Documentary: Nasca Lines: Buried Secrets

Readers in the US take note! This Sunday at 10 PM EST, the National Geographic Channel will be premiering a new documentary, Nasca Lines: Buried Secrets, from Edge West Productions, directed by celebrated British documentarian Philip J. Day.

February 18, 2010 | Archaeology, News

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Without Machu Picchu you’ll enjoy the trip of a lifetime

SPECIAL: PERU WITHOUT MACHU PICCHU – Machu Picchu is closed. It will stay that way through all of February at the very least. Do you have your flights booked and are wondering what to do next? Should you cancel or put off your trip to Cuzco?

February 4, 2010 | Travel and Places

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Priestess of Cahuachi

Tomb discovered of an elite child dating to the early Nasca Period. With the mummy were various pieces of jewellery made from gold, silver and precious stones.

Paying for a guardian out of his own pocket for 27 years turned out to be worth it for the Italian archaeologists Giuseppe Orefici, director of the Nasca Project. Not reimbursed by his supervisors in Italy nor (shamefully but all too predictably) by the Peruvian state, it is thanks to the Italian’s dedication at the heavily tomb-raided ceremonial city of Cahuachi, a expansive adobe city of countless buried pyramids, that a recent discovery was able to be made.

November 7, 2009 | Archaeology, News

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The Nazca Civilisation

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

December 3, 2008 | Culture & History

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Could the Nazcans fly?

It is a mystery as yet unsolved. How were the ancient Nazca able to draw such huge and complicated designs in the barren Nazca plains, drawings so large that they are only visible from the air? Could it be that this pre-Inca civilisation mastered some form of flight allowing them to both create and appreciate their work? Some think so.

November 25, 2008 | Culture & History

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Cemetery of Chauchilla

Laying untouched for centuries, this isolated spot in the dry Nazcan desert was used as a place to bury and preserve the mummified dead of the Nazca culture. Since then, the countless hundreds of tombs found here have been pillaged and destroyed. What remains is at first a fascinating sight for visitors – bones, ceramics and cloth scattered across the sands, pieces of ancient fabric blowing around in the wind – but that fascination soon turns to despair as you realise the amount of precious historical information lost.

November 18, 2008 | Archaeology, Ica, Pisco, Nazca Guide

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Lost city of Cahuachi

The Nazcan city of Cahuachi was a stunning and magnificent place. Stretching along the dusty hills above the Nazca River valley are an as-yet unknown number of pyramids and temples – a good number of those rolling hills are not at all natural features. Some estimates of the area the city covered are as much as 24km2 – bigger than even the famous Chimú city of Chan Chan.

November 14, 2008 | Archaeology, Ica, Pisco, Nazca Guide

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The Nazca Lines

Etched into the barren rocky desert plains of of Nazca, in the region of Ica, is a mystery yet to be solved. Stretching for miles, and only visible from the air, are a series of lines, geometric shapes and figures that are 2000 years old. Created by the Nazca civilisation, their true purpose has yet to be determined.

November 12, 2008 | Archaeology, Ica, Pisco, Nazca Guide

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