More enigmatic geoglyphs found in Peru

Lima, Feb. 28 (ANDINA). Japanese researchers have discovered 138 more hills and lines in Peru near the world-famous Nazca lines and geoglyphs. The purpose of the formations, thought to have been created more than 2,000 years ago, is unknown.

Equally enigmatic are the Nazca lines - straight as an arrow and up to 20 kilometres long - and geoglyphs of humans and animals scratched on the arid plain. The designs are so gigantic that they are recognizable only from the air.

The Japanese also found two new geoglyphs of a human head and an animal. Both are relatively small, they said, which is probably why there had previously been no aerial sighting of them, dpa reported.

The Nazca lines and geoglyphs date from 800 BC to 600 AD, when the Paracas and subsequently Nazca cultures flourished. Situated on an immense plain about 460 kilometres south of Lima, the Peruvian capital, they were discovered when the first airplanes flew over the area in the 1920s.

Peru's El Comercio newspaper quoted the head of the Japanese team, Masato Sakai of Yamagata University, and his Peruvian colleague Jorge Olano as saying that the hills, all focal points of several converging lines, may have been places of worship, direction pointers to temples or markers of subterranean streams.

The researchers found some 8,000 earthenware fragments at the Peruvian site as well. They said that discovery of the hills, aided by satellites, was of enormous significance because only 62 similar hill formations had previously been known.