A culture on the dry coast
The people who made most of the best-known geoglyphs belonged to the Nazca culture, which developed in the river valleys of the south coast of Peru. It is usually dated from about the first century BCE to the seventh or eighth century CE, although specialists draw the boundaries differently. The Nazca had no known writing system, so what is known comes from archaeology: settlements, cemeteries, pottery, textiles and the landscape itself.
Their homeland is a striking one. The rivers rise in the Andes and run toward the Pacific, but many of them carry water only in part of the year, and between the valleys lie broad desert plateaus. The Nazca Pampa is one such plateau. Farmers lived along the valleys, grew crops such as maize, beans, squash and cotton, and also made use of the sea and the highlands through exchange.
Pottery
The Nazca are best known today for their polychrome pottery. Vessels were painted with several colours before firing, using slips, which are thin mixtures of clay and pigment, to produce deep reds, blacks, whites, yellows and other tones. Typical forms include bowls, jars with two spouts joined by a bridge, and tall cups.
The designs include birds, fish, plants, and fantastical beings, often with elaborate headdresses and sometimes holding trophy heads. The imagery overlaps with the geoglyphs and is a major source for interpreting them. Because the style changed over time in a recognizable order, pottery also serves as a clock, which is how many sites and lines are dated.
Cahuachi
The largest known ceremonial site is Cahuachi, in the Nazca drainage. It consists of a large group of mounds and platforms built from adobe, some of them modifying natural hills. Excavations there have found evidence of offerings, feasting, and the placing of valuable goods, but relatively little permanent housing. The usual interpretation is that it was a pilgrimage centre where people from across the region gathered at certain times, not a conventional city. Some researchers connect the pilgrimage idea to the geoglyphs, suggesting that people may have walked along the lines on their way to ceremonies. This is a proposal rather than a settled conclusion.
Cahuachi was eventually abandoned. Researchers have pointed to episodes of flooding and sediment, perhaps linked to climate events, as one factor. Details of the sequence are still discussed.
Underground aqueducts
Water was a constant concern. A distinctive feature of the Nazca region is the puquios, underground channels that tap groundwater in the valley sides and bring it to fields and settlements. Visitors see them mainly as open spiral or funnel-shaped access shafts, which allow people to enter and clean the channels. Several dozen are known, and some still carry water.
The date of the puquios has been debated. Some researchers associate them with the Nazca period, while others place their construction or heavy use later. What seems clear is that this kind of water management suits a land where surface rivers are unreliable. Similar ideas appear in other dry regions, such as the foggara tunnels of the Sahara, though there is no known connection between the two traditions.
Water also figures in explanations of the geoglyphs, since in such a landscape rituals about fertility and rain would have had great importance. That idea, described under the Nazca water ritual theory, is one of the main competing proposals, not a proven link.
Neighbours and predecessors
The Nazca did not live in isolation.
- Paracas. The earlier Paracas culture, on the coast to the north, is known for its richly embroidered textiles and for burials at Paracas itself. The Nazca inherited and developed many Paracas motifs and craft skills, including weaving, and the study of ancient weaving in the Andes draws heavily on these textiles.
- Topara. Around the transition between Paracas and Nazca, the Topara people of the Ica region are recognised from their pottery and burials.
- Highland peoples. Exchange with the highlands brought goods such as obsidian and perhaps feathers and other items from the Amazon side. Communities in the Andes made far-reaching contacts well before any empire existed.
- Moche. On the north coast, the Moche built pyramids and decorated tombs at roughly the same time. The Moche pyramids and tombs show a society with a very different political and artistic style from that of the Nazca.
- Wari. From about the seventh century CE, the Wari state, centred in the highlands to the north-east, extended its influence over parts of the south coast. Wari styles appear in later Nazca-area pottery, and the Nazca culture in its classic form faded around this period.
Later still, the Inca controlled the region as part of their empire, long after the lines were made. The broader picture of states before the Inca is discussed under pre-Inca Andean states.
Why this matters for the lines
The geoglyphs are best understood as the product of a living society with farming, craft, ritual and trade, not as an isolated oddity. The connection with water, pilgrimage and the beliefs shown in pottery and textiles gives the strongest clues to their meaning. It also reminds us that the descendants of the Andean peoples still live in Peru, and that the heritage belongs to a continuing cultural landscape.