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Descended from the older Paracas civilisation, the Nazca are of course most famous for their countless mysterious lines drawn in the rocky desert plains in which they lived. They were also great water engineers, creating a series of complex aqueducts.

When you think of the Nazca, you think of their mysterious geometric shapes and lines in the desert, which were seemingly important enough to dedicate such huge amounts of time and resources to create.

From their capital city of Cahuachi, archaeologists have gleamed far more information about this pre-Incan people. This city was of immense, memorising proportions. Most estimates put the terrain it covered at as much as 24km2, that’s, dare I mention it, bigger than Chan Chan, built centuries later. It stretches along the sandy slopes overlooking the fertile valley, in a line that is, by my estimate, about 12km. Here you’ll find dozens of pyramids, broken pottery scattered across the desert and textiles just beneath the surface.

What was found here told us that the Nazca were descendants of the older Paracas culture, continuing their production of some of the most complex and creative textile patterns in the Andean world, and continuing and improving upon their ceramic production techniques, creating new methods to produce colourful and more realistic decoration.

From their ancient burial ground of Chauchilla, we learn that far from being small, the average Nazcan was 1.7m or 5.57ft tall. They also sported long thing dreadlocks that reach the floor.

Other than the fascinating lines, or the huge ceremonial city of Cahuachi, the Nazca are also famous for their complex underground aqueducts, bringing water to the more arid parts of their world. Wells leading down into them are found at Cantalloc, near the much later Inca ruins of Paredones, eventual rulers of this land.

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One of the wells down into the aqueduct

The Aqueducts of Cantalloc, also known by the more hispanified Cantayo, are one of the Nazca civilisation’s greatest achievements - building them was a far more difficult task than creating the Nazca lines.

Cursed with a barren, dry and rocky desert in which to live, with only the narrowest of valleys with the narrowest of areas suitable for agriculture, developing hydraulic engineering was a necessity.

Between 30 and 50 underground channels were constructed about 1500 years ago, bringing water from rivers higher in the valley to the centre of their civilisation. Spanning kilometres, trenches were dug that were lined with stones and covered by wood from local trees before being reburied.

At Cantayo, 4km from the modern city of Nasca, we find about 17 open wells. These have paths that spiral down to the level of the running water that provide access to this precious resource, but possibly also access to clean or repair the structures in case of an earthquake.

This year-round irrigation system allowed the Nazca to widen the farmable area of the valleys in which they lived, growing their crops of cotton, corn, beans and potatoes, as well as a variety of fruit. The valleys around Nazca are as green today as they were when the canals were finished, and this is because these very same canals are still in use today.

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