[FourtySeven]

Haven't these figures been shown to have been made by man?

[Momaw Nadon]

Archaeologists have developed several explanations for this: one is that the figures, probably of religious significance, were not meant to be seen as a while by human eyes; a second is that the Nazca people built balloons that allowed them to view the figures when they flew over the sites. This suggestion, while not impossible, lacks supporting evidence.

This idea, that advanced space beings visited the earth early in human history and played a part in the development of human intelligence and technology, reached its greatest popularity with Swiss writer Erich von Daniken’s book Chariot of the Gods?, first published in West Germany in 1968 and reprinted in translated editions around the world. According to von Daniken, the Nazca lines marked out an "airfield" on which spacecraft landed and took off.

Still, nothing in the nature of these lines points to such a purpose. In fact, a critic of von Daniken stated, "It hardly seems reasonable that advanced extraterrestrial spacecraft would require landing strips," adding that Nazca’s "soft, sandy soil" was hardly suitable for an airport.

Yet when the first space shuttle flight landed at Edwards AFB in California, many who viewed the landing on television were struck by the similarity of the markings that covered the field on which the shuttle landed and those in the Nazca desert.