A new study claims that ancient people from Peru are responsible for the lines of rocks in the coastal desert that might have been used as festival sites. Dating from around 300 BC, the rocks are even older than the popular Nasca lines.
The Paracas people who lived at the southern Andean coast of Peru were some of its earliest village settlers. They are known to have unique building talents and were attributed to have built the ceremonial grounds near their houses and the long lines of stacked rock in the overlooking highlands. These lines of piled rock, dubbed as "geoglyphs," can stretch for more than 3 kilometers (1.9 miles).
Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, have mapped 71 lines in the area that measures at 15 sq mi. These lines were found to be 12 miles away from the coast of Chincha Valley in southern Peru and midway between highland and coastal settlements.
Charles Stanish, co-author of the report, described how the lines were pointed to five ceremonial mounds. During the winter solstice in June, they are aligned in specific directions that suggest the occurrence of a festival.
"They were meant to be seen from above. If you want people to come to your trade fair, you have to point the way. These lines point straight to the ceremonial mounds on the coast where people could trade," Stanish said to National Geograpghic. "I
They were also able to find other evidences suggesting that the sites had been in business around 2,300 years ago. Researchers have excavated pottery and radiocarbon from three of the coastal mounds.
The new discovery of the Paracas geoglyphs overlaps the dates between the Paracas and the early Nasca geoglyphs. The researchers used "luminescence dating," a method used to identify the how long ago the minerals were exposed to sunlight, to fully determine the real age of the geoglyphs.
This study was published on The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
