Artificial intelligence helps uncover 303 new geoglyphs in Nazca desert

With the help of an artificial intelligence (AI) system, a group of archaeologists has uncovered in just a few months almost as many geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert (Peru) as those found in all of the last century. The large number of new figures has allowed the researchers to differentiate between two main types, and to offer an explanation of the possible reasons or functions that led their creators to draw them on the ground more than 2,000 years ago.

The Nazca desert, with an area of about 1,900 square miles and an average altitude of 500 meters above sea level, has very special climatic conditions. It hardly ever rains, the hot air blocks the wind and the dry land has prevented the development of agriculture or livestock. Combined, all this has allowed a series of lines and figures, formed by stacking and aligning pebbles and stones, to be preserved for centuries. The first layer of soil is made up of a blanket of small reddish stones that, when lifted, reveal a second yellowish layer. This difference in color is the basis of the geoglyphs and is what was used to create them by the ancient Nazca civilization. Some are straight lines stretching several miles. Others are geometric shapes or rectilinear figures, also huge in size. The other major category includes the so-called relief-type geoglyphs, which are smaller. In the 1930s, Peruvian aviators discovered the first ones, and by the end of the century more than a hundred had been identified, such as the hummingbird, the frog and the whale. Since 2004, supported by high-resolution satellite images, Japanese archaeologists have discovered 318 more, almost all of them high-profile geoglyphs. The same team, led by Masato Sakai, a scientist from Yamagata University (Japan), has discovered 303 new geoglyphs in a single campaign, supported by artificial intelligence.

“It speeds up the discovery process,” Sakai admits, asked about the advantage that artificial intelligence brings. “The Nazca Pampa is a vast area covering more than 400 square kilometres and no exhaustive study has been carried out,” the Japanese scientist recalls. Only the northern part, where the large linear geoglyphs are concentrated, “has been studied relatively intensively,” he adds. But scattered throughout the rest of the desert are many relief-type figures that are smaller and that the passage of time has made more difficult to detect.

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