Ancient drawings in the Peru desert have been discovered by researchers who captured images of 50 new Nasca Lines and massive geoglyphs while surveying the area with drones and satellites, National Geographic reported.
For years the enigmatic Nasca lines etched into the high desert of southern Peru have fascinated experts, who are still grappling to understand the drawings that span over 200 square miles of space and were created between 200 B.C. and 600 A.D., possibly by the technologically sophisticated Nazca people, The Atlas Obscura said.
Now Peruvian archaeologists are hoping their latest discovery could be a link to understanding the ancient culture.
Some of the newly discovered desert monuments that have been traced onto the Earth's surface belong to the Nasca culture, but experts suspect that many of the images may have been carved between 500 B.C. and 200 A.D. by the earlier Paracas and Topará cultures.
"This means that it is a tradition of over a thousand years that precedes the famous geoglyphs of the Nasca culture, which opens the door to new hypotheses about its function and meaning," Peruvian Ministry of Culture archaeologist Johny Isla, the Nasca lines' chief restorer and protector, told National Geographic.
The discovery came about indirectly as the result of an incident in December 2014 in which Greenpeace staged a protest near a Nasca monument that led to the damage of the area, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
At the time, environmental activists trampled over the sands to lay yellow fabric letters spelling out a message campaigning for renewable energy, The Guardian noted.
Authorities said their tracks caused damage to one of the images but amid the uproar, the U.S. offered a grant to Peru to hire a restoration team, which is how Isla and his team came to be involved.
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