Nazca From Space

Most people are familiar with the drawings in Peru’s Nazca Desert:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nazca_colibri.jpg

It’s thought they were created by local peoples between 200 B.C. and 600 A.D. They’re remarkably well realized, considering that the builders probably couldn’t have viewed them from the air. Here’s a view from a satellite:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:NEO_nazca_lines_big.jpg

It’s easy to decide that they’re the work of visiting extraterrestrials — the airliners that first spotted them in the 1920s described them as “primitive landing strips” — but researcher Joe Nickell has shown that a small team of people can reproduce a drawing in 48 hours, without aerial supervision, using Nazcan technology. Still, well done.
(Top image: Wikimedia Commons)