An international research team led by Japan’s Yamagata University and IBM has discovered 248 new geoglyphs among Peru’s famous Nazca Lines using artificial intelligence, bringing the total count to 893 known designs. The breakthrough demonstrates how AI is revolutionizing archaeological research, accelerating discovery rates by 16 times compared to traditional methods and revealing intricate details about ancient Nazca civilization practices, including previously unknown depictions of human sacrifice rituals.
The big picture: AI has fundamentally transformed the pace of archaeological discovery in the Nazca Desert, where researchers had identified only 430 geoglyphs over nearly a century of study.
• Prior to AI integration, the annual discovery rate was just 1.5 geoglyphs per year between 1940 and 2000, rising to 18.7 per year with high-resolution satellite imagery.
• The current AI-assisted approach has identified 781 of the 893 total known geoglyphs, representing a dramatic acceleration in archaeological research capabilities.
Key details: The newly discovered geoglyphs include 160 figurative motifs depicting people, animals, and symbolic scenes, plus 88 geometric designs.
• Among the most significant findings are four geoglyphs showing scenes of human sacrifice, including a priest carrying a human head.
• The designs were created at least 2,000 years ago using rocks and gravel, offering archaeologists insights into ancient Nazca beliefs and rituals.
• Project leader Masato Sakai noted that the geoglyphs’ strategic placement beside old pathways suggests they served as ritual expressions and methods for mapping collective memory.
How it works: The AI system analyzes thousands of aerial photographs to identify areas with high likelihood of containing undiscovered geoglyphs.
• Researchers then focus their field studies on AI-selected sites rather than conducting broad searches across the vast desert terrain.
• This targeted approach allows archaeologists to spend more time interpreting and studying findings rather than searching for them.
Why this matters: The AI-driven discoveries are revealing new dimensions of ancient Nazca culture while establishing a new paradigm for archaeological research.
• Each pathway represented different themes, suggesting the geoglyphs functioned as a system for transmitting symbolic or spiritual messages across the civilization.
• The technology breakthrough parallels the impact of aerial photography in the 1940s, which first enabled systematic study of the Nazca Lines.
• By automating pattern detection across vast landscapes, AI enables deeper understanding of ancestral cultures whose secrets remain “buried in plain sight in the sprawling desert.”
Historical context: Scientific study of the Nazca Lines began in 1927, with aerial photography in the 1940s leading to identification of the first 112 geoglyphs.
• High-resolution satellite imagery introduced in 2004 accelerated discoveries, revealing 318 new figures by 2020.
• The current Yamagata University and IBM collaboration had already found an additional 168 geoglyphs in 2022 before this latest announcement.
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