By utilizing drone technology and AI, scientists are accelerating the discovery of geoglyphs dating back to around 100 BC on the Nazca Desert.
Located in the coastal plains of Peru, approximately 400 km south of the capital Lima, the Nazca Desert is home to a vast collection of strange patterns etched into the ground, varying in size and shape.
Anthropologists believe that the Nazca culture began around 100 BC and flourished from 1 to 700 AD.
Currently, archaeologists are still unable to explain why the Nazca people created these gigantic, bizarre figures.
One of the newly discovered designs in the Peruvian desert. (Photo: Yamagata University).
The geoglyphs of the Nazca Plateau were first recognized in the 1920s when commercial flights passed over the arid desert stretching 85 km in southern Peru. They were created during the Nazca period, roughly from 200 BC to 600 AD, and are considered one of the greatest archaeological mysteries in the world.
“It took nearly a century to discover a total of 430 glyphs,” said Masato Sakai, an archaeologist at Yamagata University in Japan, who has studied these glyphs for 30 years.
However, in just the last six months, as many as 303 previously unmapped geoglyphs have been discovered in Nazca. To put this into perspective, this number is nearly double the amount that had been mapped up to 2020.
This research was published by Dr. Sakai in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
According to the study, researchers utilized artificial intelligence combined with low-flying drones to cover an area of approximately 630 km2.
Geoglyphs discovered using AI and the Watson supercomputer. (Photo: Yamagata University).
Notable geoglyphs include a gigantic two-headed snake about to swallow two people, images of birds, fish, and a strangely shaped dancing figure. These designs are etched deep into the earth, dating from around 100 BC to 300 AD.
Geoglyph depicting a two-headed snake about to swallow a person. (Photo: Yamagata University).
Not only does technology enable faster discoveries, but it also provides insights into the mysterious purposes of these symbols.
In fact, the newly found images could have been discovered in previous flights if pilots had known where to look.
The main issue is that the pastures are so vast that “without the help of automation, searching through the dry grass becomes nearly impossible,” said Marcus Freitag, a physicist at IBM who collaborated on this project.
To identify the new geoglyphs, which are smaller than earlier examples, scientists used an application capable of distinguishing outlines from aerial photographs, regardless of how faint they may be.
“AI was able to eliminate 98% of the images. Human experts now only need to confirm or dismiss potential images,” Freitag noted.
AI has discovered at least 303 previously unknown geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert. (Photo: Masato Sakai).
From the desert plains, the 2% identified by AI corresponds to about 47,410 potential sites. After thoroughly reviewing high-resolution photos, Dr. Sakai’s team narrowed it down to just 1,309 candidates.
“The images are classified into three groups based on their potential ratio, which allows us to predict the likelihood that they are actual geoglyphs before conducting field surveys,” Sakai explained.
Archaeologists still do not have a definitive explanation for the methods of creation or the motivations behind the mysterious glyphs made by the Nazca people. Some theories suggest they are related to religious activities, astronomy, or even extraterrestrial beings. The Nazca geoglyphs were recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1994.
