Nazca mummies - debunking the debunkers

[FCD]

I've heard similar stories. Not just about the Nazca lines, but anywhere that draws archeology tourism into areas. Fake pottery has been a big one, I think.

I forget who it was, but I was listening to an interview that touched on the lines recently, in passing. They went to see them a long time ago. It was all little local charters. Lots of motivation to create new locations to capture market share.

I don't even know how much real evidence of dating you can get from piles of rock in those conditions. Around here things that have been sitting there for a hundred years might not change much at all after the first few years. There's no extensive year over year growth of plants. It's wind swept. There's scabby brush and course grasses with shallow soils. We have similar conditions to the region of the lines, I believe.

The more I look into things the less I trust any dating that I haven't looked into myself. Even the convincing evidence often has enough room for lots of questions. If somebody discovered convincing evidence the lines were less than two centuries old I wouldn't be surprised at all.

I can't ever not associate the lines with Art Bell.

My colleague's wife is from Peru and her father runs in some pretty elevated political circles in Peru (like way up there) due to his background in copper and other metals mining which is a huge industry in Peru.  The guy is a Civil Engineer by education, and deeply ensconced and highly regarded in the mining world; as a result he's very familiar with the geography, geology and archeological history of the region.  So, many of the folks I referred to above are not just average Joe's on the street, but usually pretty stable (engineering type) folks.  I felt like the assessments they provided were accurate.

One of the topics they brought to my attention was how surprisingly easy it is to create things like the famous 'Nasca lines' in the Peruvian environment.  Despite historians making it seem like these lines were biblically difficult (for dramatic appeal which sells books and plane tickets), the average person can create them with a simple compass and a rake (and some effort of course).  I didn't realize it until I went to Peru on a repeated basis that Peru is one of the most arid countries in the world.  This was totally counterintuitive to me.  In Lima, which sits right on the ocean, you see palm trees and grass, and there's fog about 4 days out of 7, but it rarely ever rains there.  Thus, the terrain, once marked, stays marked for centuries.

I realize none of this relates to the mummies, but it's kind of related to weird stuff of seemingly unknown origin which Peru seems quite a few instances of.