Archaeologists using artificial intelligence have uncovered hundreds of new drawings depicting parrots, cats, monkeys, killer whales and even decapitated heads near the Nazca Lines in Peru, nearly doubling the number of human figures known at the mysterious 2,000-year-old archaeological site.
A team from Yamagata University’s Nasca Institute, in collaboration with IBM Research, discovered 303 previously unknown geoglyphs of humans and animals, all smaller than the vast geometric patterns that cover more than 400 square kilometers of the Nasca Plateau and date to between 200 and 700 AD.
The new statues, dating back to 200 BC, offer new understanding of the transition from the Paracas culture to the Nazca culture, which later created the iconic hummingbird, monkey and whale statues that form part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Peru’s most popular tourist attraction after Machu Picchu.
“Using a drone, we can travel several kilometers in a day,” says Johnny Isla. Photo: Yamagata University
“By using AI in our research, we can now map the distribution of the geoglyphs more quickly and accurately,” said Masato Sakai, an archaeologist at Yamagata University, who presented the research at a press conference at the Japanese Embassy in Lima on Monday.
A study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) claims that the use of AI combined with low-flying drones has revolutionized the speed and rate of geoglyph discovery.
According to the paper, “it took almost a century to discover all 430 Nazca lines,” but by using an AI system covering the entire Nazca region, “303 new lines were discovered in just six months.”
The AI model efficiently found many of the small relief-type geoglyphs that are difficult to see with the naked eye.
They were also able to analyse the vast amounts of geospatial data generated by the drone to identify areas where even more geoglyphs might be found.
Johnny Isla, lead archaeologist at the Nasca Lines in Peru, said the use of drones and AI was a breakthrough for archaeological research in the region.
“With drones, we can cover several kilometers in a day,” he said by phone from Nasca. “What once took three or four years can now be done in two or three days.”
He added that the newly discovered lines are very small – between three and seven metres wide – and could not have been spotted during previous high-altitude flights that uncovered the huge drawings, lines and trapezoids that crisscross the vast Nazca desert plains.
Attracting tens of thousands of tourists each year, the mysterious line includes mysterious humanoid figures known as “astronauts”, animals and vast geometric patterns including perfectly formed spirals and trapezoids that stretch for miles.
“You can tell these geoglyphs were made by humans for humans, and they often depict scenes from everyday life,” Isla said. Composite photo: Yamagata University
Isla explained that the new lines are also different in meaning from the Nazca culture’s vast geometric patterns and animal iconography.
“You could say these lines were made by humans for humans, and they often depict scenes from everyday life,” he says, “whereas the Nasca lines are mostly giant figures on flat surfaces, meant for the gods to see.”
He says the older, smaller geoglyphs may have been used as symbols or represented family or kinship groups, but probably did not have the ritual significance linked to water or fertility that the later, larger geoglyphs did.
The new imagery included large linear geoglyphs, mostly depicting wild animals, but also cruel images of decapitated humans, abstract humanoids, and domesticated camelids such as llamas and alpacas.
