AI Reveals New Secrets of the Nazca

Imagine flying high above the sun-drenched plains of southern Peru where the land is a canvas for ancient puzzles or riddles. Carved into the desert floor are massive drawings of, among other things, spiders, hummingbirds and monkeys, which have puzzled explorers for centuries. These drawings, known as the Nazca Lines, are one of the most enigmatic forms of human expression in the world and only possible to see from the sky.

What if I said that in 2024, state-of-the-art technology peeled back the sands of time and revealed hundreds more? Thanks to the information, or the brain, that is artificial intelligence, who thinks more like an archaeologist than I do, it revealed 303 new geoglyphs, which is almost double what we knew about this UNESCO World Heritage site. Join me as we fly into these Peruvian geoglyphs, try to tease apart what they might have been for, and consider their immense cultural significance.