Nazca culture and the Nazca Lines

The Nazca culture flourished in the valleys of the Río Grande de Nazca and Ica. Its main centre, Cahuachi, was not a city but a ceremonial site of earthen mounds and plazas, used for rituals and feasts connected with water and fertility. Nazca potters painted their vessels before firing, using a palette of a dozen or more slip colours; weavers produced technically complex textiles on backstrap looms, and some of the underground aqueducts, the puquios, still work today.

On the desert pampa the Nazca — and before them the Paracas people — made the lines by removing the reddish-brown surface stones to expose the lighter ground beneath: straight lines, geometric shapes and more than seventy figures of animals, such as the hummingbird, the monkey and the spider. The lines were created between about 500 BC and AD 500. Their purpose is still debated: Maria Reiche saw them as an astronomical calendar, while others connect them with the worship of water or with ritual paths. They have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994.

The dates of the culture are archaeological and differ between sources: the English Wikipedia gives about 100 BC – AD 800, with the late phase ending around 750, and the Russian article the 2nd century BC to the 6th century AD. From about 500 the culture declined, probably because of El Niño floods made worse by deforestation, and the rise of the Wari state around 650 completed the change.