Las Nazca linesin the south of Peruare a historical enigma that for decades existed in the imagination and curiosity of travelers, historians and archaeologists.
Today it is known that the gigantic lines and geoglyphs were the work of the inhabitants of the Nazca culture, who inhabited the department of Ica between the 1st and 7th centuries, in the coastal desert of central-southern PeruBut they are still many unknownswhich gave rise to the most diverse interpretations, some as bizarre as the one that attributes them to the action of extraterrestrials.
It is also known that neither the Nazca culture nor its fabulous lines would have been possible without another great vestige that was not talked about so much: the Nazca aqueducts, an extraordinary system of underground wells and channels which allowed the Nazca to irrigate the fields and produce the necessary food for a prosperous culture to flourish in one of the most arid and inhospitable areas of the American continent.
They were called “eyes of water”, by the water collection points of the aqueducts and the spiral-shaped vents about seven meters deep that allow the water to be perceived in some points of the network. Ana María Cogorno, president of the María Reiche Association, told BBC Mundo what “No water, no lifehence all that unique culture would not have been possible without the aqueducts”.
Cogorno is part of a project for the conservation of aqueducts in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture of Peru, Unesco and the Peruvian multinational soft drink AJE Group. Many are still in use today and are used to supply water to the inhabitants of the area.
The Nazca aqueducts are an astonishingly advanced water system for the time. According to the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, most They were built between the years 300 and 500between the periods known as Early Born and Middle Born. It is estimated that they date from a date close to that of the lines and geoglyphs.
It’s about a filtering gallery systemwith wells, reservoirs and canals, some underground and others in the open, dug by the Nazca, who thus managed to extract the water contained in the water table under the desert terrain they inhabited.
The system captures water from the water table by filtration and conducts it through underground and uncovered sections until it is stored in a reservoir from which it will later be distributed to the crop fields. The canals have an operational length of more than 9.5 kilometers and manage to irrigate more than 3,000 hectares of land.
Alberto Martorell, head of the Decentralized Directorate of Culture of Ica, points out that “this is how they were made with water from seepage and snowfall from the Andes, which passed through the subsoil and from there was captured through the aqueducts of an area where there is no surface water most of the year”.
Those who studied it admired the Nazca culture for its knowledge of astronomy and mathematics, and the canals are a new example of the wisdom of this ancient and mysterious world. Martorell indicates, however, that, although the network basically had the purpose of irrigation, “the proximity of some springs to others suggests that they also had a ceremonial use.”
The Nazca culture is one of the rich pre-Hispanic civilizations whose legacy fills many Peruvians with pride and historians agree that its development played a key role in human evolution on the territory of present-day Peru.
Although a minority of authors maintain that they were created during the Spanish colonial era, most experts consider the Nazca aqueducts one of the most original creations of this culture and most decisive for its development.
The archaeologist Abdul Yalli stresses that “it is a unique hydraulic system in the Andean world.” For this reason, they have been protected by the Peruvian State as a Cultural Asset of the Nation since 2006 and Unesco collaborates in the efforts for their conservation.
The continuity of its use up to the present turned them into a vital issue for the inhabitants of the area, beyond their historical or cultural value. The aqueducts that have been best preserved are still in use, but others have suffered a worse fate. Yalli explains that “some aqueducts are quite neglected and some have even disappeared due to the urban expansion of Ica.”
Yalli was one of those responsible for the rehabilitation project of the Ocongalla and Cantalloc aqueducts. In Ocongalla, 500 meters of brush were cleared and 120 meters of walls were consolidated. The objective is to continue the work in the medium term with other aqueducts and create an archaeological interpretation center in Ocongalla that helps to deepen the learning of the wise use of water, a subject that is fully valid today.
For Cogorno, dedicated to continuing the work of recovering the legacy of the Nazca culture, “the lines and aqueducts make a spectacular creation and that is why it is a sacred site where one feels the value of thousands of years of history and that it is worth preserving”.
* Por: Guillermo D. Olmo