Matyas Rehak - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only
Over the past century, the ancient artworks inscribed on the ground in a desert in Nazca, Peru, have fascinated archaeologists. Many of them can only be seen from far away, such as from atop a mountain or in an airplane.
These geoglyphs were created by the Nazca culture, a pre-Inca South American Indigenous group. They are most known for creating the Nazca Lines.
The Nazca Lines were first recorded in 1927. Since then, researchers have found around 430 geoglyphs associated with the Nazca people.
Now, an additional 303 geoglyphs have been discovered with the help of artificial intelligence. The drawings were made in an elevated desert in southern Peru at least 2,000 years ago.
The Nazca people lived in coastal desert settlements along the Nazca River between roughly 200 B.C.E. and 600 C.E. They carved geoglyphs into the ground by moving rocks to reveal lighter soil.
Their largest artworks of geometric patterns and shapes measure up to 30 miles long. Figures that depict wild plants and animals reach about 1,200 feet long.
The new group of geoglyphs was smaller, older, and less visible than the ones discovered in the past. So, the researchers employed an A.I. model that was capable of identifying geoglyphs from aerial pictures.
The A.I. was trained to detect faint lines on the desert floor. It can spot outlines at a rate 20 times faster than humans.
After training the model to identify images of existing geoglyphs, the research team traveled to some sites to confirm the existence of the recently discovered illustrations.
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