AnthroAvenger

The foundational argument for this episode of Ancient Aliens is predicated upon the hosts’ assumption that, due to their extremely large size, the Nazca lines could only have been seen by ancient peoples from the air. According to their logic, this must mean that the ancient Nazcan people received help from technologically advanced extraterrestrials who guided them in their construction. However, their assumption is false; the Nazca lines lie directly adjacent to a mountain range. The ancient Nazcans could very feasibly have ascended the mountains to some height to view their handiwork, if they had wanted to. Much is made about the various shapes and figures scattered throughout the Nazca lines. One contributor points out that one of the massive triangular shapes is depressed 24 inches into the ground, a feat they claim ancient humans would have been incapable of. Humans were stacking stones up to the heavens over in Egypt (see: The Pyramids at Giza) millennia before the Nazca are even identifiable as a culture, so the idea that a determined group of humans could not stamp down or remove a 24-inch layer of dirt from a large space is ludicrous and quite frankly, insulting. They also claim that the planning and construction of such a large triangular shape would be beyond the reasoning capabilities of the ancient Nazcan people. By definition, all that is required for a triangle is a base line from the ends of which two lines extend in the same direction. The two lines will always meet eventually, when building on such a massive scale, why would the Nazcans care where the lines met? It would be big either way, no planning needed. Another contributor suggests that the figures align with the stars in some convoluted way. However, statistical reasoning shows that with such an abundance of lines drawn in such an abundance of configurations, it is almost impossible for some of them not to line up with stars and constellations at some point in the year in some fashion. (1) Another host suggests that the large figure commonly known as El Astronato is meant to represent an astronaut visitor pointing toward the sky. However, nothing definitively points to this being the truth. It ultimately looks like a humanoid figure with simplified facial features (which would be admittedly difficult to sculpt on such a scale), and the figure could just as easily be waving as pointing, as there are no fingers scraped out in the dirt. One important thing to note is that most scholars now agree that the Nazca lines were made at two different times, in two different sets. The more pictorial glyphs representing animal and human figures came first, followed by most of the simpler linear geoglyphs (2). A cultural examination of Nazca mythology offers a much more reasonable and rather convincing explanation for the existence of these large geoglyphs. One scholar suggests that the Nazcan people created the lines as part of an incredibly complex and large-scale practice of ancestor veneration. By creating and maintaining the lines by walking along them, they reenacted their creation myth, perhaps in an effort to bring water to their arid land. Through this, they connected themselves to their gods and ancestors paid respects to their creator god by crafting images of the animal forms legends said he took (3). 1. Iammarino, Darren. “The Nazca Geoglyphs: A Pictographic Creation Story.” Skeptic, 2016, 18. 2. Iammarino, Darren. “The Nazca Geoglyphs: A Pictographic Creation Story.” Skeptic, 2016, 21. 3. Iammarino, Darren. “The Nazca Geoglyphs: A Pictographic Creation Story.” Skeptic, 2016, 24-5.