The Nazca Lines Continued: Reality Vs Hollywood

This post was going to be a simple continuation of my Nazca Line post which I started on Friday in honour of Ack's birthday. On Sunday night, however, Robert and I went to see the latest Indiana Jones movie. We didn't know anything at all about the movie, so we were surprised to see that it was set in Peru. It involved an ancient hidden city in the Amazon, a trip to the Nazca Lines and aliens from outer space. We were quite amazed with how Hollywood Nazca compared to the real Nazca. So, as I continue my Nazca post, I will also point out the difference between what Indiana Jones saw, and what we did!
First, here is one last figure I wanted to show you. This is called the dog. You can just make out that he has his tail in the air. Below, is an image I pulled off the web.
One question that someone asked about the Lines is: 'What do they look like from the ground?' The answer is that you can barely make out that they are lines at all.

Here is a 'Line' taken from the side of the Pan American Highway. It is part of the figure called the tree. You can view the 'tree' from the Maria Reiche tower.
This is a brief reminder of what the tower looks like. This is about half an hour outside of town. We hired a taxi to take us there.

Here is the tree taken from the tower. You can just about make out part of it. The problem is that the figures are so big that they are hard to appreciate unless you are very high. The largest figure is 270 metres long. The figures I have shown you are just a fraction of what was produced. The lines cover 193 square miles. There are hundreds of them. Some are elaborate figures, some are just lines or geometric shapes.

The two big questions that people ask about the lines are: 'How were they made?' and 'Why were they made?'. The first question is a bit easier to answer. The Nazca desert is covered by a thin layer of iron oxide coloured soil. Underneath is a white chalky layer. So, the lines were made by simply removing topsoil and rocks to reveal the white surface underneath. Because it almost never rains in the Atacama desert and there is almost no wind, the lines have remained undisturbed.

How were the Nazca people able to make such large figures? The most convincing answer I have heard was offered by people who specialise in studying Andean weavings. Everyone apart from Ack can read on. I would like Ack to pause a minute to see if she can figure out the answer for herself...

The Nazca people were expert weavers. Above is a sample from a museum. I am not too sure what this figure is supposed to be. I would say it was a monkey if it wasn't for the things coming out of the head. Note the cross between the head things. The cross was a symbol in South America long before they were introduced to Christianity. It represents the coming together of opposites. What the weaving specialists figured out is that the Nazca people simply scaled up from weaving figures. A woven textile like you see above can be broken up into individual squares marked out by the warf and weft. So, to scale this up, you would peg out a system of squares in the desert and mark out the pattern accordingly.

The Nazca were also potters. The figures in the lines, like monkeys and spiders, etc. also appear in the pottery and weavings. The figure above is (I think) a jaguar (note the whiskers). More about this later.

So, why were the Lines created? Various theories have been offered. Von Daniken, of course, theorised that they were linked to space aliens because they can only be seen from very high up (i.e. from a space ship). Quite unsurprisingly, this is the theory embraced by the Hollywood creators of Indian Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The crystal skull, is actually the skull of an alien. Of course, the design of this skull was based on the actual skulls of Inca noble mummies.
This skull shape was achieved by binding the heads of babies in woven belts. Only Inca nobles did this. I don't know what impact this had on brain function, but they managed to create an empire, so it couldn't have been too damaging.

Theory number two was put forward by Maria Reiche. She had studied maths before getting involved in archaeology. She reckoned that they were part of an ancient calendar. That is, you could look at how the sun hit certain figures on certain days to know when to plant crops, etc. This makes some sort of sense and a lot of work has been done working out how this might work, but it doesn't explain all of the figures.

Theory number three suggests that the lines have to do with helping people locate underwater rivers and streams. As you may have noticed, the Atacama desert is pretty dry. There seems to be some evidence that there was a bit more water about during the time of the Nazca and that irrigation was very important. In fact, there are still some underground aquaducts. These take water from the mountains to populated areas. The town of Nazca gets its water from underground. Some of the figures are indeed lined up with some of these underground sources, but not all of them.

I am sure that theories two and three can explain some of the lines. However, the most convincing explanation for me is theory number four: that these lines have to do with shamanism and with shamanistic visions. Shamans existed on the coast of Peru, in the Andes and also in the jungle. Shamans are able to enter into alternative levels of reality where they can communicate with animal spirits. Basically, the world that you and I perceive isn't reality. Shamans enter a different level of reality where they see things as they really are. So, you and I walking in the jungle might see a jaguar and think: Hey! There is a jaguar. A shaman 'seeing' the same jaguar would know that it wasn't a jaguar at all, but a jaguar person that he could talk to. Sounds strange? The series of Matrix movies provide a nice illustration of this concept. When the guys in the movie are in 'the matrix' they are wearing nice leather jackets, eating steak and thinking that is real. However, this is only an illusion. What is real is the level of reality where they wear grotty looking knitwear and eat porridge. Shamans can do their stuff because they can 'see' what is really real and communicate with beings like the jaguar (who are as people in the really real world).

In contemporary South America, the highland people regard jungle (i.e. Amazonian) shamans as the most powerful as they are regarded as being closer to the animals (and hence better able to communicate with them). In the village where I did my fieldwork, for example, jungle indians were seen as being closer to animals because they wore feathers rather than weaving. Weaving takes on great significance in the Andes because it demonstrates the human ability to take nature (like fleece) and transform it into cloth. It is seen as a demonstration of what makes humans different from animals.

Interestingly, and what I find particularly interesting about the shaman theory, is that many of the animals represented in the lines, like the monkey, didn't exist in the Nazca area. Monkeys are only found in the jungle regions. This suggests contact with the jungle areas, probably through trade. So, the basic idea is that the figures are part of some shamanic effort to communicate with various spirits. There seems to be some evidence that the figures were made during a period when the area was experiencing an extreme drought. Perhaps by calling on jungle spirits (an area associated with water and lush fertility) they might bring some of this water and fertility back to the Nazca region. It seems to me that this theory could easily encompass aspects of theories two and three. What about the 'space man' figure? The proponents of the shamanism theory think that this represents an owl man.
So, what about Indiana Jones and the Kindom of the Crystal Skull? There were a number of areas where Hollywood really went far and beyond reality. There is a point in the movie where they fly above the Nazca Lines. The movie is set in 1957. Indiana Jones eventually goes to Nazca where he is supposed to find a clue to the location of the crystal skull. They take a small plane from Nazca airport. Nazca airport, which must have been built in the 60s, does in fact fit quite well into the movie. However, Robert and I did start elbowing each other when we saw what the digital enhancement guys had done to the lines. They managed to squeeze in the major lines (like the spider and the monkey) into the same shot. They were also highlighted so you can easily spot them. In reality, it is about 10 minutes of flight between these figures. It is a bit of a shame that the digitally enhanced version you see in the movie gives you no idea of how impressive these figures are. Part of this impressiveness is the size of them and the distance between them. I am sure that American tourists going to the Lines in a post Indiana Jones world will be disapointed that they are not all bunched together and more highly visable.

After you see the lines in the film, you end up in a Nazca cemetery complete with mummies. This does actually exist in real life, but not as it was portrayed in the movie. No doubt, to give the cemetery a sense of exoticness, they have it covered in vines. The spider web special effect guy also really went to town. Above is a still from the movie. Below is what one of these tombs actually looks like.
If you take a look at the middle mummy, you will notice a small woven belt just in front of it. Here it is in close up below.
Notice the lack of vines and spider webs.

This is what the Nazca cemetary at Chauchilla looks like. Basically, grave robbers looking for gold and pottery to sell located and broke into a number of tombs. The bones and mummies were scattered across the area. Archeologists, made an attempt to reposition some of these mummies. They also placed the extra bones they gathered back into the tombs. These are just sitting there in the open air. Each tomb has a thatched roof over it and it is roped off. There are no walls or anything else to protect the figures. They must have a night security guard, but I was quite surprised that the figures were just sitting there. You can see some of these structures in the distance above. Again, not a vine in sight.

Due to the lack of rain, the Nazca people were able to mummify their dead. This also allowed hair and textiles to be preserved.
Here are two mummies. Note that they are placed in a squatting position. Their bodies are wrapped in cotton and then they are wrapped with woven cloth. The long strands that you see coming from the backs of their heads is, in fact, matted hair.
This photo gives you a better idea of the hair. These shanks of matted hair appear to come from more than one individual. I guess it was like a Nazca toupee. Archaeologists think that these hair shanks denote ritual specialists. Interestingly, if you go back to the previous pictures of mummies and look at the next ones coming up, you see no evidence of head binding as you see with the Inca. So, this is yet another bit of artistic license in the movie. Indiana Jones tells the young man you see in the picture above that the Nazca people bound their heads to reshape their skulls. Sorry Indy! I don't think so...
Here is another burial where a few of the extra bones gathered from the desert were placed. You can also see a hair shank displayed on the wall.
Here is a close up. One thing that the movie did get right was the fact that the mummies were burried in layers of cotton wadding (or maybe it is fleece) underneath the layers of woven cloth.
This might be simply technical (i.e. it helps protects the body) or it might be symbolic (i.e. unwoven fleece next to the body (symbolising nature) and then covered by woven cloth (symbolising culture)).

A final point about the movie. As you can imagine, Indiana Jones eventually makes it to the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The architecture here is a totally mixed up version of various architectural styles seen throughout Central and South America. Personally, I would have gone for a modified Inca look. Inca temples have very clean lines.
They are also reknown for their amazing stone work. The stone below is in Cuzco and has twelve corners. The joints are so well crafted, that they are held together without mortar and have survived centuries of earthquakes.
Instead, Hollywood went for a a mixture of Maya, Aztec and Tiahuanaco culture.

The temple shape in the movie is very Mayan. The Maya Empire had its major period from 250 to 900AD. Maya people still live today, but there is a big mystery as to what caused the fall of the empire. The leading theory is drought.
At times, you see stone disks set into the floor of the temple. These are very much like the Aztec sun stone. The Aztec Empire lasted from 1428AD to 1571AD (severely affected by the Spanish conquistadores)
Other bits (the base of the oblisk from the temple) look like they come from Tihuanacu near La Paz in Bolivia. This culture had its heyday around 600BC. They predated the Inca.
These heads are set into the wall of a sunken courtyard.
Here is another view of the sunken courtyard. Behind and above, you can see stairs leading up to another level of the main temple. You can also see a gateway and a statue called the monolith. I was here for the solstice in June 2007, so you will see more about Tihauanacu in a later post.

Going back to the movie set, it was a bit like the spider web guy had a contest with the temple designer guy to see who could be the most 'over the top' in terms of what they did to the set. Hopefully, this won't spoil your experience of the movie and like me, you can just simply sit back, eat your over-priced popcorn, think how good Harrison Ford still looks at 65 year old and enjoy spotting the 'Hollywood gone mad' moments in the movie.
Let's hear it for older men!