Up: body cylinder

Left: southern pole

Right: northern pole

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We are proud introducing the new Nazca Constellations Cylinder. There is not a scientific base to say "Nazca Figures are constellations" and, less even, that they reflect in ground a map of the sky. Only there are assumptions of some authors who propose that some of the above mentioned figures might be constellations; but even in the above mentioned case, there are no congruities between them to assign any figure to certain sets of stars.

The Nazca s figures and lines of Nazca are one of the biggest puzzlers of the humankind and there are lot of theories about. This is just another possible interpretation.

Do not exist other public works trying to fix all the principal figures in a star map, interpreting at all them as constellations. We have taken some indications proposed by different investigators like Maria Reiche and others, who have been identifying some of those figures with constellations. We have tried to identify to the remaining figures with different groups of stars, taking in mind their relative positions in Nazca s Plateau.

Alejandro Pacha Vega. Mail to: alejandro@planetarios.com

The Nazca culture flourished in the Nazca region between 300 BCE and 800 CE. They created the famous Nazca lines and built an impressive system of underground aqueducts that still function today.

Near the aqueducts open to tourists, there is an overlook point which includes an Inca building added after the Inca conquest of the area. On the pampa, on which the Nazca lines were made, the ceremonial city of Cahuachi (1-500 CE) sits overlooking the lines. Modern knowledge about the culture of the Nazca is built upon studying the city of Cahuachi.

Pottery

The Nazca region is a desert that the Nazca turned into a viable agricultural area using their aqueduct technology. Nazca pottery has been divided into eight phases. Around 200 BCE, at the end of the Early Horizon drought, Nazca I began.

Pottery from this era contains the mythical content of Paracas art, but added realistic subject matter such as fruits, plants, people, and other animals. Realism increased in importance in the following three phases (II, III, IV) referred to as the Monumental phases. The pottery from these phases includes renditions of their main subject matter against a bold red or white background. In the next phase, Nazca V, the backgrounds are filled in and the subject matter now included bodyless renditions of both deamons and humans. Nazca VI, and VII include the earlier motifs but also add militaristic ones, and portraits of elite members of the society.

Nazca VI and VII also begin to show the influence of the Moche. Finally, Nazca VIII saw the introduction of completely disjointed figures and a rich iconography which we have yet to decipher. The phases were created before the advent of carbon dating and today have some problems. While the general order did not change there is a great deal of overlap of the phases, and while the Nazca IX phase ends c. 600 CE, some of the pottery in that category was created at least as late as 755 CE.

Since the Nazca were a coastal people, who depended on the sea for their livelihood, archaeologists are fortunate that they portrayed aspects of their everyday lives in and on their pottery. The motifs generally seen on Nazca pots are those of animals and plants used and seen by the ancient people. These include sea birds, hummingbirds, whales, sharks, fish, snakes, seeds, flowers, and cacti. Also, more gruesomely, the Nazca also portrayed disembodied heads, presumed to be trophy heads, on their pottery.

Textiles

Polychrome, fish-shaped, nazca vessel. (See: huaco)The Nazca are also known for their textiles. They began using llama and massive quantities of alpaca a thousand years before the north coast cultures began to esteem the camelid wool. The source of the wool is believed to be from the Ayacucho region. The motifs that appeared on the pottery appeared earlier in the textiles. Textiles may have been as important to other cultures in the region as to the Nazca, but the desert has preserved the textiles of both the Nazca and Paracas cultures and comprise most of what we know about early textiles in the region.

Other information

The Nazca culture co-existed with the Moche culture of what is now northern Peru

The Paracas culture was an important Andean society between approximately 750 BCE and 100 CE that developed in the Paracas Peninsula, located in what today is the Paracas District of the Pisco Province in the Ica Region. Most of our information about the lives of the Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside Paracas necropolis, first investigated by the Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello in the 1950s.

The necropolis consisted of multitudes of large subterranean burial chambers, with an average capacity of about forty mummies. It is theorized that each large chamber wold be owned by a specific family or clan, who would place their dead ancestors in the burial over the course of many generations. Each mummy was bound with cord to hold it in place, and then wrapped in many layers of incredibly intricate, ornate, and finely woven textiles. These textiles are now known as some of the finest ever produced in the history of Pre-Columbian Andean societies, and are the primary works of art by which Paracas is known.

The Moche civilization

(aka the Mochica culture, Early Chimu, Pre-Chimu, Proto-Chimu, etc.) flourished in northern Peru from about 100 AD to 700 AD. Today it is understood that they were not politically the same people as the Chimú, and some believe this was not even an empire but rather a group of communities that shared a common iconography and technology.

Pre-Columbian years as expansive as 300 BC to 1000 AD are sometimes described as the era of the Moche. They are noted for the elaborate painted ceramics and pottery, gold work, and irrigation systems. Moche history is broadly categorized into five periods based on the increasing complexity of pottery decoration. Many Moche ceramic pieces, including their highly detailed erotic pottery, can be found at the Museo de la Nacion and the Museo Larco Herrera, both in Lima.

The Moche primarily were farmers, who diverted rivers into a network of irrigation canals. Their culture was sophisticated, although they had no written language. Yet, their artifacts document their lives with detailed scenes of hunting, fishing, combat, punishment, sexual encounters and elaborate ceremonies.

The Moche lived principally in the valleys of three rivers: Chicama, Moche and Viru. Major Moche cities include Sipan and Huancaco. There are several Moche ruins not far from the city of Trujillo, Peru. Huaca del Sol, a pyramidal structure on the Rio Moche, had been the largest pre-Columbian structure in Peru but was largely destroyed when Europeans mined its graves for gold. Fortunately the nearby Huaca de la Luna seems to have been more important to the Moche and remained largely intact. It contains many colorful murals with complex iconography and has been under excavation since 2004.

Pottery

Moche pottery is some of the most varied in the world. They used molds in order to mass produce huge quantities of it. But despite this, they had a large variation in shape and theme. Virtually all vegetables and important activities are documented in their pottery, including war, sex, metal work, and weaving. They would apply figures onto pottery before it dried, which is seldom done today because of the risk of explosion in the kiln if air gets into the joints.

They also seemed to be obsessed with individuality. Every one of the 100,000,000 bricks in the Huaca del Sol had a maker's mark. Important persons would have vases made to resemble their heads. The portrait vases also show the personality of the subject: some are shown laughing, others in deep thought, others angry, etc. Some Moche art is erotic in nature, showing various acts including oral and anal sex. These acts were later banned by the puritanical Inca and the later Christian conquerors. Some people believe the Moche had contact with the Chinese and with Southern Africa because there are vases which show these populations' physical features. But no Chinese or African made artifacts of the period have been found in South America or vice-versa.

The coloration of Moche pottery is not very varied, white and red are used almost exclusively, with a yellowish cream color and black in only a few pieces. Their adobe buildings have mostly been destroyed by looters and the elements over the last 1300 years, but the two huacas that remain show that the coloring of their murals was much more varied, with every color of the rainbow represented. Not much is known about their clothing since it has all disintegrated; the Moche lived in the north of Peru, which gets flooded in El Niño years.

Religion

Moche worship featured a figure called the Decapitator, mostly depicted as a spider, but also depicted as a winged creature or a sea monster. When the body is included, it is always shown with one arm holding a knife and another holding a head by the hair. It is thought to figure in the ritual human sacrifice of foreign soldiers or tribal citizens.

This human sacrifice also included the consumption of human blood by the El Señor de Sipán, who was a Moche spiritual, military and civil leader. This act is believed to have been done to appease the Decapitator. While some scholars, such as Christopher Donnan and Izumi Shimada, argue that the sacrificial victims were the losers of ritual battles among local elites, others, like John Verano and Richard Sutter, suggest that the sacrificial victims were warriors captured in territorial battles between the Moche and other nearby societies. Burials in plazas near Moche pyramids have found groups of people sacrificed together and skeletons of young men deliberately excarnated, perhaps for temple displays.

Demise

There are several theories as to what caused the demise of the Moche civilization. Studies of ice cores drilled from glaciers in the Andes reveal climatic catastophe between 550 to 600 AD, when it is thought that coastal areas were hit by 30 years of floods and rain (Mega El Niño), which were then followed by 30 or more years of drought.

Recent evidence uncovered by American Archeologist Tom Dillehay has shown that Moche civilization survived beyond 650 AD, and later settlements are characterized by fortifications and defensive works. Finding no evidence of foreign invasion, this suggests that a period of unrest followed the climatic changes, as the Moche civilization tore itself apart.

Other

The Moche was an Early Intermediate culture that co-existed with the Ica-Nazca culture. They were preceded by the Chavín horizon and succeeded by the Huari and Chimú. They are thought to have had some limited contact with the Ica-Nazca culture because they mined Guano for fertilizer in Ica-Nazca territory. Moche pottery has been found near Ica, but no Ica-Nasca pottery has been found in Moche territory.

Note: Mochica was the language spoken in the area when the Conquistadors arrived, but there is no indication that this was the language spoken by the Moche, so scientists still call them the Moche after the location of the primary archaeological site. There is some evidence they were the same people as the later culture known as Chimú.

Recent discoveries

In 2005, a mummified Moche woman was discovered at the Huaca Cao Viejo, part of the El Brujo archeological site on the outskirts of Trujillo, Peru. It is the best preserved Moche mummy found to date and the tomb that housed her had unprecedented elaborateness. The archaeologists on the site believe that the tomb had been undisturbed since approximately 450 AD. The tomb also contained various military and ornamental artifacts, including war clubs and spear throwers. A garroted young girl, probably a servant, was found in the tomb with her. News of the discovery was announced by Peruvian and U.S. archaeologists in collaboration with National Geographic in May, 2006.

Nazca Lines

This aerial photograph was taken by Maria Reiche, one of the first archaeologists to study the lines, in 1953.

The Nazca Lines are gigantic geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert, a high arid plateau that stretches 53 miles between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana in Peru. They were created by the Nazca culture between 200 BC and 600 AD.

There are hundreds of individual figures, ranging in complexity from simple lines