he Nazca Lines, a group of hundreds of mysterious geoglyphs etched into the desert in Peru, have mystified scientists for nearly a century. People from ancient civilizations made the drawings over a period of hundreds of years, beginning around 200 B.C. By analyzing the style and subject matter of the drawings and the methods used to make them, researchers at Yamagata University in Japan have proposed that the lines were made by two different cultures — the Nazca and their predecessors, the Paracas — and were intended to be seen on their respective pilgrimages to an ancient temple, not from the sky as they’re more often seen today.
The Nazca people most probably were doing rituals to plead for water from their gods. Perhaps, the lines were made that large to make their gods see them and to show them their desperate need for water as a message through the shapes.
According to Reinhard, animal symbols and spiral themes that can be seen in the shapes were common in other ancient Peruvian sites.
Looking at the meaning of these symbols in the Peruvian ancient age, it displays that spiders are believed to be a token of rain, hummingbirds are linked with fertility, and monkeys are associated with their location in the Amazon, the place with affluence of water.
Moreover, the hummingbird, which draws attention among the shapes, seems to confirm this thesis. Hummingbirds are known to live in tropical areas close to the equator, the regions where it rains for hours a day, not 20 minutes a year.
“No single evaluation proves a theory about the lines, but the combination of archaeology, ethnohistory, and anthropology builds a solid case,” said Reinhard.
Water is the source of life as well as the source of change. Maybe that’s what the people living there wanted to say. They wanted the desert they lived in to change by giving messages.
And perhaps, what they desired was access to water, the same thing that we may lack in the future due to global warming- disrupted weather patterns.