The famous figures
Among the many lines and shapes on the Nazca plain, a few animal figures have become icons. They are the part of the site that most visitors want to see, and they appear on postcards, in documentaries and in school books. A caution applies to every measurement below: published sizes for the geoglyphs vary from source to source, depending on what is measured and how, so the figures given here are rough, commonly quoted values and not exact dimensions. Nothing here depends on the exact numbers.
The hummingbird
The hummingbird is one of the most admired designs. It shows a small bird with a long, slender beak and a fanned tail, and it is usually quoted as being on the order of ninety metres long, with a beak that stretches a good way ahead of the body. The outline is drawn with a single line that begins and ends at the same area, which has been cited as an example of a figure that could be walked.
Hummingbirds are native to the Americas, and they appear in Andean art, including Nazca pottery. This helps show that the geoglyph is part of a wider tradition of imagery, as discussed under Nazca iconography.
The monkey
The monkey is a large figure, commonly given as roughly a hundred metres in length. Its most striking feature is a tail that curls into a tight spiral. The hands and feet show a small number of digits, and the body is drawn in outline. The monkey is not native to the dry coast, which has led some researchers to suggest that it reflects contact with the Amazon side of the Andes, where monkeys live, or that it carried a symbolic meaning. Monkeys also appear in Nazca pottery and textiles.
The spider
The spider is smaller than many of the others, often quoted at somewhere around fifty metres. One of its legs is differently shaped, which has been interpreted as a mating feature, and Maria Reiche noted that the form resembled a rare spider found in the Amazon basin. This kind of identification is uncertain, and other scholars regard the figure simply as a spider, possibly with symbolic links to weaving, water or fertility. Whatever the species, the spider is a clear example of an animal whose meaning is open to interpretation.
The condor
The condor, the great Andean vulture, appears as a large bird with outstretched wings. It is commonly quoted at well over a hundred metres from beak to tail. The condor held great importance in later Andean beliefs, including those of the Inca, whose imperial society treated it as sacred and who saw it as a link between earth and sky, although it is difficult to project those later beliefs back onto the Nazca.
Other figures
The best-known group includes several more:
- a killer whale, which links the desert with the sea;
- a lizard, partly damaged when the Pan-American Highway was built across the plain;
- a pelican-like bird and other water birds;
- a dog or fox-like animal;
- a tree, flowers and other plants;
- a human-like figure on a hillside, which has been given a number of nicknames in popular writing.
Each name is a modern label. Nobody knows what the Nazca themselves called the figures, and some identifications are debated.
Drawn in one line
A common feature of the animal figures is that the outline is a single line that rarely crosses itself and eventually returns to its starting point. Researchers note this in several figures, including the hummingbird. There are two main readings. One treats the line as a path for a person to walk, so that the figure was experienced in motion, probably as part of a ritual. The other treats it as a drawing convention, a way of showing a figure with a continuous stroke, comparable with the unbroken contours seen on Nazca ceramics. These readings can be combined.
The single-line construction also tells us something about the making. A planned path can be set out by stretching cord between stakes, then clearing the stones along its length, which fits what is known about making Nazca figures with simple tools.
Seeing them today
Visitors view the figures from lookout towers by the highway, from nearby hills, and from small aircraft. The condor, hummingbird and others look very different from each vantage point. Although the sight of them from the air is memorable, the claim that the designs were intended only for aerial viewing has no support, and many are partly visible from high ground.
Surveys, including those carried out with drones, continue to find more animals and other figures, usually smaller and often older than the famous ones. The famous list is therefore a starting point, not a final inventory. As with all the geoglyphs, these animals are best read as part of the culture and landscape that produced them, and the Nazca animal figures make the most sense when set against the imagery on the pottery and cloth of the same people.