INSIDE THE MONKEY'S TAIL
by Carmen Wise
 Maria Reiche (1903-1998)
A full moon washes over the vast desert floor; the brilliant fireworks that are the stars fade in the moon's presence. Maria loved to wander over this still land, even at night when the ground reflected the light like a calm, pale sea.
In the moonlit darkness, she could not see the lines, figures, drawings, and carvings all around her but she could sense them. The way she could imagine similar figures up in the night sky. Constellations appeared to form bears and dogs and warriors and nymphs. Here on her treasured desert floor, on a thousand miles of bare dry earth, other creatures lay. Maybe the Ancient Ones had seen such figures in the sky and had tried to duplicate them on the earth. In their own way.
For fifty years Maria Reiche lived in the place of the Nazca drawings and tried to discover not only how long and wide each figure was but she also yearned to know why they were there. She measured every inch and every mile. As a Mathematician by training, this was her main task. The little house that she had built in the midst of the lines is now a museum filled with her blueprints documenting every one of the figures.
Her favorite figure, the one she identified with, was the Monkey with its playful expression and long spiraling tail. How perfect he was, jaunty curves, except...except that each of his hands had only four fingers. Maria had lost one of her fingers due to a gangrenous infection just a few years before.
"She asked people who knew the old Nazca stories what this (four fingers) might have meant. Finally, she learned that this was a mark of the God of Thunder, which gave special power to communicate with the gods. Had Maria, herself, been marked to uncover the secrets meant only for the gods?" from Maria y Las Estrellas by Anita Jepson-Gilbert
This Monkey, three football fields wide, won her heart and in turn so did all of his companions, the spider, the hummingbird, the whale, the dog, the condor, the parrot and many more.
The Ancient Ones had created these drawings. An ancient architect or artist or priest had directed that the darker surface rocks be lifted one by one in a designated pattern. This left the lighter colored rock to form the figure intended. Thus by plane or helicopter, thousands upon thousands of lines crisscrossing the desert floor can be seen: squares, circles, trapezoids. Her measurements led her to believe that they corresponded in many cases with certain stars. For example, her Monkey's tail seemed to lead to the Ursus Major Constellation.
Maria Reiche, unhappy with Hitler's ascension, left Germany to work as a nanny for a German family living in Cuzco. This brought her to the mysterious land of Peru, with its glorious history of the Inkas and other historical highly developed and organized native societies. When she moved on to Lima, she fell in with a community of fellow scientists who introduced her to what was to be her home for the rest of her life. Her first flight over the Nazca pampa sealed her fate.
"This precious thing should be treated like a very fragile manuscript that is guarded in a special room in a library," she wrote.
 Almost single handedly Maria took up the cause of saving the "precious thing" carved out of that barren land. She convinced the United Nations to designate the Nazca drawings as a World Heritage Site. This meant that only scientists could walk on the floor of the desert. She built a tower next to her home and would use this as a way to detect any intruders on her treasured drawings. People described how she would run up to them to shout at them to go away.
When Maria was successful in having the United Nations declare the Nazca desert a UNESCO World Heritage Site, natives to the area, began to see her in the light of their ancient goddess Pachamama. They thought that it might be possible that the spirit of Pachamama had come back in the person of the tall, lanky woman who wandered around the desert with her halo of hair flying about her head.
They were convinced her role in protecting the Lines for posterity was one Pachamama would play as Mother Earth. Pachamama was the mythical wife of the great Sun God Inti who ruled the heavens. Nazca pottery is filled with images of Pachamama as she is revered even today. Over time, as Catholicism replaced the ancient Gods, Pachamama resolved into that of the Virgin Mary. And so it was, as the Mary worshippers saw this angelic woman striding alone and taking care of the earth, that Maria was a source of wonder and great reverence to them.
"When I do die, I want to be buried in this fascinating place, which I love so much," wrote Maria to her sister.
Maria became ill in her last years and was cared for and tended by her sister until her death at the age of 95. Before her death, she was awarded many honors by the Peruvian government. She was proclaimed an honorary citizen of Peru and the title of Great Lady of Nazca. She is buried in the garden of the little compound she called home, right in the midst of her beloved Lines.
Maria's little adobe home with its flush of pink and orange bougainvillea and its friendly furry alpacas was made into a museum after her passing at the age of 98. Her home continues to be the center of operations for the study and protection of the Nazca reserve. Because of her extraordinary efforts and dedication, these mysterious lines and figures will be available for many generations to come.
THE ANCIENT ONES
Much of this information was gathered from the Internet:
The San José desert, bisected by the great Pan-American Highway that runs the length of Peru, is more spectacularly marked by 70 giant plant and animal figures, as well as a warren of mysterious geometric lines, carved into the barren surface. Throughout the Nazca Valley, an area of nearly 1,000 sq. km (390 sq. miles), there are at least 10,000 lines and 300 different figures. Most are found alongside a 48km (30-mile) stretch of the Pan-American Highway. Some of the biggest and best-known figures are about 21km (13 miles) north of Nazca.
Most experts believe they were constructed by the Nazca (pre-Inka) culture between 300 B.C. and A.D. 700, although predecessor and successor cultures - the Paracas and Huari - might have also contributed to the desert canvas. The lines were discovered in the 1920s when commercial airlines began flights over the Peruvian desert. From the sky, they appeared to be some sort of primitive landing strips.
As enigmatic as they are, the Nazca Lines are not some sort of desert-sands Rorschach inkblot; the figures are real and easily identifiable from the air. With the naked eye from the window of an airplane, you'll spot the outlines of a parrot, hummingbird, spider, condor, dog, whale, monkey with a tail wound like a top, giant spirals, huge trapezoids, and, perhaps oddest of all, a cartoonish anthropomorphic figure with its hand raised to the sky that has come to be known as the "Astronaut."
Some figures are as much as 300m (1,000 ft.) long, while some lines are 30m (100 ft.) wide and stretch more than 9.5km (6 miles).
The variety of animal figures is puzzling. None are indigenous to the Pampa. The monkey, parrot, hummingbird, alligator, cat and dog are more likely found in the Selva. The condor of course is found everywhere, especially in the mountains. Perhaps Nazca was populated by people who migrated from the jungles. It is fitting I think that these jungle creatures would be captured on the rocky canvas of this dry area as symbols of the tropical, water-filled land beyond the mountains.
The straight-edge lines are not so easily explained. Some hypothesize that the lines on the surface parallel underground streams and rivers. Again the central concern in such a dry region is water. Some scientist believe they are the visible map of hundreds of underground springs and rivers. Or perhaps they are grid marks, laid one upon the other over thousands of years.
The unique Nazca Lines remain one of the great enigmas of the South American continent. Questions have long confounded observers. Who constructed these huge figures and lines? And, of course, why? Apparently, over many generations, the Nazca people removed hard stones turned dark by the sun to "draw" the lines in the fine, lighter-colored sand. The incredibly dry desert conditions - it rains only about 50 centimeters a year, on average - preserved the lines and figures for more than 1,000 years. Why the lines were constructed is more difficult to answer, especially considering that the authors were unable to see their work in its entirety without any sort of aerial perspective.
Their purpose remains a mystery. For example, why the fascination with the trapezoid, and why so many in so many different sizes. Did it have religious significance in ancient times? In Egypt the chief architectural shape was the Pyramid. In Nazca it appears to be the trapezoid. Their sharp, geometric edges are in stark contrast to the rounded, undulating animal figures. Again each of these could be creations of different generations of cultures over a thousand years.
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