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 Peru, in a find that nearly doubles the number of known figures at the enigmatic 2,000-year-old archaeological site.
A team from the Japanese University of Yamagata’s Nazca Institute, in collaboration with IBM Research, discovered 303 previously unknown geoglyphs of humans and animals – all smaller in size than the vast geometric patterns that date from AD200-700 and stretch across more than 400 sq km of the Nazca plateau.
The new figures, which date back to 200BC, 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 make up part of the Unesco World Heritage site, Peru’s most popular tourist attraction after Machu Picchu.
“The use of AI in research has allowed us to map the distribution of geoglyphs more quickly and accurately,” said the archaeologist Masato Sakai of Yamagata University, presenting the research at a press conference at the Japanese embassy in Lima on Monday.
The use of AI combined with low-flying drones revolutionised the speed and rate 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 while it “took nearly 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 efficiently spotted many of the smaller relief-type geoglyphs which were harder to see with the naked eye.
It was also able to analyse vast quantities of geospatial data generated by drones to identify areas where more geoglyphs might be found.
Johny Isla, Peru’s chief archaeologist for the Nazca Lines, said the use of drones and AI represented 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 metres across – that they would not have been detected by the flyovers of the past which discovered the giant images, lines and trapezoids that crisscross Nazca’s vast desert plain.
The mysterious lines that attract tens of thousands of tourists every year include a mysterious humanoid figure known as the “astronaut”, animals and vast geometric patterns including perfectly formed spirals and trapezoids which stretch for miles.
The new geoglyphs also differed from Nazca culture’s vast geometric patterns and zoomorphic figures in their meaning, Isla explained.
“We can say that these geoglyphs were made by humans for humans, they often show scenes from everyday life, he said. “Whereas 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 lacked the ritual significance linked to water and fertility of the larger, latterly drawn lines.
The new figures included large linear geoglyphs, mainly representing wild animals, but they also included gory figures showing humans holding decapitated heads, abstract humanoids and domesticated camelids, such as llamas and alpacas.
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