No aliens, but still a mystery

"The Last Secret of the Nasca" is a 2018 National Geographic documentary about the perennially mysterious Nazca culture in southern Peru. Strictly speaking, the documentary is French, originally titled "Nazcas, les lignes qui parlaient au ciel". And yes, I´ve seen a Swedish version! 

The Nazca culture existed from around 200 BC to 700 AD, and was preceded by the lesser known (at least to the paying public) Paracas culture. Both cultures created gigantic geoglyphs in the Nazca desert, but also road-like structures. The Nazca geoglyphs, such as the Monkey or the Hummingbird, are world famous and have been the staple of various unserious "theories" about aliens and UFOs. So have the strange skeletons with deformed skulls found in the area. One of the geoglyphs is actually called The Astronaut by the Swedish narrator! The Nazca people also produced complex textiles and other intriguing artifacts. 

To be honest, nobody *really* knows what on earth (pun intended) the lines are for, and the theories presented in this documentary are really speculations. That being said, a religious explanation is the most obvious ("religious" from our viewpoint), since a ceremonial center called Cahuachi overlooks some of the lines. Cahuachi included a small pyramid. Both "mummies" and trophy heads have been found at the site, which is belived to have been a place of pilgrimage for the natives. Young men may have been ritually sacrificed at the site (insert complaint about Saxon and Norse heathens here "for balance"). As for the figures, I laughed at the "learned" explanations of the archeologists featured. "This is obviously a fertility symbol", "this shows the eternal nature of time and its cyclical character". Ahem, you can´t know that without a written scripture. On a more fascinating note, one of the supposed gods of the Nazca people looked like a chimaera, combining the traits of a killer whale with that of many other animals, and carrying the inevitable trophy head. Psychopomp? 

The documentary speculates that the geoglyphs were created during a period when rain and hence water became more scarce, as a way to influence the gods to send more of it. When this failed, Cahuachi was abandoned, while the artists in the deserts suddenly made large straight lines intersecting the previous animal figures, as if defiguring them. A new religion in the making? I think it´s obvious that these explanations are influenced by our present predicament with climate change. The Natives impotently screaming "save us, dear gods, sent us rain" in the gloomy Peruvian desert are really us.

We also get to see some really flashy virtual technology, so perhaps all isn´t entirely lost yet? To me, at any rate, the tech gadgets shown are just as mysterious as the Nazca lines! When this docu was recently showed on Swedish TV, the person introducing the show pointed out that the currently popular theory about Nazca is actually somewhat different, claiming that the straight lines may have been canals! 

Perhaps we really can´t understand the thinking processes of this lost civilization, just as they for sure wouldn´t be able to understand ours...