Why was Maria Reiche obsessed with Nazca Lines?
What if I told you that in the 1940s a German woman dedicated her entire life sweeping meter by meter the Nazca lines.
She came from Germany as a teacher to Lima and soon she heard about the lines and became obsessed with their mystery. She went through so many brooms that, among the local population rumours circulated that she was a witch.
She used her own brooms to remove the dark gravel that over the centuries had filled in the geoglyphs. thanks to her training in science, she developed the first theory about their possible purpose as an astronomical calendar, a hypothesis still debated today.
Reiche protected the complex not only from the effects of the weather, but also from the intruders who arrived mainly by the Pan-American highway. Thanks to Reiche’s efforts, the Nazca lines became a world-famous enclave, researched since then by numerous experts. No one knows the purpose for which they were created. Reiche observed that some lines converged towards the sunrise on the winter solstice of the southern hemisphere.
Reiche proposed that some figures correspond to the shapes of constellations and served as an astronomical calendar.
So she became Maria Reiche “La Dama de Nasca” “La Dama del Desierto”.
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