot outlines 20 times faster than humans, reports Live Science’s Harry Baker. Once the model had identified various figures, the team traveled to some of the scanned locations to confirm the illustrations’ existence.

The scientists spent more than 2,600 hours manually inspecting these sites, capturing drone photography and conducting field inspections, reports New Scientist’s Jeremy Hsu. Still, lead author Masato Sakai, an archaeologist at Japan’s Yamagata University, tells Agence France-Presse that the A.I. model “allowed us to map the distribution of geoglyphs in a faster and more precise way.”

He adds, “The traditional method of study, which consisted of visually identifying the geoglyphs from high-resolution images of this vast area, was slow and carried the risk of overlooking some of them.”

The 303 “new” geoglyphs depict human-like figures, livestock, fish, cats, birds, a ceremonial scene, people interacting with animals and—most notably—killer whales wielding weapons, the study notes.

“On some pottery from the Nazca period, there are scenes depicting orcas with knives cutting off human heads,” Sakai tells New Scientist. “So we can position orcas as beings that carry out human sacrifice.”

The purpose of the Nazca people’s massive illustrations, which are seemingly only appreciable from a bird’s-eye view, remains a mystery, though some historians posit that the civilization created the illustrations with a spiritual motive.

According to UNESCO, which designated the geoglyphs a World Heritage Site in 1994, the lines represent a “remarkable manifestation of a common religion and social homogeneity.” The study’s authors believe that in the coming years, they’ll be able to identify some 250 more Nazca geoglyphs that were flagged by the A.I. model but they didn’t have time to examine in person.

“The A.I.-based analysis of remote sensing data is a major step forward, since a complete map of the geoglyphs of the Nazca region is still not available,” Karsten Lambers, an archaeologist at the Netherlands’ Leiden University who wasn’t involved in the study, tells New Scientist. However, “even this new, powerful technology is more likely to find the better visible geoglyphs—the low hanging fruits—than the more difficult ones that are likely still out there.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.