A vast desert area between Cahuachi and Palpa was covered in antiquity with a huge array of lines, some depicting figures. These were created by removing dark stones from the surface to expose light coloured subsoil.
The designs are huge and can only be appreciated from the air, so their makers cannot ever have seen them.
They were probably executed by scaling up a previously prepared design. (A modern team investigating the lines demonstrated how easily this could be done when they made an experimental line and spiral using simple technology such as string and markers.).
Many of the designs are geometric figures or straight lines radiating from a central point; some, however are more complex, depicting birds, animals, flowers and objects.
Some evidence suggests that these figurative designs are the earliest, around 100 BC-200 AD, while the radiating lines are probably later. Frequently the figures are constructed of a single continuous line: this perhaps formed a path followed in the course of religious ceremonies.
Offerings of pottery have been found by the figures and at the central points of radiating lines where small cairns were constructed: offerings continued even after the Spanish conquest of Peru. Although the Nazca Lines are the largest concentration of such art, they are not unique. Other examples of such figures come from other parts of coastal South America: these include a number at Cerro Unitas in northern Chile.
