Chronicles of the Strange and Mysterious
Page 5
The Nazca Lines
The Nazca lines of Peru offer a more profound challenge to archaeologists, but recent research in laboratory and desert has brought a new understanding of their purpose. Theories that the lines were runways for alien spacecraft or tracks laid out for pre-Columbian athletics meetings have long been laughed out of court.
Anthony F. Aveni, Professor of Astronomy and Anthropology at Colgate University in the United States, led a team which began an elaborate survey of the lines in 1977. Earlier, he and a colleague had studied the extraordinary ceque system of the Inca capital, Cuzco. This was a network of forty-one 'invisible lines' radiating out of the city. Each was punctuated at intervals by a huaca, or sacred place. Unlike the lines, these huacas actually existed, and the investigators found that many of those at the end of the ceques marked places near which water could be found. The system also operated as a gigantic agricultural calendar: each huaca signified a different day in the farmer's year, and some ceques pinpointed where the sun would be on important dates, thus signifying when, for example, the crops should be sown. The ceques were also used as ritual paths by pilgrims.
The Nazca lines were probably laid out 1,000 years before Cuzco was built. Were they, Aveni wondered, forerunners of the ceque system? To find out, six expeditions laboured under the desert sun; volunteers followed the lines for miles across the pampa; aerial photographers produced a photo-mosaic; and the triangles, trapezoids and spirals were meticulously measured. The results were fascinating. Like the spokes of a vast wheel, many lines radiated from centres, each of which took the form of a natural hill or a mound on which a rock cairn had been constructed. These centres reminded the investigators of the huacas of Cuzco.
Many of the Nazca lines, like their invisible counterparts at Cuzco, turned out to be associated with water. Some opened up into vast trapezoids, two thirds of which were aligned with water courses with their 'thin ends' pointing upstream. The astronomical studies added extra weight to the theory. The lines that intersected the part of the horizon through which the sun travelled in the course of the year tended to cluster around one particular area - the region where the sun appears in late October, a time especially important to the Nazca farmers, for this is when the dried-up rivers flow again with water. This suggests that the Nazca lines, like the ceque system, formed a giant agricultural calendar.
The survey also revealed that the lines had been used as pathways and established that they have many of the characteristics of the old Inca roads. Aveni speculated that workers might have used them to travel from one river valley to another and that the paths might have had some sort of ritual use.
This is how Professor Aveni summed up his findings:
To be sure, our argument has proceeded by analogy, but whatever the final answer may be to the mystery of the Nazca lines, this much is certain: the pampa is not a confused and meaningless maze of lines, and it was no more intended to be viewed from the air than an Iowa wheatfield. The lines and line centers give evidence of a great deal of order, and the well-entrenched concept of radiality offers affinities between the ceque system of Cuzco and the lines on the pampa. All the clues point to a ritual scheme involving water, irrigation and planting; but as we might expect of these ancient cultures, elements of astronomy and calendar were also evident.
Although the question of why the lines were built is the major mystery of Nazca, there is another intriguing enigma still to be resolved: How did the Indians of at least 1,000 years ago draw the birds, insects, and animals that make up the huge 'picture book' of Nazca? The outlines are difficult to make out on the desert floor, yet from the air their precision is flawless.
In August 1982, a small group of enthusiasts assembled at a location far to the north of the 'giant scratchpad', a landfill site near West Liberty, Kentucky. Joe Nickell of the University of Kentucky, an experienced investigator of mysteries, planned to work out how the vast drawings of birds, insects and animals that probably predate the larger Nazca lines were actually inscribed onto the desert. Maria Reiche, the stalwart investigator whose study of Nazca began in the 1940s, had noticed an important clue in the course of her painstaking mapping. The draughtsmen of ancient times had made small-scale preliminary drawings of the figures on plots 6 ft (2 m) square. They had then enlarged them, section by section. There can be no doubt that this was the method used: like the lines and figures, these sketches have survived the centuries and can still be seen.
Maria Reiche was less specific about how the drawings were scaled up, however. She suggested that the Nazca Indians could have used a rope and stakes to make straight lines and circles, but was vague about how they could have found the right positions for the stakes that served as the centres of circles or the ends of straight lines. Joe Nickell thought he might have the answer, and called in two of his cousins to put his theory to the test. They decided to try to reproduce one of the most striking of the Nazca drawings, the giant 440-ft (135-m)-long condor. Nickell wrote afterwards:
The method we chose was quite simple. We would establish a center line and locate points on the drawing by plotting their coordinates. That is, on the small drawing we would measure along the center line from one end (the bird's beak) to a point on the line directly opposite the point to be plotted (say a wing tip). Then we would measure the distance from the center line to the desired point. A given number of units on the small drawing would require the same number of units - larger units - on the large drawing.
Maria Reiche had suggested that the desert artists had used a standard unit of measurement known as the 'Nazca foot' - about 32 cm (12.68 in) long. So, using the 'Nazca foot', a wooden T-square to ensure each measurement they made would be at right angles to the centre line, a supply of tennis-court marker-lime for drawing the outline, and with an aeroplane standing by for aerial photography, Nickell and his group (which now included his father) set to work. The task took nine laborious hours of plotting and pegging. Over a mile of string connected the stakes, but the outline was unmistakable. After a week's delay, due to rain, they traced it out with lime, and the figure, 'possibly the world's largest art reproduction', could be photographed in all its glory from the air.
Cheerfully, Nickell summed up. They had proved that:
the drawings could have been produced by a simple method requiring only materials available to South American Indians centuries ago. The Nazcas probably used a simplified form of this method, with perhaps a significant amount of the work being done freehand. There is no evidence that extra-terrestrials were involved; but, if they were, one can only conclude that they seem to have used sticks and cord just as the Indians did.
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[See First Set Of Plates pl01 to pl26]
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The Peruvian Stone Walls
Professor Jean-Pierre Protzen, Chairman of the Department of Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley, also found that practical experimentation can help solve some mysteries. While on a visit to central Peru in 1979, he became fascinated by the ruins of buildings constructed by the ninth emperor of the Incas.
The huge blocks of stone, some weighing well over 100 tons, were put together in a most remarkable way: each block fitted together so tightly that it was impossible in many cases even to slide a knife-blade into the joints. What was the secret of the Inca stone-masonry? Professor Protzen assumed that when he returned to Berkeley he would be able to find out from a book in the university library. But there was no book, and no one seemed to know the answer.
In 1982 the professor set out for Peru once more, determined to crack the mystery. First he examined the spectacular Inca walls at Cuzco, Saqsaywaman and Oliantaytambo. Then he visited the quarries from which the stones had been cut, marvelling in passing at the slides down which the blocks were transported from the rock face. One slide, at Kachiqhata, had 'an awesome 40-degree slope with a 250-meter vertical drop'.
At another quarry Protzen found 250 large stones which, he realized, were 'examples of
all the stages of production, from raw stone to finely dressed blocks'. Scattered amongst them were stones which had obviously come from outside the quarry, probably from the banks of the Vilcanota River nearby. These, he decided, were hammers with which the blocks had been worked. He identified three types: the heaviest probably shaped the stones immediately after they had been cut from the main rock face; the medium-sized ones could have been used for dressing the blocks; and the edges would have been fashioned with the smallest hammers.
The time for theorizing was over. The professor chose a likely looking block and set to. With just six blows of a 9 lb (4 kilo) stone hammer, he shaped a rough block, and then, with another hammer, pounded one of its faces until it was smooth. To protect it from the impact of heavy blows to the next face, he used one of the smallest stones to draft the edges before turning the block over. Ninety minutes later, three sides were dressed. A comparison of the test block with those worked by the Incas confirmed that Professor Protzen's hypothesis was plausible.
Now it was time to tackle the heart of the mystery. How had the Inca stonemasons managed to make the blocks fit together so tightly? The examination of ruined walls provided the clues. Joints - usually concave depressions - were cut in the lower blocks so that the upper course could fit into them precisely. The sides of each block were slotted together in the same way. Once again, Professor Protzen tried the technique himself. He took the block he had already dressed and placed it on top of another. Then he traced the outline of the upper stone upon the lower, removed the top block, and pounded away until he had hollowed out a depression for the top one to fit into. Before long, both stones were tightly locked together.
The enigma of Inca stone-masonry had yielded to an enquiring mind and an energetic arm.
The Great Glass Slab of Galilee
There are some mysteries, however, which cannot be explained by experiment or enterprise; when archaeologists have to make do with excavation and informed guesswork. In the 1950s the local authorities near Haifa, Israel, decided to build a museum in a cave at Beth She'arim, the site of an ancient city where Jews were buried in catacombs. The cave had been used as a water tank and, since it was badly silted-up, a bulldozer was brought in to clear it. In the middle of the floor, the machine struck a large slab, which the museum administrators decided to keep and use as the base of a display case. For years afterwards, visitors filed past, looking only at the model of a building laid out upon it, not realizing that the slab itself was by far the most interesting exhibit of all.
Eventually, some local archaeologists took a closer look at the slab. To their amazement, they found it was not made of rock at all, but of strange purplish-green glass. A search through the record books brought a further surprise. The slab measured 3.40 m by 1.94 m (over 10 ft by 6 ft), was about 50 cm (nearly 20 in) thick, and weighed about 8.8 tons. This made it the third largest piece of glass ever known to have been made by man, ranking only after two giant mirrors manufactured in 1934 - making full use of the current technology - for the Hale Telescope at Mount Palomar in the United States. Yet from what was known of the history of the cave, the 'Great Glass Slab of Galilee', as it came to be called, was well over 1,000 years old.
In 1964, soon after its discovery, a team of American experts was called in to investigate the slab. Its leader, Dr Robert Brill, Administrator of Scientific Research at the Corning Museum of Glass, New York, was mystified. The slab was certainly made of glass - laboratory tests on a core taken from it with a power-drill proved as much. But what was the third largest piece of glass in the world doing in a cave in Galilee? And who had made it, and when and why? To produce a slab that size would certainly have been a daunting task, requiring around 11 tons of raw material kept at a temperature of 1,150°C for several days.
In fact, finding out how the glass had been made did not prove difficult. Brill and his colleagues managed to excavate beneath the slab and there they found a layer of large stones which appeared to have once been covered with clay. This, Brill guessed, was the bottom of a large tank in which the glass must have been mixed and fired. He went on to suggest that firing chambers were probably built at the side to provide heat for melting the material and that the whole tank was covered over. He later learned from the archaeologists that, within living memory, a course of large stones had existed around the slab, and this strengthened his conviction that a tank had been used.
It was fairly simple, too, to guess why the slab had been left in the cave: Brill's chemical analysis of the core showed that it had gone wrong in the furnace. At the bottom the raw materials had not fused together properly, the whole thing had crystallized - and its dull appearance meant that no one recognized it as glass when the museum was opened.
Comparisons with other ancient glass from the area - in addition to his knowledge of the history of the cave -enabled Brill to estimate that the slab had been made at some time between the fourth and early seventh centuries, but he was at a loss to explain why the glassworkers of ancient Galilee had embarked upon their laborious task in the first place. There was one clue, but it told him little.
Manganese had been added to the mixture to give the glass its purplish colour, suggesting that it had been designed to be decorative. Perhaps, Brill speculated, the slab had been destined to be broken up into small pieces and sent out to craftsmen in other villages, who would then have fashioned glass objects of their own from them. Or perhaps the intention had been to keep it in one piece and use it in a building as an impressive architectural feature. Robert Brill was doubtful that the answer would ever be forthcoming. He wrote:
We must in the meantime commend its unknown makers for their engineering skill. They brought over eleven tons of raw materials to a temperature in excess of 1000°C for several days, and produced a glassy consolidated mass. This was a considerable technological feat, and I know of no similar accomplishment in the metallurgical or other pyrotechnic arts in ancient times.
Dr Brill's approach is realistic. There can be no definitive solutions to such mysteries, for, as far as we can tell, the ideas and technological secrets of so many ancient civilizations were not written down. The fact that the Californian Chinese anchors were thought mysterious shows how quickly know-how can be forgotten. Scientists can learn much about mysterious artefacts by experiment, the archaeologist's spade can turn up many clues, but the exact intentions and methods of the people who traced out the huge pictures of the Nazca desert, of the Galilean glass-makers, the Inca builders and the metalworkers who worked a Chinese warlord's belt are likely to stay lost forever in the tantalizing silence of the past.
Arthur C. Clarke comments:
I am happy to see a solution to the mystery of the 'ancient' Chinese aluminium belt, which has worried me for years. Technologically, such an artefact would be almost as anomalous as a medieval transistor radio. Of course, the solution may not be right, but it is highly plausible - and one possible solution is infinitely better than none. Recent scandals have shown that archaeological (and other scientific) frauds are by no means uncommon, and may begin as practical jokes that sometimes get out of hand. The classic case is that of the eighteenth-century German professor whose academic rivals carved amazing fake fossils for him to discover.
The fact that some of them appeared to be of fiery comets, stars and spiders spinning webs only increased his eagerness to publish his findings. By the time he discovered that he had been hoaxed, it was too late - and he spent the rest of his life (and fortune) buying up the volumes in which he had printed his revolutionary conclusions.
A few months ago I received a letter and photograph from Mr William W. Jenna of Bel Air, Maryland, containing information about an item which one might suspect of having a similar origin. Note that it was found on the high plateau near Nazca - where, as we have seen, some surprisingly ingenious technology once flourished!
About ten years ago, my wife and I purchased a piece of pre-Columbian pottery from a collector who had unearthed it in a dig in P
eru in the late 1950s. The piece was a product of the Vicus culture, which flourished in Peru between the first and fifth century A.D. Because of the location in which the piece was found, the high plateau near Nazca, it was dated by museum experts at around A.D. 200; at least 1,500 years before the dawn of the industrial revolution. Yet it would appear to be an exact representation of a modern steamroller, complete with a front 'smoke-stack' and, even more startling, a cab with a driver inside, tire-treads, and wheel spokes. All this from a culture which, as far as we know, did not even make use of the wheel. Everything was carried or dragged from place to place, and it was not until the Spanish explorers conquered the area that wheeled vehicles (carts, etc.) were introduced.
Up to this point, only a handful of people have seen the piece, primarily museum curators, who, like ourselves, were both puzzled and fascinated by the piece. The thing is in mint condition, having fortunately been perfectly preserved by the extremely arid conditions of the high plateau; all the museum people agreed that it was a superb example of the Vicus double-vessel work, and all placed the date between A.D. 100 and 300.