Archaeologists using artificial intelligence (AI) have discovered hundreds of new geoglyphs depicting parrots, cats, monkeys, killer whales and even decapitated heads near the Nazca lines in Peruin a find that nearly doubles the number of known figures at the enigmatic 2,000-year-old archaeological site.
A team from Japan’s Yamagata University’s Nazca Institute, in collaboration with IBM Researchdiscovered 303 previously unknown geoglyphs of humans and animals – all smaller in size than the large geometric patterns dating from 200-700 AD and spanning more than 400 sq km of the Nazca Plateau.
The new figures, dating back to 200 BC, provide a new understanding of the transition from the Paracas culture to the Nazcas, who later created the iconic hummingbird, monkey and whale figures that are part of the Unesco World Heritage Site, Peru s most popular tourist attraction to Machu Picchu.
“Using AI in research has allowed us to map the distribution of geoglyphs faster and more accurately,” said Yamagata University archaeologist Masato Sakai, who presented the research at a press conference at the Japanese Embassy in Lima on Monday. have.
The use of AI combined with low-flying drones a revolution in the speed and pace at which the geoglyphs were discovered, according to a research paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The paper said that while it “took almost a century to discover a total of 430 figurative Nazca geoglyphs”, using an AI system covering the entire Nazca region, it “took just six months to discover 303 new figurative geoglyphs”.
The AI model effectively spotted many of the smaller relief-type geoglyphs that were harder to see with the naked eye.
It has also been able to analyze large amounts of geospatial data generated by drones to identify areas where more geoglyphs can be found.
Johnny Isla, Peru‘s lead archaeologist for the Nazca Lines, said the use of drones and AI represents a quantum leap for archaeological study in the area.
“With a drone you can cover several kilometers in a day,” he said by phone from Nazca. “What used to take three or four years can now be done in two or three days.”
He added that the newly discovered geoglyphs were so small – between three to seven meters across – that they would not be detected by the overlaps of the past that discovered the giant images, lines and trapezoids that crisscross Nazca’s vast desert plain.
The mysterious lines that attract tens of thousands of tourists each year include a mysterious humanoid figure known as the “astronaut”, animals and large geometric patterns including perfectly formed spirals and trapezoids that stretch for miles.
The new geoglyphs also differed in their meaning from the Nazca culture’s large geometric patterns and zoomorphic figures, Isla explained.
“We can say that these geoglyphs were made by people for people, they often show scenes from everyday life, he said. “While the geoglyphs of the Nazca period are gigantic figures made on mostly flat surfaces to be seen by their gods.”
The older, smaller geoglyphs could have been used as signs, he said, or represented family or kinship groups, but probably did not have the ritual significance linked to water and fertility of the larger, later drawn lines.
The new figures included large linear geoglyphs, mainly representing wild animals, but they also included gory figures showing people holding severed heads, abstract humanoids, and domesticated camelids, such as llamas and alpacas.
