World of Mysteries - Crop Circles and Desert Lines

Peru South America where mysterious pictures were created 2,000 years ago on the plains of the driest desert on earth now these ancient wonders have spawned a modern tourist industry attracting travelers from all over the world elsewhere tourists flock to see monuments the date from the dawn of history like here at Stonehenge in England and in the surrounding countryside new wonders still appear today vast and intricate crop circles that materialize overnight but how and why are they made and who creates these extraordinary mysteries of the fields amid the rolling hills of England hundreds of intricate designs known as crop circles appear in the fields such perfect circles have been known about for centuries they used to be feared as the work of the devil a 17th century illustration shows Satan mowing his corn but in recent years these crop circles have become ever more numerous more elaborate and more mysterious nobody knows just how the circles are made but some strange force is at work twisting crushing and flattening the corn crop circles have been found all over the world but most appear here in England the greatest concentration lies 100 miles southwest of London in the county of Wiltshire but why are so many found here the answer could lie in the ancient history of this beautiful and mysterious countryside near where the circles appear our age old pictures carved into the hillsides and most famous of all the 5,000 year old rock circle of Stonehenge one and a half million people visit this ancient monument each year making it one of the most popular tourist attractions in England but today this landscape draws tourists to a newer equally mysterious phenomenon in August 2001 this huge and intricate crop circle materialized quite literally overnight its scale was enormous 1,500 feet long and 1500 feet wide hundreds of separate circles within an elaborate spiral design edged perfectly into the field of wheat it appeared on milk Hill a remote spot with no human witnesses to see its creation but these slopes are popular with paragliders and the following day they spotted the circle from the air in the field of farmer Brian Reid we believe it was made in one night I think it just arrived we saw it on the ground but when you walk on the ground you couldn't really appreciate the full extent of it when we saw the aerial photo I mean initially we were shocked to see the intricacy of it just disbelief that it could be so precise and symmetrical that's when we started to think you know this isn't very easy to make it's something else is at work here this corn circle was so spectacular it made headline news and thousands traveled to see it I was amazed by the impact of news once it goes round the world you know people coming from USA Germany Holland Italy Spain Japan it's amazing so many people enjoyed it some that just wanted to walk in there and feel the energy but how was it made some talk of unidentified flying objects others of unknown natural forces Brian Reid has no answers and the sheer scale of the circle has left him bemused I don't know what caused that but not sure that it was made by people investigating this mystery is crop-circle expert Byron Reese now a schoolteacher Reese first began looking at circles in his former job as a policeman but I was cold to a farmer's field where a lot of damage had been done during the night each crop had been destroyed and I had to investigate that and I was just fascinated by the size of it and complexity of it and just got really interested in it from then on I've been doing it ever since Reese has investigated more than a hundred crop circles all over Britain but never one this big this particular crop circle was just huge and over 300 circles of the largest being 70 feet in diameter and I was just enthralled to actually try and work on it and get some readings from he suspects that variations in magnetic fields are a possible cause and he's used its skills as an electronics teacher to adapt his equipment it was originally a metal detector well obviously made a few modifications to because I'm more interested in actually getting the magnetic influence that's below the ground if you remember back at school where we had the piece of paper with the magnet under it we put the iron filings on the top and that sort of circular pattern that we used to get at each end of the magnet well there's some argument that that could be caused by some sort of magnetism within the ground forming these circles at the North and the South Poles of a magnetic source within the earth Reiss examines the whole area where the circle appeared water divining or dowsing is one of his techniques nobody really knows why water dowsing works it just seems to work and some people could do it and some people can't and it seems strange that in many of the cases I've looked at has actually been water very nearby not if not directly underneath a local tavern the barge in has become the favorite watering hole for those who study the crop circle phenomenon we get people from all over the world who come here from Japan Australia New Zealand South America the states Europe everywhere they seem to find this pub and want to know more about crop circles and is the sort of site that generates that interest for people throughout the world the bar known locally as crop circle Central has wall maps detailing the hundreds of circles that have materialized within a few miles of this building but what nobody knows is why this place should be at the heart of the crop circle mystery there's a history of crop circles all over the world but I'm in England has the greatest number of crop circles in this part of the country in fact and in this year alone there's been over 2,000 crop circles in England and about another four to 700 in the other parts of the world so it seems to be a growing phenomenon Britain's corn circles are beautiful and complex but other even more mysterious artworks can be found halfway around the world in Peru South America the tiny fishing port of El Chaco on the coast of southern Peru it's a hundred and fifty miles south of the capital Lima here the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean are rich in fish and in Peru wherever you find fish you find the pelican thousands upon thousands of pelicans it's also a magnet for tourists from all over the world seeking an adventure ride to offshore Pacific Islands and a giant sand drawing whose meaning has been lost in the mists of time the adventure begins with powerful speedboats racing across the Pacific waters at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour they are traveling to the ballestas islands these uninhabited Isles are an astonishing haven for wildlife on the islands rocky beaches boatloads of tourists are entertained by sea lions while simultaneously the sea lions are entertained by the tourists among them Canadian traveller Karen Hannett I got an opportunity to see just an amazing amount of wildlife more birds than I've ever seen I think in my life which was a highlight for sure others were exhilarated by the speedboat ride like Karen's sister Alana it was a fast and fun I loved it the islands themselves are just beautiful and just the diversity of animals and the numbers of animals is just amazing for the tourists there is a further 15 minute ride to reach the coastal sand drawing known as the Paris candelabra 600 feet high the drawing can be seen twelve miles out at sea nobody really knows when it was built or why but even this massive sand drawing pales in significance when compared to the awesome spectacle of the Nazca lines a hundred and fifty miles away in the Peruvian desert okay it looks like a desert runway big enough for any International Airport a hundred and eighty feet wide more than six thousand feet long a landing strip for a jumbo jet or the Space Shuttle or perhaps a more mysterious more alien flight arrival this runway follows an arrow straight line for as far as the eye can see but the reality is that this is probably not a runway at all it is one of thousands of ancient man-made drawings edged into this desert floor scientists call them geoglyphs many are huge rectangular shapes that overlap each other in random patterns others form a fantastic menagerie of animals so big they can only be seen from the air a whale and a curly tailed monkey a delicate hummingbird and a monstrous spider but how and why where the pictures created this is the Nazca desert of southern Peru it is 275 miles south of Lima sandwich between the Pacific coastline and the high peaks and valleys of the Andes life here is changed little for hundreds of years at the base of the mountains on the desert plains the riverbeds are bone dry less than one inch of rain falls here in 20 years this is a dry and windblown place almost lifeless and yet this arid desert attracts tourists and scientists from all over the globe to marvel at one of the ancient wonders of the world the Nazca lines years ago schoolchildren from the town of Nazca demonstrated how to build a Nazca line on top of the sand is a thin layer of dark loose rocks washed down from the Andes 500 thousand years ago and deposited on the desert floor first mark out a narrow straight line with sighting poles and rope then remove every Sun darken stone from the surface of the desert the result is a line as it once would have looked the underlying brilliant white sand shining out against the iron-rich rock floor from the ground the Nazca lines are on too big a scale for the human eye to recognize them so the designs remained a secret until the first commercial flights began to cross these remote Plains in the 1930s yet the lines were created thousands of years before mankind learned the secrets of flight so how did anybody draw such perfect shapes when they couldn't see them in their entirety some believed that this could be the answer the creators of the lines developed some form of balloon No today a hot-air balloon is the latest way to fly over the lines and the flight has lost none of its wonderful balloon pilots one Ortiz I fly I love to fly you know my blood is half Burt and have half human in them it's so beautiful and different I think that the lines were meant to be in watch from the ball something amazing there's an energy in there it's it's so you feel so different it's like in another world when you flying over it more earthbound tourists must make the journey from Lima along the pan-american highway to this 45 foot hi viewing tower offering a less elevated way to see the Nazca lines others take an aerial tour from the tiny Nazca Airport thousands of tourists take this trip every month they leave the town of nazca behind to circle the viewing tower and see the lines and animal drawings concentrated at the Pampa de San Jose but most visitors are unaware of just how vast the lines really are and the power immense and effort went into their creation most of the people who come and visit the lines at Nazca relate to the pomp of the San Jose the one they fly over and they say my god how many lines there are here and they don't realize this this is one tiny percent it's not even one one hundredth of one percent of all the geoglyphs that are available along the coast of Peru when you see the extent it is mind-boggling but perhaps the most mind-boggling mystery of all is why were the Nazca lines made some believe they are aligned with the solstices and record major astronomical events that was the belief of one woman who spent decades studying the lines German mathematician Maria Rice Pampa is a biggest astronomy book in the world at the beginning when they were first made they must have been brilliant white on a dark the dark surface that you see here now but wind has carried small dark stones on the surface and they are not quite the effective that it was in former times maria rice was the first person to discover measure and preserve many of the Nazca lines her work has brought them worldwide recognition rice died in 1998 still trying to prove a link between the lines and her astronomical calculations the tiny room where she lived is now part of a museum dedicated to her memory local children are taught how rice fought for the lines to be protected as a World Heritage Site now the study Maria and all the national schools because really she has saved these lines for country and especially there I think that the children of these days they are really aware of what she has done so in a way Maria is like sort of a hero for Anna Maria kigu know the tomb inscription sums up Maria Rice's achievements Ladon the Nazca is Maria Reiche a grocer the honorary keeper of the Nazca lines for her investigation discoveries in universal delegation of the world cultural heritage the lines in recent years however many of Maria Rice's astronomical theories have been discounted by modern computer studies but other more outlandish theories have tried to link the Nazca lines with the Stars some believe the lines are evidence of alien visits to earth they think that these could be runways for spacecraft and these pictures of aliens who interbred with primitive man in the museum's of Peru are astonishing human remains 2000 year old bodies preserved in the driest desert on earth they were dug up here in the Nazca Plains of southern Peru under the shadow of the towering Andes Mountains a unique gallery of pictures and lines was created by these long dead people an adult with dried skin perfectly preserved a woman who died in childbirth the mummified remains of her stillborn infant lie in the bag she clutches to her stomach trophy heads taken in battle and misshapen skulls alien to human eyes which some claim a proof that space travelers landed here thousands of years ago that was the view put forward by Swiss author Erich von däniken in his 1968 book Chariots of the Gods von Daniken claimed that the Nazca lines were a huge intergalactic Airport and therefore proof that prehistoric earth was visited by astronauts from outer space it's more vehicle landing with an effect maybe even of the air-cushion system so they don't need landing cracks but simply by the landing itself some sand and stones are blown away and you have a simple track on the ground and after maybe a few hours or a few days they start again maybe in another direction you have a second crack but take off track in the humanoid figures on the hills the author claimed to recognize pictures of the alien visitors this particular geoglyph is known as the astronaut but von Daniken's theories have been widely criticized the alien heads are skulls deformed by an ancient Peruvian practice of binding the heads of newborn babies the astronaut is believed to represent a Shaymin or wise man his over large eyes are those of the all-seeing Nazca desert at all von Daniken's runways have been found to come in all shapes and sizes few people believe that a landing spacecraft could have created shapes like these for the last five years archaeologists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have been recreating the Nazca lines in cyberspace they've digitized thousands of aerial 3d photographs to create this world in their computers by studying which lions overlapped each other the archaeologists deciphered how the designs changed over hundreds of years first made were wavy lines and spirals and later larger trapezoid shapes which got bigger and bigger as time went by but the question remained who built the lines scientists believe that most were drawn by an ancient and cultured civilization which thrived here 2,000 years ago but that civilization is shrouded in mystery they left no written records but vital clues come from their mummified bodies out in the desert little trace remains of this sophisticated culture but 9 miles from the town of Nazca archaeologists are slowly uncovering the lost city of cahuachi a religious center buried beneath the burning sands here lie the ruins of the Nazca people's temples nobody lived here yet they traveled from far and wide to worship at this site a testament to the importance of the gods in their everyday lives above-ground only ruins remain but below ground lie huge caverns now partially filled with the desert sands the people who once worshipped here were Lords of all they surveyed but they abandoned their temples 1,500 years ago when the climate changed and the rains ceased to fall near cahuachi is the sacred Cemetery of the Nazca people today it's a tourist attraction the Nazca Nway of death has been studied by local historian one Tola nivara via can be seen quite well how were the conditions deteriorated mummy how the skin is cracking up in the afternoon get sterile windy here we have a storms and also temperature of is resident in summertime we got over 40 degrees over here but the dead weren't always buried alone in one tomb is a wife her husband and his concubine it is a family tomb so more than one person it was very here but in this particular Cemetery we find three kinds of tomb shapes we have we have a rectangular shape and square and also rum ones okay meant for is believed for one person is because the tomb is not big enough okay but this rectangular and square shaped UN's we're meant for a whole family the corpses were wrapped in cotton shrouds and often tied in a fetal position symbolizing the nask and belief that their loved ones would be reborn and when the dead came to life they would obviously need sustenance from the pots of food left beside their often young bodies a life expectancy of these people at that time was relatively short it's quite rare to find mummies with gray hair when you look at these mummies you see the hair color always readies brown or black which is the original hair color and the set of teeth perfect in very healthy it is the state of preservation is astonishing the bodies have been desiccated by the arid conditions over thousands of years hair skin and even tiny toenails of a young child still exist evidence that the Nazca people built the vast network of lions can also be found at the cemetery you would say but how come we know how can we be so sure that the nazca is we're the ones who build these figures on lines because in tombs like these has been found ceramic and textiles with the same designs so by association of ideas they archaeologists come to the conclusion that the nazca swear the ones who build these figures and minds how did they do it or what was the reason for doing so we won't ever know because the old nazca see no leave a written record of what happened in those things but the nask and dead can never rest in peace for centuries their tombs have been looted by grave robbers pots and textiles are stolen and body parts lies scattered across the desert floor this is a weird place because it can be a still found human material lying on the surface look at this here look at it if we keep on pulling it out for Willy a mummy will come out rip see here vertebras part of our skulls in here this is a really fantastic place and you won't see a place like this nowhere else in Peru ignited in the whole world so this is unique people in the past obviously believed in a life after this and then in tabligh this they thought they were going to be varied off somewhere we'll come back to life again but they end up by this and it's sad because my country fellows do not look after this you know we have this grave robbers who destroy we decide like this but it cannot be a stop I'm afraid from the air thousands of pits left by grave robbers can clearly be seen the desert is dotted with the holes they leave behind and the tracks from the grave robbers vehicles have even damaged the Nazca lines themselves but nowadays the grave robbers don't get it all their own way dawn at Nazca Airport in southern Peru and the security patrol is about to take off its leader is pilot Eduardo Heron Heron usually flies tourists over the Nazca lines but today he's tracking down grave robbers they've been spotted in the desert digging up ancient and valuable artifacts from the tombs of the Nazca people from his microlight aircraft Haren is in radio contact with motorcyclists and with police out on patrol the penalties for damaging this World Heritage Site are severe grave robbers risk unlimited fines and up to eight years in jail safeguarding the lines is now of vital importance to the Nazca thora T's and to Eduardo here on I do now the people know the Nazca lines patrol is on the air all the time you know and maybe in the future see an eight take care now the Nazca patrol is on the air scientists too are fighting back against the scourge of the grave robbers Peruvian archaeologist Johnny Isla and German colleague Carsten Lambert are visiting an a skin graveyard desecrated by thieves high above a river valley lies the cemetery of La muniya it was last used 1,500 years ago by the people who drew the Nazca lines in trying to solve the riddle the archaeologists are studying the relationship between the graves and the designs on the neighboring man-made terraces faded lines can still be traced on these age-old terraces carved out of the hillsides pneumonia was a cemetery for the rich and powerful at its heart was the grandest tomb of all a tomb fit for a king that once contained a king's treasure most Nazca tombs are no more than six feet deep but this one lies 60 feet below the desert floor like the other graves it has been looted by bandits who dug this enormous pit to get to the burial chamber whatever NASK and treasure had once been here is gone sold by the grave robbers and now probably dispersed among museums and private collectors all over the world the final burial chamber eight feet by 10 feet was once covered with a hardwood roof of local Warren go trees we have the colores faint traces of color still remain on the walls but despite their greed the robbers failed to get all of the burial horde the archaeologists are sifting loose rubble left by the robbers on the floor of the tomb the painstaking work has been continuing for months the search is uncovering tiny treasures semi-precious stones and even gold pearls this workshop is the final destination of these treasures in the skilled hands of artist Janette Jacob this tomb must have been very rich because it has been emptied before and still they found all the rest of this necklace so we like it very much because it's the first time on these excavations they have pearls and beads and gold especially this comes from the same tomb like the beads probably water pot and a hunting scene it's a hunter with his arms and the handle which is missing but I will make a reconstruction probably of it and I will fill all these holes Jacob has been restoring Peruvian pottery for the last two years and her admiration for the Nazca people has grown steadily in that time they have been great artists in making pottery because they had no wheels they were turning it on a plate but by hands and they were extremely skillful also these pots are extremely thin and regular and totally around but the colors they are extremely well preserved they are like from yesterday but the search at la moon-u tomb has yielded more than just ceramics tiny seashells found in the rubble have provided clues to the greatest mystery of all why where the Nazca lines created here in the Nazca desert of southern Peru German archaeologists are investigating trapezoids the rectangular shapes that narrow at one end across the desert floor nobody knows why this shape appears so often or why some are so huge this one pasted out by Carsten Lambert is over 300 yards in length but it is on these shapes that Lambert has discovered the same rare seashells found at the Nazca Kings grave at la muniya what we found here was the fragments of seashell of a special type it's called spondylus which you can't find on the coast near Nazca it comes from what is now is Ecuador we find spondylus on some of the geoglyphs and there is a certain relation to water the ocean off southern Peru is normally too cold for spawn jealous seashells but once every decade a warm El Nino current shown here in red attracts spondylus to this coastline as a result the Nazca people associated the shells arrival with dramatic El Nino weather fronts and the bringing of rain to the desert sometimes with a very strong Nino it even rains down here and we suppose that the the ancient Nazca knew about the relation of his Nino years and they spawned little seashell it was another hint that the geoglyphs have to do with the water called Lambos now believes the Nazca lines were ritual sites where the seashells were offered to the gods to encourage El Nino rain others agree that water is the key to the mystery of why the Nazca lines were created rivers flowing down from the Andes are the only source of water for this arid land and many centuries ago it seems that some of the rivers ran dry years without rainfall forced the Nazca priests to abandon their temple site at Kawachi in a desperate plea to the gods they built bigger and better geoglyphs instead of having rain they had two droughts so they thought that the gods were upset for something they did and they didn't know what it was him so in order to please these God's anger Dayton made up designs in lines and figures to blister the Nazca people even believed they knew where their gods lived here on the biggest sand dune in the world at 6,800 feet it towers over the surrounding mountains but now that tourism is a major industry the mountains of the gods have a more down-to-earth appeal the nazcans have discovered sandboarding you that's quite high but um it's quite a rush when you get down while I've actually had a hangover today I mean by the pool not doing too much but I thought I should get some fresh air so I'm about to go sand boy he's jumping the board and go for it straight down the hill and hang on I need a lot of Stan the most recent theory of why the lines were created comes from David Johnson research associate at the University of Massachusetts he's studying links between the Nazca lines and this arid lands most precious commodity its water Johnson believes the lines are coded messages revealing the secrets of hidden water sources under the desert and that quest for water was at the heart of the nazcans religious beliefs what is a major component of your religion is what is important to your survival and water is important to survival here without it you're dead Johnson's work is partly funded by the National Geographic Society despite his use of some unorthodox methods although the scientific community does not believe in dowsing I find that dowsing does work for me the dowsing rods are made out of iron in this case and 2bic pen containers to which they are set in which allows the rods to swing freely so they're independent of my hand I'm not influencing them Johnson demonstrates the technique walking over a water course buried beneath his feet as he encountered the boundary of the water the rods will point along the course of the water the direction of flow as soon as I step on to that water source the rods cross and they will remain crossed as long as I'm on a concentrated flow of water and as I get near the center of the concentrated flow they will be literally parallel to one another crossed in parallel and this is the best place to put a well today water is pumped from deep underground wells to make the desert bloom but without modern technology these sophisticated people constructed elaborate aqueducts to channel the water to their settlements 2,000 years later many of their aqueducts still exist in working order some were buried underground to cut down on evaporation constructed of stone channels they need cleaning and are still maintained by local people today and crystal-clear pools like this are where the underground water ends up canals dug in the desert floor 2,000 years ago this is an example of one of the ancient aqueducts or pookie owes that are located within the nostril region this is a working aqueduct as you can see people come here every day to wash to take drinking water and it is a vital component within the community the engineering skills of the ancient Nazca people are a constant source of amazement to David Johnson we are using every scientific tool available to develop an understanding of the source of these of these waters and yet the ancients utilize this water for more than 1500 years and it is just incredible to believe that they had such a profound knowledge of their natural environment even in modern times let alone a thousand five hundred years ago at the heart of Johnson's theory are underground Rock faults caused by volcanic activity eons ago within the faults you find many minerals for example this is copper over here is quartzite they mined it for gold and silver as well and then in addition to that the bedrock within the fault zone is highly fractured for example this bedding right here you can literally flick it apart with your hands and within this fractured zone it is water can be conducted Johnson was convinced that the Rock faults carried water beneath the desert and for years he's been researching just how that discovery relates to the Nazca lines I've been working here on the lines in Oscar for five years and people say aren't you getting bored and the answer is no because every day we go out we see something or we can experience something that no one else has experienced in 1500 or 2000 years and then out in the mountains tracing a rock fault he had a moment of true revelation I came over a little Ridge and here before me was this magnificent trapezoid and line system and it was pointing directly to the fault that I was walking to I realized that I had a source of water beneath me and I just sat straight down and that's when you begin to hyperventilate and you look up and you say my god I think I know what they mean David Johnson believes that the huge hilltop shapes and the miles of lines between them with an askins way of recording the location of hidden water courses some shapes showed the direction the water ran in others how fast it flowed they even recorded the names of their underground rivers when people fly over the lines of Nazca the thing you're attracted to most are the figures which take the shape of the spider the hummingbird of the orca whale the monkey to mention a few I believe that they were utilizing those figures to name the different water sources as we name rivers today so we can distinguish one from the other this is a very difficult thing to prove and we may never prove it but it is what I believe based on the investigations that I have conducted here but why did the ancient Nazca people rely on such complex methods of recording their knowledge the complexity of the lines in Nazca can this be explained by looking at current knowledge and how we recorded you can have books you can have computers we have numerous ways recording our knowledge now go back 2,000 years go back 1500 years these people didn't have paper they didn't have the computers in that and recording knowledge was a part of their lives as much as it is ours we know this because we can look at the pottery and we can see storylines which relates to their everyday life time now take this water system and the lines of Nazca are not any different and then a modern water utility map for a community when you go into a city and a water main breaks the water company will get out their mounts I don't know exactly where to dig to find a given pipe well it's no different than what the nos 2 or whatever culture put the lines down only in this case they did it on a one-to-one scale across the vast expanses of this desert so they had a great platform on which the right and that isn't exactly what they did but what the ancient people of Peru could never have imagined is just how their massive works of art have captured the imagination of 21st century tourists a quarter of a million people have visited the Nazca lines in the past five years developing a modern tourist industry in this ancient land and the lines are now a protected World Heritage Site safeguarding their future for generations of travelers to come you

Channel: Naked Science

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Keywords: crop, circles, desert, lines, nazca, paracas, candelabra, wiltshire, pictures, stonehenge, ancient, monument, phenomenon, geoglyph, huge, epic, scale, elaborate, design, corn, wheat, milk, hill, remote, aliens, ufo, extra, terrestrial, suspicious, farmer, magnetic, source, beautiful, complex, peru, extraterrestrial, andes, peruvian, sechura, plains, secret, shapes, astronomical, events, maria, reiche, german, mathematician, skull, erich, von, däniken, chariots, gods, intergalactic, airport, worship, david, johnson, project, countryside, giant

Id: uf9fLuaHvZQ

Length: 50min 34sec (3034 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 02 2014