More than 300 new geoglyphs discovered in the Nazca desert with the help of AI

A Japanese scientific research carried out with artificial intelligence (AI) has allowed the discovery of 303 new geoglyphs in the Peruvian desert of Nazca (south), which almost doubles the total known of these mysterious lines with more than 2,000 years of antiquity, its authors announced on Monday.

“Using AI in the research has allowed us to map the distribution of the geoglyphs more quickly and accurately,” said archaeologist Masato Sakai of Yamagata University, presenting the results of the study at a press conference at the Japanese embassy in Lima.

Sakai said the findings were the result of joint work between the Nasca Institute of the Japanese educational institution and IBM Research.

“The traditional method of study, which consisted of visually identifying the geoglyphs from high-resolution images of this vast area, was slow and carried the risk of overlooking some of them,” said the scientist, endorsing the use of AI as a tool.

The research has been accepted by the scientific community and was published this Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the prestigious journal of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

According to the article, “AI-accelerated research enabled the identification of 303 new geoglyphs in six months of fieldwork.”

Among the figures discovered are “giant linear geoglyphs” that “predominantly represent wild animals,” but there are also “small” ones in relief with “motifs related to human activity, including humans and domesticated camelids.”

To discover these 303 formations, “a vast amount of data from geospatial images produced by aircraft was analyzed to identify priority areas of probable geoglyphs for field studies,” the research adds.

“This represents a 16-fold increase in the rate of discovery using IBM AI” and demonstrates how this powerful technology accelerates discoveries in fields such as archaeology, the PNAS article notes.

The research recalls that the discovery of the 430 Nazca geoglyphs that were known before this find took almost a century.

The famous Nazca Lines, recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, are about 2,000 years old and take the form of geometric and animal figures, which can only be appreciated from the sky.

The real meaning of these geoglyphs is an enigma: some researchers consider them to be an astronomical observatory, others a calendar.

The mysterious site where the formations are located is located about 400 kilometers south of Lima, in the desert. The first geoglyphs were discovered in 1927.

The inhabitants of the Nasca civilization occupied the area from 200 to 700 AD.