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Grounding the Nasca Balloon

by Katherine Reece

The Nasca lines and designs have been separated from the ancient people who created them by various authors who have sought to put our own modern mindset on their creations. It is difficult for someone to understand why the ancient Nasca would put such time and energy into creating these lines on the ground, especially someone that does not make any attempt to study the Nasca and their environment.

One of the authors who has attempted to put a modern thought pattern onto this ancient creation is Jim Woodman in his book Nazca: Journey to the Sun. Woodman argues that the ancient Nasca could have flown, and that they did this using hot-air smoke balloons. In this article, I am going to examine the information and evidence that Woodman presented in his book, contrasting his opinions with those of archaeologists and anthropologists who have studied the Nasca people and the lines for decades. This has been a time consuming process, since like most alternative history books, Woodman did not reference his sources, provide detailed information, or images depicting his visual evidence that could be analyzed.

After flying over the Nasca pampa in an airplane Woodman tells a colleague:

“I know damned well someone flew at Nazca,” I kept insisting. "You simply can't see anything from ground level. You can't appreciate any of it from anywhere except from above. You can't tell me the Nazca builders would have gone to the monumental efforts they did without ever being able to see it.”¹

With this modern, and incorrect, viewpoint in mind Woodman attempted to prove that the Nasca could have flown. To do so, he gathered information and constructed a hot-air smoke balloon using material available to the ancient Nasca people. While the lift for the balloon was provided by hot air the porous material was "sealed" by the smoke and soot from the fire. In this fashion a very short manned flight of approximately two minutes was successful.

It is incorrect to say that the lines can not be seen from the ground. They are visible from atop the surrounding foothills. The credit for the discovery of the lines goes to Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe who spotted them when hiking through the foothills in 1927. ²

With the assistance of a local grave robber, Woodman plundered through the Nasca burial grounds gathering samples of textiles. He had these textiles analyzed and found that the weave is extremely tight and the thread count very high. He marveled that modern textiles do not come close to such high quality.³ Had Woodman searched the academic literature rather than plundering through ancient graves, he could have found this same information.

The Nasca are renowned for their weaving skills. Using varying techniques such as interlocking warp and weft, needle-knitting or cross knit loop stitching to create three dimensional textiles the Nasca artisans created diverse fabrics, with different embellishments and coloring that served many different functions. The fabrics they created include plainweave, double cloth, gauze, tapestry, plaiting, embroidery, brocade, and tie-dye. ⁴ Their talents were certainly not limited to creating the tight weave that Woodman encountered in the tombs. What was the motivation to create such sumptuous fabrics?

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Originally posted by Chippewa

Pretty large article but they don't appear to mention Maria Reiche, who studied the Nazca drawings much of her life. Not nitpicking, just an observation.

I recall she theorized that the images had ritual and astronomical significance for the people who made them. (Astronomical not as in ancient astronauts.)

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