Evidence of the Gods (16 page)

A precise study of the geometric depiction on the high plateau supports the genuine nature of the shape. To the right and left of the large square in the middle, there are circles consisting of an outer and inner ring each. At the center of each, a star can be seen with a central point and eight lines raying out. (
Image 141
) From this center point, a long, straight line goes to the two smaller circles on the right and the left. This line also goes over the cut in the terrain. The extension ends in the “Nazca piste” (not visible on the picture). The center of the large circle also forms a point from which lines ray out, with two overlapping rectangles. Then there is an inner and an outer ring. The stones of the inner ring run both through the cut in the terrain and a hollow. I took the trouble to count the points in so far as possible. In the inner ring, there are about 90 points, in the outer about 63.

The superimposed rectangles in the center of the large circle are, in turn, bisected by lines which precisely intersect the corner points of the square in the middle. The whole structure is a masterpiece of geometry. Furthermore—just like the chessboard pattern—the geometric message is embedded in the Nazca network.

Just imagine that forgers today had produced the geometric message. The first question is, What for? Well, maybe to make Nazca and Palpa more attractive for tourists. Tourists are flown over Nazca daily in small aircraft. But the thing that the pilots precisely do
not
do is fly their guests over the mandala and chessboard pattern, because they are not part of the scraped out drawings of Nazca at all. All that forgery for nothing? Friends, the matter is more complicated than might appear at first sight: both the mandala (the large geometric creation) and the chessboard pattern only become visible if approached from the air at a particular angle. If the pilot approaches from the wrong angle or height, the structure does not exist. In a complex piece of work, several geometric points would have to have been fixed and marked with string before work started. The boss of the team of forgers would need to be a geometry professor and his gang prepared to gather stones into huge triangles, circles, and rectangles for weeks in the burning heat. All that sweat-soaked effort just for a forgery? No one goes voluntarily into hell, not even the members of the Peruvian army. Furthermore, they would have arrived in all-terrain vehicles. Finally, the work gang would sweat off a large quantity of water. Where are the tracks of the vehicles? Where the paths of the industrious forgers?

If a clique of forgers had been at work in Nazca/Palpa in our time, such months of effort would most certainly not have gone unnoticed. Where are the triumphant sensational reports in the local press? We did it!

When I flew over Nazca and Palpa each evening in the autumn of 1996, I asked Eduardo, the chief pilot of Nazca at the time, “Who scraped these forgeries into the ground? Who gathered the stones?”

“That is no modern forgery! That thing has always been here!”

“Why don’t any of the many Nazca reporters write about it? I can’t remember having seen a picture of it.”

Eduardo, the oldest pilot at the time, informed me that, first, the diagram was not located on the plain of Nazca but in Palpa and, second, no one knew what to say about it. All that remained was a big silence.

That has not changed to the present day. Neither the geometric message nor the chessboard pattern are discussed anywhere. Not even the young pilots who today fly tourists over Nazca know what is correct. Hardly any of them even know of the geometric drawings. That does not surprise me. After all, they can only be seen under certain conditions of light and angles of approach. So the younger pilots think, with a shrug of the shoulders, that it is probably a forgery while the older ones maintain that the geometry has always been there, but has hardly been noticed because of the light conditions. No one wants to burn their fingers. No one dares to refute the loud claims of forgery. But they
can
be refuted. How?

Image 142
shows a section of the smaller accompanying ring on the right. Two straight lines cross the center and extend beyond the outer ring. Part of the line which frames the large mandala in the center can be seen to the left of the picture. The twin tracks of this line can be seen clearly in the picture. The alleged forgers would therefore not only have taken the trouble to frame the central representation with a square, but they would also have drawn the white line of this square twice—totally daft for forgers. They do not create extra work for nothing.

Image 143
shows a close-up outside the central depiction. We can still barely recognize strange rectangular shapes on the ground, which move outward from a point in a star shape. One line of the Nazca network runs toward it and touches the central mandala. So the “forgery” somehow belongs to the complex of lines of Nazca. In whatever form, flying planners were at work.

Image 144
is not about the geometric figures but about the surrounding terrain. Where is the car park for the vehicles of the forgers with their water barrels? They would not even have been able to ascend the steep slope on the right at the front (lower edge of picture). Where are the tire tracks? How and why would one plant an incredible geometric shape on a section of land which cannot be seen from anywhere, except when approached from the air in a particular direction? Why undertake the exercise in a dried-out desert when no human soul would ever see this magnificent stroke of genius? Forgers who produce a work like that want an audience, admirers, and applause for their achievement. All markings from our time—political messages, for example—are located on hillsides near roads with traffic, such as the famous Pan-American Highway, the route from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. It runs through the deserts of Nazca/Palpa. Yet the geometric miracle lies completely off any road in a burning hell hostile to any humans. Where is the signature of the genius forger? I have heard the objection that it sometimes rains violently for a brief period in Nazca/Palpa. The downpours should have washed the shapes away a long time ago if they were actually old. Not true. The same rain would have made the shapes, pistes, and zig-zag lines on the plain of Nazca/Palpa disappear. But that did not happen.

The chessboard pattern consists of more than 800 individual points, though they cannot be counted precisely. Just as with the mandala, a kind of water course runs transversely across the pattern here too. (
Image 145
) Should the rare rain water not have made these points disappear a long time ago as well if they were old? Precisely not. Why? Several undisputed old lines run their course to the left of the chessboard pattern. Irritatingly, they do so just as directly across
water courses as those in the chessboard pattern. Any rainfalls were not able to wash away these definitively old lines at all. They exist beyond dispute. The fourth and fifth from the left even run for two meters in the water course. No trace of wearing away. The proponents of the forgery theory should think again. And the question about the tire tracks is also resolved under the magnifying glass: there aren’t any, neither on the first nor the second chessboard pattern.

It seems to me that a discussion of the geometric figures is not wanted, hence the moaning about forgeries—nothing unusual about that in our society. The spirit of the times only permits what is reasonable. And a geometric message from the past cannot exist. Period! Anyone who speaks about it is unreasonable. Who, actually, can protect us from reasonable people?

In fact, I can produce even more impressive pictures, whether the spirit of the times likes it or not. In Ica, a provincial capital 140 kilometers north of Nazca/Palpa, a giant salutes the heavens from a rocky plateau.
Image 146
is the original; in
Image 147
, we have outlined the contours. The monster has broad feet angled outward and long legs, and its left arm is held at an angle. The head has been destroyed and the right arm appears to hold a long object. What is that all about? Another forgery? This time the figure was not laid out with stones but chiseled directly into the rock. Not in this and not in the last century. Anyone who argues that the Giant of Ica, as the figure is known, is not pointing at the heavens probably cannot cope with the message to the gods.

Even in Nazca, among the tangle of lines, a 29-meter-high figure generally called El Astronauta, “the astronaut,” is stuck to a hillside. (
Image 148
) The skull is dominated by two round eyes, the proportions of the body are correct, and the feet appear to be wearing heavy shoes. The arms are remarkable: one arm is pointing toward the sky, the other toward the earth. Is this intended to signal the connection of Heaven–Earth? (Incidentally, the whirling dervishes in Turkey, who rotate their body at great speed in their flowing robes, point one arm at the earth and the other at the sky, with the intention of indicating the connection between heaven and earth.) El Astronauta in Nazca is framed by two vertical lines. There must originally have been other figures on the same hill. Their contours can only just still be recognized. And there is a surprising three-dimensional effect which only becomes visible when the sun is low. Suddenly El Astronauta appears to step out of the hill.