Japanese-Peruvian Team Discover 168 More Nazca Lines Winter 2023

One hundred sixty-eight previously unrecognized Nazca Lines dating from 100 BCE to 300 CE have been identified by a Japanese-Peruvian research team in Southern Peru. The newly discovered geoglyphs – markings made by removing a top layer of dark rock to expose lighter sand below – include abstracted figures of humans and a wide variety of animals including camelids, birds, killer whales, felines, and snakes. The discovery was announced by researchers led by Professor Masato Sakai, a specialist in Andean archaeology from Yamagata University and Peruvian archaeologist Jorge Olano.

The Spider, Nasca World Heritage Site, The Spider (Nazca Lines), 30 January 2019, Photo by PsamatheM, CCA-SA 4.0 International license.

The Nazca geoglyphs were named a World Heritage Site in 1994 and their fame has attracted both tourists and protests. In 2014 Greenpeace activists laid out giant letters in a message calling for environmental action next to a major Nasca image of a hummingbird damaged the protected site, for which Greenpeace apologized.

Yamagata University has been committed to studying the glyphs in the region for some time. The university established an Institute of Nazca in the town of Nazca in 2012, and in 2015 signed an agreement with Peru’s Ministry of Culture to expand their work. In 2017, an archaeological park was established to protect glyphs located near downtown Nazca.

The team collected data in field surveys to collect high resolutions aerial and drone photographs of the Nazca plain and along ancient trails in the surrounding hills. They used AI to analyze the images to locate dozens of mostly smaller figures in locations such as across hillsides, where the lines hadn’t previously been recognized.

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