1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

by Charles C. Mann

An obvious example on the southern coast is the Nazca, famous for the huge patterns they set into the ground. Figures of animals and plants, almost a thousand geometric symbols, arrow-straight lines many miles long—what were they for? Peruvian anthropologist Toribio Mejía Xesspe first brought these famous drawings to the attention of the outside world in 1927. Four decades later, the Swiss writer Erich von Däniken set off an international furor by claiming that the Nazca Indians could not have made these symbols, because they were too big for such “primitive” people to construct, and because they are visible only from the air. Instead, he said, the giant figures were landing signals for space travelers; the whole plain was a sort of gigantic extraterrestrial airport.