The Mysterious Palpa/Nazca Lines Peru - LOST ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY?

originally posted by: Agartha
a reply to: JamesTB

Here's another theory:

A paper published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explains the existence of dozens of geoglyphs—essentially rock and earthen formations—in Peru’s Chincha Valley that predate the existence of the Nazca civilization, and were likely used as pointing devices to help people find towns and ancient markets.

motherboard.vice.com...

If the above is true:
Why build them shaped as animals and not simply straight lines?
And why are some oriented towards the sunset during the winter solstice?

That was an interesting journalist report well worth the read - if a little short on hard data.

Probably to give them a clue when the weather would change - and important piece of info if you are a herder or farmer which they were.

originally posted by: Hanslune
How? Easy the plains and hills there are covered with small dark stones, these are moved and the lighter soil shows thru.

On the ground, most of the lines are formed by a shallow trench with a depth of between 10 cm (3.9 in) and 15 cm (5.9 in). Such trenches were made by removing the reddish-brown iron oxide-coated pebbles that cover the surface of the Nazca desert. When this gravel is removed the light-colored clay earth which is exposed in the bottom of the trench produces lines which contrast sharply in color and tone with the surrounding land surface. This sublayer contains high amounts of lime which, with the morning mist, hardens to form a protective layer that shields the lines from winds, thereby preventing erosion.

Why is a bit more complicated as the Nazca people left no writings. As noted earlier they were probably religious in nature, they can be seen from the hills around the plains and some on hills can be seen from the plains.

Making them probably was thought to bring merit to the builder or perhaps they thought it evoked magical powers in their behave.

Here is a study of one aspect of the ancient Nazca people's religious beliefs

Study of Nazca head hunting

James how is shifting rocks to leave a pattern in the soil "Lost ancient technology"?

That's fine thanks for your opinion now why do you have to continue to ram your opinion down our throats? We've all got opinions but you always have to impose yours in every thread I make why? It's great that you've solved every archeology mystery that there ever was, good for you, now I'd like to discuss different theories whether right or wrong in the hope that I may discover new things. Is that too much to ask?

The idea of a group worshiping aliens and doing a cargo cult type of actions could be beleiviable. Just happening to have a place that can keep the lines open for centuries handy to present it seems real weird. Did they level a mountain or just use what was available?
The down to earth means of creating the lines is easy. The way for them to imagine what the lines would look like from above is quite a different thing. Planning and carrying this out isn't spacy it's just very different.

originally posted by: JamesTB
That's fine thanks for your opinion now why do you have to continue to ram your opinion down our throats?

How is sharing information ramming an opinion down your throat? You claim to want to discuss different theories(if I was a real prick this is where I would correct you and say that they're more aptly classified as hypothesis not theories as defined under the parameters of the scientific method. Oh oops...) but what you really want is a circle jerk of like minded people to pat each other on the backs in a congratulatory celebration like the gathering of the juggalos

We've all got opinions but you always have to impose yours in every thread I make why? It's great that you've solved every archeology mystery that there ever was, good for you, now I'd like to discuss different theories whether right or wrong in the hope that I may discover new things. Is that too much to ask?

See, if you really wanted to discuss and learn you would be open to listening to ALL opinions, then engage in some good old fashioned due dilligence and try to come to your own conclusion. Instead you're crying like a kid who got kicked at the playground by the school yard bully as opposed to paying attention and seeing if there is anything new to be gleaned from someone who has been studying this and related fields for decades and has a wealth of experience that can only arise from being being raised outside of the US giving a starkly different context than your average snooty American Scientista.

It's too bad because you choose some interesting topics for discussion but get a bee in your bonnet because someone is attempting to share a well researched perspective on the topic at hand. Being dismissive is only harming yourself because you may have actually had a different insight that could have had a correlation with what you probably refer to as "mainstream science" but instead of trying to look you closed your eyes, stuck your fingers in your ears and shouted 'nanny nanny boo boo' until the bad man was gone. It's childish and you're not going to learn anything that way.

I'm sure I just came off as the biggest prick in the Western Hemisphere after that tirade and its rather poor behavior on my part to call you out and then sink to the same level. But, in the grand scheme of things, this is pretty benign. If you think that was a total dickout you should've been at Hoffstra last February for the lecture that the AJA presented on Oetzi. At least I didn't make you cry. Did I?

originally posted by: JamesTB

originally posted by: Hanslune
How? Easy the plains and hills there are covered with small dark stones, these are moved and the lighter soil shows thru.

On the ground, most of the lines are formed by a shallow trench with a depth of between 10 cm (3.9 in) and 15 cm (5.9 in). Such trenches were made by removing the reddish-brown iron oxide-coated pebbles that cover the surface of the Nazca desert. When this gravel is removed the light-colored clay earth which is exposed in the bottom of the trench produces lines which contrast sharply in color and tone with the surrounding land surface. This sublayer contains high amounts of lime which, with the morning mist, hardens to form a protective layer that shields the lines from winds, thereby preventing erosion.

Why is a bit more complicated as the Nazca people left no writings. As noted earlier they were probably religious in nature, they can be seen from the hills around the plains and some on hills can be seen from the plains.

Making them probably was thought to bring merit to the builder or perhaps they thought it evoked magical powers in their behave.

Here is a study of one aspect of the ancient Nazca people's religious beliefs

Study of Nazca head hunting

James how is shifting rocks to leave a pattern in the soil "Lost ancient technology"?

That's fine thanks for your opinion now why do you have to continue to ram your opinion down our throats? We've all got opinions but you always have to impose yours in every thread I make why? It's great that you've solved every archeology mystery that there ever was, good for you, now I'd like to discuss different theories whether right or wrong in the hope that I may discover new things. Is that too much to ask?

Because this is a discussion board - or do you think it is something else? Perhaps you should rethink your participation here if you are struggling with this concept or do you believe we shouldn't discuss what you say - just agree with you? lol

Go right ahead and I'll continue to comment just as I have in the past.

By the way are Brien Foerster? I've asked before but you always dodge the question...why?

a reply to: peter vlar

A common reaction to sensible responses. As Harte says, "they don't like it when we make the sparklies go away".

One suggestion go to websites awash in non-scientific based discussion they exist all over.

Hey Peter good rant too, what was your specialty in Anthropology and did you do any field work?

originally posted by: JamesTB

I think so how about you?

yes me too. absolutely

originally posted by: Hanslune
a reply to: peter vlar

A common reaction to sensible responses. As Harte says, "they don't like it when we make the sparklies go away".

I hate when the sparkles disappear! Though if they really wanted they could delve into our recent past and utilize some old shamanic "treats" to reengage the sparkles

One suggestion go to websites awash in non-scientific based discussion they exist all over.

so true, that whole world wide web thing with all that info at our fingertips haha

Hey Peter good rant too, what was your specialty in Anthropology and did you do any field work?

Thank you Hans, I try to get a good rant or two out every now and again! I focused on physical anthropology with heavy emphasis on Neanderthal. Before I started my masters(which I'm embarrassed to admit I never finished but that's a story for another day lol) I was obsessed with what I called the 'Levantine Paradox' of H. Sapiens and Neanderthal living in the same sites, seemingly at the same times for roughly 50,000 years at several sites scattered throughout the Levantine Valley from northern Israel and about halfway up into what is now Lebanon. When I started my masters program I still wanted to make Neanderthal my prison bitch but in themed-late 90's the technology wasn't quite there for what I was proposing which meant funding was nil. ETA- I'm pretty sure I "borrowed the title Levantine Paradox from an article I read sometime in 94 or 95 in case anyone else has read it, I don't want to be accused of plagiarism.

The readers digest version goes a little like this... I thought(and still do lean towards this as a hypothesis with potential) that what led to the demise of what on paper appears to be a physically and mentally superior human was a scenario very similar towhat we saw in the Americas 500 years ago... populations that had been separated by tens, or in the case of H.N.,100's of thousands of years, which made the older population more susceptible to diseases that became pandemic in Europe around 50-60,000 BPE pushing them farther back into tiny niches like Portugal and Malta and those who had immunity eventually bred and married into the H.S. populations moving into Europe.

The part that became technologically as well as financially difficult was that I wanted to try to test as much of their DNA as possible from Before, and after H. Sapiens came into the picture and look for any viral DNA that could be traced back one way or the other and attempt to track the spread of diseases brought into Europe by H.Sapiens as well as differentiate any viruses that were isolated to one population or the other.

Back then I was pretty convinced that it was the magic bullet from JFK as well as the smoking gun. I still think disease played a pretty big role, I just see it now as one of several contributing factors. Now, it seems pretty mundane but 16/17 years ago they thought I was bat # crazy and the running joke was that I was either going to get a Nobel for proving it or get thrown out of school for wanting to spend a considerable amount of money to try to prove a rather tenuous looking hypothesis when it didn't pan out. It was a SUNY school and budgets were tight.

As for field work, it was very limited. I did a couple of partial seasons in upstate NY near where I grew up and both were related to new construction that uncovered some Iroquois remains, tools etc...and a pre French and Indian War dig related to Sir William Johnson. Nothing terribly exciting but still a great experience and it was cool as hell to be standing in a 5 foot deep trench literally looking at the past few hundred years of history like a layer cake. Plus it beat the hell out of what I was doing with the 10th Mountain Division prior to that. Instead of mortar fire my biggest fears on those sites were rabid raccoons haha Unfortunately for me, I screwed my hip up pretty badly when I served which made field work kind of difficult and then I thought I was going to become a rock n roll superstar so the masters went on hiatus and here I am running my mouth on ATS like a champ.

The End

originally posted by: peter vlar

The End

Well we agree on the idea of a disease carrying HSS helping to do in the HSN

Yeah finished a related masters then delayed the Ph.D and never got back to it when I decided to go off to Europe and work. Later did degrees in other subjects but always kept my hand in on Archie always interested in Bronze age Middle East not so much the Mayan's I was trained to find. Field work in Hawaii, RN, Yucatan, Cyprus, and every nation in the middle east but Iraq (curse you Saddam) and Yemen.

Well good to have another trained person here and with a more modern education. I trained with people who had done their main work in the 1940-60's, Solheim, Boggs, Todd, etc, Hunt was a classmate of mine.

The dig in NY was it those near Ft Drum?

a reply to: Hanslune

The sites I worked were near Albany which was originally Fort Orange and Ft Johnson which is about 35 miles west if Albany. But my dad was a science teacher who was really into the Erie Canal so when I was really young we would go through a couple of sections that were still pretty intact in this tiny little village called Ft. Hunter which is also very near Caughnewaga which was one of the largest villages the Mohawk ever built and the birth place if Kateri Tekawitha who is now a Cathokic Saint and the first Native American saint so that's how I got the bug.

Good to know you worked in the Yucatan, I might have to pick your brain a little since I'm going down there for a week in December to check out a couple of Mayan sites and I think I'm going to Belize too. I've been a bit if a shut in the last few years mostly due to medical crap related to my time in the army and after a serious amount of PT and extra crap on my own because I was trying like hell to avoid surgical intervention I'm only 41 and I cancelled a hip replacement last month and avoided spinal surgery in my neck by the skin if my teeth. Still a lot if nerve damage but I can feel my left arm and hand again so that's always a plus. So my wife decided to book me a trip.ad a reward for all my pitiful suffering lol. On a serious note I think she's hoping it will reinvigorate my interest in Anthropology and spur me to get off my ass and finish at least my masters. Im the black sheep in the family, my father in law is a department chair at George Mason and his brother taught physics at Columbia before becoming the president of Oberlin so I look like a bum at family get togethers.

I'm also a little jealous that you got to spend so much time in the ME. I'd kill to be able to work some of those sites in the Levant but the whole region up to and including the Mediteranean basin... There's just SOOOOO much still out there to find and learn its like Christmas every day and between the Bronze Age sites and the PPN sites... I'm salivating just thinking about it haha. There are some really cool spots near where I live but it's all French and Indian war through Revolutionary War. I'm still pretty close to where I grew up and the sites I worked in college and I'm only a short drive to where the Battle of Saratoga was but as cool as they are, nothing beats the sensation of holding a Neanderthal skull in my hands especially considering how much the view on who they really were has changed just in the past couple of decades. I'm such a dork. I get giddy like a little kid anticipating Christmas when I'm talking about them.

The Nasca line on Google maps - a large area so you need to zoom in and out. Here the Nasca line spider location right next to a "runway".

originally posted by: Hanslune
How? Easy the plains and hills there are covered with small dark stones, these are moved and the lighter soil shows thru.

On the ground, most of the lines are formed by a shallow trench with a depth of between 10 cm (3.9 in) and 15 cm (5.9 in). Such trenches were made by removing the reddish-brown iron oxide-coated pebbles that cover the surface of the Nazca desert. When this gravel is removed the light-colored clay earth which is exposed in the bottom of the trench produces lines which contrast sharply in color and tone with the surrounding land surface. This sublayer contains high amounts of lime which, with the morning mist, hardens to form a protective layer that shields the lines from winds, thereby preventing erosion.

Why is a bit more complicated as the Nazca people left no writings. As noted earlier they were probably religious in nature, they can be seen from the hills around the plains and some on hills can be seen from the plains.

Making them probably was thought to bring merit to the builder or perhaps they thought it evoked magical powers in their behave.

Here is a study of one aspect of the ancient Nazca people's religious beliefs

Study of Nazca head hunting

James how is shifting rocks to leave a pattern in the soil "Lost ancient technology"?

Move the dark stones and the lighter ones show through! Are you actually being serious? You claim to have decades of experience in this field and you're coming out with laughable over simplified answers like that?

The lines are ETCHED into the ground.

Recently storms uncovered some new markings in Peru which were covered with sand if these marks were left by simply moving stones then there would be nothing left to uncover as the stones would be displaced. If you'd taken the time to read the recent article posted on this board you'd already know that as the scientists there state that the lines are 'scratched into the ground!

Here have a read -

http: //www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/new-nazca-lines-geoglyphs-uncovered-by-gales-and-sandstorms-in-peru-9645983.html

Here we have a mountain in Nazca which clearly shows ETCHED lines -

s30.postimg.org...

Come on admit that you are WRONG about this.

a reply to: JamesTB

Nobody's wrong about anything in how they were made, both methods were used to make the lines and animal depictions.

heres another picture of up

a reply to: JamesTB

Nope that is the method used at Nazca other places may use slightly different methods however they do share a common methodology to make lines; either move darker stuff to let the lower stuff show through or you move darker stuff onto lighter stuff to make lines.

Not terribly high tech.

There are hundreds of close up images of Nazca lines on line - take a look. lol

By the way are Brien Foerster? I've asked before but you always dodge the question...why?

Just a reminder....

a reply to: peter vlar

Mounds, mounds, mounds everywhere (in the middle east) In '84 I drove past the site where GT would later be located despite having with us the 1960s report of items up there. Oh well.

I did work around Merida in the Yucatan and also some recovery work on Caste War sites. Mainly directing Mayan labor in clearance projects. One week of work at CI which was the best site.

originally posted by: JamesTB
That's fine thanks for your opinion now why do you have to continue to ram your opinion down our throats? We've all got opinions but you always have to impose yours in every thread I make why? It's great that you've solved every archeology mystery that there ever was, good for you, now I'd like to discuss different theories whether right or wrong in the hope that I may discover new things. Is that too much to ask?

IOW, "Boo hoo! I can't claim some utterly fictitious idea explains an ordinary, if remarkable, circumstance."

Harte

a reply to: peter vlar

You did not come off as a prick, it needed said. Not that he will consider anything like "evidence" and stuff, or discuss the points raised.

I've purposefully stayed away from many of the OP's recent glut of "durr, i cant work out how this stuff happened, and don't care to listen to rational explanations with common sense, documentation and comparable examples" threads (its a not so new category that he has made his own) as i did not want to appear a stalker and it's a waste of time attempting to communicate with a brick.

But really, i'm starting to think that he needs to have intelligent discussion and sources and all that inconvenient stuff rammed down his throat until it appears out of his jaxie, all processed and understood, like.

a reply to: JamesTB

Unsurprisingly, you fail to appreciate the difference between "scratched into the ground" (from your source and "etched". I think it's likely that English is not your first language judging from some posts etc (this is not a criticism at all, btw).

To clarify - you can clear rocks from a route and then make scratch marks into the exposed earth/soil etc with a stick, leaving a small trench that is clearly visible due to the differing colour and texture. This is highly visible, and can be seen in the pic posted above.

To etch, you would need to go down to bedrock and carve a mark into that with a hard instrument (and i don't mean 5-string bass or Harpsichord).

Trouble is, you make many such obviously inaccurate statements, and those whose dogma you believe do just the same, and then build the next point on that inaccuracy (or, as i like to call them, lies). Thus grows the tower of nonsense that rules over your threads.

I've privately wondered if you are Brien Foerster too. Or at least his secretary/PA drumming up hits for his vids. It's a filthy accusation, yeps, but he seems to be your primary source.

Have you ever read (as in processed information and used your brain and stuff) any evil mainstream archaeology books (like, real textbook stuff by professors and ting), they have splendid explanations.

I await your lack of decent reply with baited breath.



This is why i stay away from this forum, it's like teaching someone from a point of less that zero.

originally posted by: JamesTB

originally posted by: Hanslune
How? Easy the plains and hills there are covered with small dark stones, these are moved and the lighter soil shows thru.

On the ground, most of the lines are formed by a shallow trench with a depth of between 10 cm (3.9 in) and 15 cm (5.9 in). Such trenches were made by removing the reddish-brown iron oxide-coated pebbles that cover the surface of the Nazca desert. When this gravel is removed the light-colored clay earth which is exposed in the bottom of the trench produces lines which contrast sharply in color and tone with the surrounding land surface. This sublayer contains high amounts of lime which, with the morning mist, hardens to form a protective layer that shields the lines from winds, thereby preventing erosion.

Why is a bit more complicated as the Nazca people left no writings. As noted earlier they were probably religious in nature, they can be seen from the hills around the plains and some on hills can be seen from the plains.

Making them probably was thought to bring merit to the builder or perhaps they thought it evoked magical powers in their behave.

Here is a study of one aspect of the ancient Nazca people's religious beliefs

Study of Nazca head hunting

James how is shifting rocks to leave a pattern in the soil "Lost ancient technology"?

That's fine thanks for your opinion now why do you have to continue to ram your opinion down our throats? We've all got opinions but you always have to impose yours in every thread I make why? It's great that you've solved every archeology mystery that there ever was, good for you, now I'd like to discuss different theories whether right or wrong in the hope that I may discover new things. Is that too much to ask?

Oh James ...that coffee was hot I just shot out my nostrils !!! I sense you've only just been able to keep that down for what must've felt like a lifetime......& ive shared that ride with ya pal !!!! Bravo ol' chap !!

originally posted by: skalla
a reply to: JamesTB

This is why i stay away from this forum, it's like teaching someone from a point of less that zero.

And this post of yours is (one of the reasons) why I'm glad you decided to return, if only for a few posts.

Harte