Two researchers, two different aims
Much of what the world knows about the Nazca Lines comes from decades of patient work by two people who arrived at the site for different reasons. Paul Kosok, an American historian, was studying ancient irrigation on the Peruvian coast. Maria Reiche, a German-born mathematician and translator, came to the lines through him and then stayed with them for the rest of her life. Their work in the 1940s and after turned a scattering of curious marks into a mapped and, eventually, protected archaeological landscape. Local people and Peruvian scholars had known about the markings before they arrived, so this is the story of study and survey, not of first discovery.
Paul Kosok and the solstice line
Kosok visited the Peruvian coast in the early 1940s to investigate how ancient societies had managed water in the dry valleys. While examining what he took to be old canals on the plain, he came across the lines. In June 1941, according to the accounts usually given, he saw the sun set almost exactly over the end of one line, close to the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere. That observation led him to suspect that the lines had an astronomical function, and he is widely quoted as calling the site the largest astronomy book in the world.
Kosok made early drawings and photographs, including some from the air, and he recognised that the designs needed systematic study. His own time in Peru was limited, and he turned to Reiche to continue the work.
Maria Reiche’s long project
Reiche was born in Dresden in 1903 and moved to Peru in the early 1930s, where she worked as a tutor and translator. After meeting Kosok she began helping with his research and soon made it her own. From the 1940s she spent long periods living in or near the desert, often in very basic conditions, walking the plain to measure and record the lines and figures.
Her main contributions were practical.
- Mapping. She surveyed many lines and figures on foot, using tape, string and basic instruments, and produced detailed plans. Because the designs are too large to grasp from the ground, accurate drawings were a necessary step.
- Cleaning. She and her helpers cleared away accumulated debris and stones from some lines with brooms and rakes. That kind of intervention would be handled differently now, but it helped preserve the shape of designs that were fading.
- Interpretation. She developed the astronomical-calendar idea, proposing that lines and figures marked the sun, moon and stars. She also suggested that the makers used a standard unit of length in setting out the designs. These claims have received mixed responses from later researchers and are now treated as proposals.
- Publishing and fundraising. A short book first issued in the late 1940s helped draw wider attention. Sales and donations helped support her work.
From mapping to protection
Reiche came to feel strongly that the lines were vulnerable. Farming, road building and, later, tourism and construction all posed risks. She campaigned for official protection, gave talks, guided visitors, and urged the Peruvian authorities to take responsibility for the site. Over time the state extended formal protection, and in 1994 the area was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. By then she was elderly. She died in 1998 at the age of about 95, and her house near the desert has since been kept as a small museum.
She is sometimes described as the woman who saved the Nazca Lines. That is a fair summary of her influence, but protection also depended on Peruvian archaeologists, officials and local communities, and conservation work continued after her death. Today the question of Nazca site conservation involves guards, regulations, monitoring and efforts to manage the pressures of tourism and development.
How views have changed
The picture of the Nazca Lines has moved on from the early astronomical emphasis. Tests of alignments by other researchers did not show that most lines pointed to celestial targets, and many specialists now put more weight on ritual walking and water-related ceremonies. Archaeological work at Cahuachi and in the Palpa valleys has linked the geoglyphs more firmly to the societies that made them. Even so, the early surveys remain valuable. Reiche’s maps give a baseline for the state of the designs in the mid-twentieth century and a record of lines that have since been disturbed.
The early work also shows how archaeological methods develop. A first, partly mistaken or incomplete hypothesis can still produce a mass of careful observation that later researchers use to test and refine ideas. Whatever the final verdict on the astronomy, the survey itself endures.
Legacy
Kosok’s solstice observation and Reiche’s decades of fieldwork put the Nazca Lines on the map, literally and figuratively. Their story also illustrates a tension that still shapes the site: the more attention a fragile landscape receives, the more it needs protection. Visitors today are kept to designated viewpoints for that reason, and the lines survive in large part because people chose to look after them.