ARE THE NAZCA LINES UNIQUE?

Is the straight line a Nazca local phenomenon, or are there lines in other places on this planet? If they do not occur elsewhere we may be looking at a solitary local culture which developed this interest in straight lines for some reason, useful or religious, that arose and died as a particular cult. But if straight lines occurred elsewhere, there will be more reason to think they were part of the existence of a civilization and that these instances were connected in some way. Yet how can this be, if the other occurrences are on different continents, at a time several thousand years ago when humans are thought to have been incapable of ocean travel. The chances of independent existence of long straight lines on the surface of the earth at a distance of over 5000 miles from the plain of Nazca seem remote. Yet this is what we find.

In 1925 AD a book was published in England called The Old Straight Track, written by Alfred Watkins. He was born in 1844 and was

a distinguished local merchant, amateur archaeologist, inventor (e.g. the pinhole camera and Watkins exposure meter), photographer, and naturalist.

He worked in his youth as a brewer's representative for his father, which brought him into close contact with the countryside surrounding the town of Hereford. Towards the end of his life it suddenly occurred to him that the notches he had seen on hillsides, the old trackways he had noticed, the prehistoric mounds, the holy wells, the churches, castles, iron age camps and mark stones, in a number of cases were in perfectly straight lines. So straight that a line ruled on an ordnance survey map would run directly through up to eight of them. Three in line would be no better than chance, he found. The age discrepancy between bronze age burial grounds, iron age forts, mediaeval churches and castles, arose because all these later works, when aligned, proved to have been constructed on prehistoric mounds. He noted that Winchester cathedral's high altar is sited over an ancient 'holy' well.

He found more: tracks that led from hill top through a valley, down through a pond, up the other side, past ancient mark stones and single entrances to flat topped mounds (with moats) covering in some cases a stone 'cromlech' or shelter where human remains were found. Frequently these mounds were sited on the most scenic outcrops overlooking pleasant valleys and with a wide vista of spectacular views. The straight tracks or 'leys' as he called them often seemed to begin and end at a hill top. The line of track would be hollowed out, as it neared a hilltop or skyline, so that a 'notch' effect was created for anyone standing on the line of the 'ley' approaching the hill. In his own words (p.40):

the fact has to be faced that if a track is on a sighted ley it does not go along a selected route, but over whatever steep and seemingly improbable obstacles come in the way.

And on p. 2:

As regards shape, the 'long barrow' (few in number) is one type: the remainder are circular or slightly oval. In Herefordshire and surrounding counties the circular ones seem to be of two types - round top and flat top, the last by far the most numerous

In Yorkshire examples range...from 15 to 125 feet in diameter and from a few inches to 22 feet in height,,,one flat topped mound (mainly artificial) at the bottom of Garrowby Hill, 250 feet in diameter and 50 feet high...

The shortest discernible ley lengths appear to be about 3 to 4 miles, many are much longer. And on p.42:

The bold way in which the track plunges, not merely towards, but directly through, pieces of water, both natural and artificial, is at first a matter of perplexity.

He continues by explaining that the approaches are so cut that the traveller sees the water from afar if on the right track.

Most amazing of all experiences in ley hunting is the fact that not only do leys often go precisely through small ponds (without islands) in the fields but the actual land roads or causeways in the direction of the leys are sometimes found at the bottom of the ponds.

It is quite probable that there was water in the ponds in prehistoric times (c. 4000+ years ago) as the circular ditches surrounding the mounds appear to have been constructed to contain water, and climatic conditions are considered not to have been very different from those in the 20^th c. AD.

Watkins refers to straight tracks and notched skylines in Africa (Uganda), India (China hill country) and Palestine (Ghaza). Even if we set aside this additional information as merely hearsay evidence, one incontrovertible fact remains: there are many examples in Britain and in the Peruvian Andes of prehistoric straight tracks which in both cases begin abruptly, often in high places, continue unswervingly across or over intervening obstacles, regardless of height or water, and end, generally after a distance of miles, frequently in high places, equally abruptly, without evidence of habitation at either end. To show you how the English Herefordshire ley lines mirror the Peruvian Nazca lines, here is a replica of one of the several illustrative photos in the book by Watkins:

It's remarkable that traces of the original lines still exist after thousands of years, with Briton, Saxon, Dane, and Norman occupation; a feudal land-based economy followed by an industrial, an imperial, and then a global economy; with countless wars, considerable land working and construction, over such a long period.

Because of the characteristics of simple human nature we can I suggest fairly safely assume that the placings of offerings at points on the lines along the way, and sacrifices at either high point ending (Nazca), with references to the holiness of wells, and establishing of later religious places, or castles denoting secular authority (England), all arose on the prehistoric lines because of the deeply rooted mortal awe and ingrained fear by earlier co-existing humans, of those who created these lines and 'leys.'

The makers of the long lines in prehistoric England seem to have had the same contemptuous disregard for the difficulty of the terrain in creating a line as did those who created lines at Nazca. Further, the lines seem random but with aggregation points for no apparent (to us) reason. Experience shows us that it does not take humans much use to turn a trail, just blazed, into a track, and then into a well worn path. These generally follow the line of least resistance and are far from straight. Evolutionists see present-day humankind as descended from earlier more primitive origins, and if there is some truth in that, animal characteristics should be taken into account as a component of human nature. Animals do not ordinarily travel in straight lines. Generally, for their own protection they change direction frequently. During recorded history, the devious paths, tracks and roadways of earlier humans are notorious, and much 20^th c. AD civilized time and effort was spent straightening curves and turns in earlier roads as our speed of locomotion increased. When I lived in England many years ago I used to complain that the roads there had been created by drunken shepherds.

I believe we can arrive at some logical conclusions from the evidence we have. First, that the phenomenon of miles-long perfectly straight lines is not limited to Nazca. Next, that they appear to us as random and as a product of some function. They do not appear to have been created as an end product for use in themselves, but as a by-product of some other purposeful activity. The lines do not appear to us to have artistic intention, although the creators of the lines give strong evidence in huge-scale drawings of great artistic ability which we can recognize as such. (Nazca: creature and geometric; England: the White Horse - see EF's The Mysterious Cursus chapter 6). The difficult ground some of the lines traverse suggests they were created using equipment or machines moving over and close to but not touching the ground, or, because of the sharpness of one side of the furrow, something touching the ground but unaffectedly capable of moving in a perfectly straight line through earth, rock or under water. Because there is almost always a single furrow, whatever the means employed was, it was in contact directly, or indirectly by some above-ground jet, with a single point or length. To us, the straightness implies high speed was necessary to this machine or equipment. The volume of 'traffic' suggests there were a number of such devices and not just a single unit.

Either the same machine or equipment or perhaps another version of it, was used to twist and turn at will to create the many huge single-line drawings. If one looks again at the condor drawing (shown in chapter 1) which is about 140 metres or 460 feet long, it will be seen that the two sides of the bird are not identical, though close enough not to distract from the general artistry of the product. This slight dissimilarity is noticeable in various other creature designs, suggesting to us that they were 'freehand' and not from a template, unless the templates were intentionally created that way.

Use of the rectangles and trapezoids as airstrips does not seem practical because if the moving equipment or machines or vehicles had to cut furrows while on or close to the ground this traffic would quickly have cut up any designs it crossed. In fact the illustration of the Nazca site in chapter 4 shows many trapezoids cut up, with other larger rectangular-type designs imposed apparently over pre-existing lines.

There is no apparent evidence from that available to us that the lines fade away at their ends. The lines are represented as ending abruptly at both ends. If that is the case, there is no indication of 'lift off' or 'landing' as a result of the creation of the lines. Whatever created the lines seems to have been turned off abruptly rather than the lines losing strength through increasing height from them. When the lines end at a hilltop there is no mention of their continuing down the other side. The lines apparently end at the hilltop.

In chapter 1, where a single straight line was shown, you may have noticed that from the observer's view the line was cut with a straight edge on the left but to the right there was not a folded over surface as with a plough. Instead, to the right was a series of apparently clockwise swirls, as though a small fast-moving circular brush or powerful air or gas jet from above had whisked it away from the cut by a foot or more to the right. I'm not aware that in human history to the present day we have had a piece of equipment that can do precisely that, and certainly not thousands of years ago.

In 1920 AD Alfred Watkins first realized what he had been seeing years previously in rural England. He published the results of his research in 1922, which I understand to be before the discovery of the Nazca site by Western Civilization through air travel in Peru. Although the illustration of some of his tracks and the lines at the Nazca site seem to bear a remarkable similarity, there is no evidence apparently in Watkin's life or his book that he even knew of the Nazca site, or that anyone else in the 1920s or even later thought to connect the two phenomena.

Try as we may, we have no rational explanation for all this activity. It's apparently evident on more than one continent and has left a similar awe-struck impression on humankind in each case. As it is not limited to one place it appears to be evidence for a former highly gifted civilization capable of moving from one continent to another at will thousands of years ago, and of an alien character which we cannot understand. But yet we do understand ancient building techniques, irrigation methods, tools and weapons of humans who lived earlier on this planet.

It seems most probable that the Nazca and British lines related to air travel, The Nazca site was only discovered when we ourselves took to the air, and the drawings and designs can only be seen as a whole and appreciated in full from the air. If this ancient air-borne civilization had developed on earth, surely we should have come across some past evidence for its progress in archaeological remains. But so far this has not occurred. We ourselves have only just begun venturing into space, and the few long lines on the US Space Shuttles' runways are almost certainly totally different in purpose and technology from the Nazca lines, but are our best parallel. Clearly it seems the Nazca site was a much busier location than the bases for the few Shuttles the US possesses: