TRAVERSE Issue 51 - December 2025 | Page 66

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would turn into a long stop while waiting to get a service and change of tyres on our motorbike. We would discover a liveable city made up of a thousand souls: the popular neighbourhoods, the historic centre with the palaces of power and Barranco, a neighborhood that runs along the ocean where the wealthy nouveau riche of Peru live.
Those jokers who enjoyed tracing the famous lines in the Nazca desert more than 1,500 years ago, who knows what they would think of the theories of those who blame mysterious aliens for their creation! The fact is that between Palpa and Nazca straight lines, geometric figures and drawings of animals have occupied the minds of archaeologists, mathematicians, historians and astronomers like few other works in the world.
Theories about their creation attempt to explain who drew these lines, and when and why. The German mathematician, Maria Reiche, dedicated years to the study of these works, concluding that it was a complex system useful for agriculture, traced with the use of long ropes. Other scholars hypothesized that the lines were linked to the cult of water coming from the mountains, which was so important in the desert. Others popularise that the ancient populations were able to build hot air balloons to observe them from above.
Not being able to afford the plane ride to admire them in their entirety, we were content with what we could see from the observation points and the large viewing platform. The lizard, the tree and the frog were right in front of us, the same images we had studied in history books since
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