For nearly 100 years, scientists have been perplexed by the famous Nazca geoglyphs – ancient patterns in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru.
Now, with the help of AI, researchers have discovered another 303 drawings – and they’re possibly the most bizarre yet.
Among them are alien-like figures, killer whales holding knives, cats, camels and a figure that looks like Pixar’s Wall-E robot.
PH๏τos show some of the new discoveries, with lines manually added on to the images to emphasise the original lines, which have faded due to erosion.
The mysterious Nazca glyphs may date back to 400 BC, but scientists are still unsure what their exact purpose was, if any.
‘It took nearly a century to discover a total of 430 figurative Nazca geoglyphs, which offer significant insights into the ancient cultures at the Nazca Pampa,’ says the team in their paper.
‘Here, we report the deployment of an AI system to the entire Nazca region, a UNESCO World Heritage site, leading to the discovery of 303 new figurative geoglyphs within only six months of field survey.’
The researchers scanned aerial images of the Peruvian site with IBM’s AI because it can identify markings in the landscape that the human eye would otherwise miss.
Of the 303 newly discovered geoglyphs, 178 were individually suggested by the AI, which had been trained to search for them in drone pH๏τos.
They predominantly depict wild animals such as orcas and domesticated camels, and human-related motifs, including alien-like humanoids.
There’s also what appears to be pairs of primates playing together, including one pair with large tails, holding balls, and a feline with a surprised expression.
Many are simply uncategorisable, but appear to show various distorted forms of the human figure, including a head with spiky hair and another head on a pair of legs.
Some believe they were intended to act as a kind of observatory, to point to the places where the sun and other celestial bodies rose or set in the solstices.
Other theories suggest that they were created to be seen by the gods in the sky, but they may also have just been artistic expressions much like the ones we see today.
Often, a geoglyph is too big to be appreciated at ground level, so only when one is high enough in the air can they discern the shapes of some of the designs.
For this reason, the intricacies of many of the designs were not fully realised until airplanes were invented and the artwork was seen from the sky.
The Nazca lines were apparently first spotted in 1939 when a pilot flew over the Nazca plains of the Peruvian coastal highlands, although it’s likely they were seen by locals on hilltops much earlier.
Contrary to the popular belief that the figures can only be seen from the air, many are actually visible from the surrounding foothills too.
According to the experts, IBM’s AI could lead to even more geoglyphs being discovered – possibly thousands.
‘AI may be at the brink of ushering in a revolution in archaeological discoveries like the revolution aerial imaging has had on the field,’ they say in their paper.
