Archaeologists Reveal the Face of Peru’s ‘Ice Maiden’ Mummy
In a remarkable unveiling, the potential true appearance of “Juanita,” Peru’s iconic mummy, a teenage Inca girl sacrificed over half a millennium ago on the lofty Andean peaks, has been revealed.
A life like sculpture revealing the potential living face of Peru’s most famous mummy, a teenage Inca girl sacrificed in a ritual over 500 years ago on the Andean peaks, has been unveiled.
The bust was unveiled at a ceremony at the Andean Sanctuaries Museum of the Catholic University of Santa Maria in Arequipa
The reconstructed mummy, known as “Juanita” or “The Ice Maiden”, is the result of collaborative efforts between a team of Polish and Peruvian scientists, in conjunction with Oscar Nilsson, a Swedish sculptor renowned for his expertise in facial reconstructions.
Johan Reinhard, the US anthropologist who found the mummy said he could not have imagined having a precise reconstruction of the mummy.
It took over 400 hours for Nilsson to reconstruct “Juanita,” from the research given by the Polish team.
Who was “The Ice Maiden”?
Reinhard and his Peruvian climbing partner, Miguel Zárate, discovered the mummy in 1995 at an altitude of more than 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) on the snow-capped Ampato volcano.
Juanita, the mummy, was almost entirely preserved in a frozen state, retaining her internal organs, hair, blood, skin, and even the contents of her stomach.
The mummy is known as “Juanita” and the “Inca Ice Maiden”
In addition to the mummy, they stumbled upon a multitude of items that had been left as offerings to the Inca gods.
These included llama bones, small figurines, and fragments of pottery, scattered across the mountain slope from which the body had tumbled down.
Anthropological research places the sacrificial date of Juanita between A.D. 1440 and 1450 when she was aged between 13 and 15.
The likely cause of her death was identified as a severe blow to the right occipital lobe, as determined by researchers at Johns Hopkins University who conducted a CT scan.
She is considered one of the best-preserved mummies in the Andes and her remains can currently be viewed at the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries in Arequipa, Peru
Humans were in South America at least 25,000 years ago, giant sloth bone pendants reveal
Humans were living in Brazil earlier than previously thought, prehistoric sloth-bone pendants suggest.
The date that humans arrived in South America has been pushed back to at least 25,000 years ago, based on an unlikely source: bones from an extinct giant ground sloth that were crafted into pendants by ancient people.
An artist’s interpretation of a human crafting a pendant from a giant ground sloth bone around 25,000 years ago in what is now Brazil.
Discovered in the Santa Elina rock shelter in central Brazil, three sloth osteoderms — bony deposits that form a kind of protective armor over the skin of animals such as armadillos — found near stone tools sported tiny holes that only humans could have made.
The finding is among the earliest evidence for humans in the Americas, according to a paper published Wednesday (July 12) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Researchers in Brazil found three giant ground sloth osteoderms that were polished and had holes in them.
The Santa Elina rock shelter, located in the Mato Grosso state in central Brazil, has been studied by archaeologists since 1985. Previous research at the site noted the presence of more than 1,000 individual figures and signs drawn on the walls, hundreds of stone tool artifacts, and thousands of sloth osteoderms, with three of the osteoderms showing evidence of human-created drill holes.
The newly published study documents these sloth osteoderms in exquisite detail to show that it is extremely unlikely that the holes in the bones were made naturally, with the implication that these bones push back the date humans settled in Brazil to 25,000 to 27,000 years ago.
These dates are significant because of the growing — but still controversial — evidence for very early human occupation in South America, such as a date of 22,000 years ago for the Toca da Tira Peia rock shelter in eastern Brazil.
Using a combination of microscopic and macroscopic visualization techniques, the team discovered that the osteoderms, and even their tiny holes, had been polished, and noted traces of stone tool incisions and scraping marks on the artifacts. Animal-made bite marks on all three osteoderms led them to exclude rodents as the creators of the holes.
“These observations show that these three osteoderms were modified by humans into artefacts, probably personal ornaments,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
The osteoderms had traces of stone tool incisions and scraping marks, which suggests they were modified by humans.
In an email to , study co-author Mírian Pacheco, a lecturer in paleontology at the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil, noted that “it is virtually impossible to define the real meaning these artifacts had for the occupants of Santa Elina.”
However, the shape and large number of osteoderms “may have influenced the making of a specific type of artifact such as a pendant,” she said.
The presence of human-modified sloth bones in association with stone tools from geological layers that date to 25,000 to 27,000 years ago is strong evidence that people arrived in South America far earlier than previously assumed.
It’s possible that ancient humans wore these bones as pendants.
Our evidence reinforces the interpretation that our colleagues working on Santa Elina have been talking about for 30 years,” Thaís Pansani, a paleontologist at the Federal University of São Carlos in Brazil, said in an email to Live Science — namely, that “humans were in Central Brazil at least 27,000 years ago.”
The finding shows that ancient people used sloth remains in a variety of ways, said Matthew Bennett, a geologist at Bournemouth University in the U.K. who has researched human-sloth interactions in North America but was not involved in this project.
“This is an exciting piece of work which may, in time, support the idea of peopling of the Americas during the Last Glacial Maximum,” the coldest part of the last ice age, Bennett in an email.
However, many sites in South America have not yet been fully studied, meaning the debate about humans’ arrival in the Americas is far from over.
“We believe that there should be more evidence waiting to be found in the rock shelters and caves of Brazil in places little or not explored,” Pansani said.
Archaeologists Have Discovered a 3,200-Year-Old Mural of a Knife-Wielding Spider God in Peru
Archaeologists have discovered a 3,200-year-old mural of a spider god at an ancient temple complex in northern Peru’s Virú province, around 300 miles north of Lima.
Farmers expanding their fields in Peru discovered this ancient temple with a mural depicting a spider god.
The painting, in shades of ochre, yellow, gray, and white, was found on the side of an adobe structure made from mud bricks, reports the Guardian. The zoomorphic design is believed to represent a spider wielding a knife.
Local avocado and sugarcane farmers discovered the historic artwork in November while using heavy machinery to plow new fields, which inadvertently destroyed about 60 percent of the site. Because it is located near a river, the temple was likely dedicated to water deities.
“What we have here is a shrine that would have been a ceremonial center thousands of years ago,” archaeologist Régulo Franco Jordán told Peru’s La República newspaper.
“The spider on the shrine is associated with water and was an incredibly important animal in pre-Hispanic cultures, which lived according to a ceremonial calendar.
It’s likely that there was a special, sacred water ceremony held between January and March when the rains came down from the higher areas.”
Farmers expanding their fields in Peru discovered this ancient temple with a mural depicting a spider god.
Jordán was called to investigate the discovery by a friend who lives in the area. “When I arrived I was so surprised to see an impressive facade, with geometric figures,” he told Peruvian state news agency Andina.
The shrine was likely the work of Peru’s pre-Columbian Cupisnique culture, a people who lived on the nation’s northern coast more than 3,000 years ago. Jordán has christened the site Tomabalito, after Castillo de Tomabal, another nearby archaeological site.
Farmers expanding their fields in Peru discovered this ancient temple with a mural depicting a spider god.
The government plans to begin emergency work to preserve the find next week, and has filed a complaint against the famers who damaged the ancient temple, reports Andina. Further excavations are planned for after the pandemic.
Other recent archaeological discoveries in Peru include a new Nazca line geoglyph of a giant cat, which was discovered in October. The massive hilltop drawing is believed to date to between 200 BC and 100 BC.
Man in Peru Caught Out Drinking With an 800-year-old Mummy!
A pre-Hispanic mummy of between 600 and 800 years old, was found inside the backpack of a delivery man from a delivery company in the Peruvian region of Puno, near Bolivia.
The 26-year-old Peruvian man who was caught with the mummy said, ‘Juanita’ was a kind of ‘spiritual girlfriend’ he kept it at home “and took it out to show his friends.”
Drunk in Charge of a Mummy
The police found three young men accompanied by a mummy that was inside a thermal delivery suitcase. The discovery occurred on Saturday, February 25, 2023, in the city of Puno, in southern Peru.
The group of friends was surprised by the police authorities in a routine check while they were consuming alcoholic beverages at the Mantaro viewpoint of Puno.
The 26-year-old had with him a delivery box from the company ‘Pedidos Ya’. Inside, there were human remains in a fetal position still bearing soft tissues with characteristics corresponding to a mummy.
According to the BBC , the young man described the mummy as ‘a kind of spiritual girlfriend’ as he had been sharing his room with it for some time.
The mummy was supposedly owned by his father, and was generally kept in a box next to the TV. It is unknown how the mummy came to be owned by his father.
The Ministry of Culture specified through a statement that the remains – classified as a national cultural asset – were identified as a mummified adult man presumably from the eastern area of Puno.
Sources from that office informed EFE that the individual would have been over 45 years old and approximately 1.51 meters (5 foot) tall, according to preliminary investigations.
An Odd Housemate
The authorities estimate that the human remains were 800 years old, and would likely come from the district of Patambuco. Apparently, they had been in the possession of the family for about 30 years, the authorities from the Peruvian Ministry of Culture informed various local media.
Photograph from the Ministry of Culture, which shows a pre-Hispanic mummy found inside the backpack of a delivery man.
The delivery man stated that the mummy was kept at his parents’ house and that he took it out to be seen by his friends from the neighborhood, according to the newspaper El Comercio .
The police confiscated the mummy and turned it over to the Peruvian Ministry of Culture. The delivery man and his two friends, aged between 23 and 26, have been detained and are being investigated for possible crimes against the country’s cultural heritage.
1,000-Year-Old Skeletons ‘Wrapped in Textiles’ and ‘Buried in Seated Position’ Looking Out to Sea
The remains of four bodies dating back to 1,000AD have been discovered in a strange sitting position in a series of tombs.
Archaeologists discovered the skeletons of three adult women and one man in the middle of a residential neighbourhood in Lima, Peru
They are part of a civilisation that dominated Peru before the rise of the Inca, and while the remains appear to have decomposed, archaeologists believe they were once wrapped in textiles in an attempt to mummify them.
The four skeletons, which were found in separate tombs, were part of the ancient Ichma culture that formed following the break-up of the South American Wari Empire before later being absorbed into the Inca Empire.
The figures, some of which still have hair, were found seated, looking out towards the sea, alongside offerings such as ceramics and weaving tools. The exact reason for this position is still unclear, but archaeologists believe it must have had some ritual significance. The Incas, and likely cultures before them including the Ichma, believed there was a link between the living and the gods.
Some of the skeletons still have hair and were found buried along with ceramic pots and weaving tools (pictured). While the remains appear to have decomposed, archaeologists believe they were once wrapped in cloth in an attempt to mummify them
As a result, mummies would be ‘consulted’ on important occasions and were often given ‘places of honour’ near temples and on high ground.
The living used artificial techniques such as embalming and drying out the flesh, known as desiccation, to preserve their Dead.
Spanish conquerors during the 16th century were reportedly so disgusted by the ritual that they destroyed many mummies after looting their graves.
This may explain the lack of other artefacts, and even the cloth the mummies were wrapped in, in the newly-discovered tombs.
It is the latest in a number of ancient tombs to be discovered in Peru’s capital, but these are among the first from the Ichma, or Ychsma era, helping to provide new clues about this little-known, early culture.
Isabel Flores, an archaeologist and director of the excavation at Huaca Pucllana, the ancient ceremonial complex in the Miraflores district of Lima where the skeletons were found, said: ‘There are four human burial sites, for adult individuals, three women and one man, who lived between the years 1000 to 1450.
‘These are the first four tombs of the Ichma culture. We think that we may still find more.’
The discovery of the tombs has allowed archaeologists to confirm that the Ichma culture, which dominated the central coast of Peru, had a foothold in Lima.
It dominated the area south of Lima in the Lurin Valley from 1,000AD and later spread north into the Rimac Valley.
It was later absorbed into the Inca Empire in around 1440.
It is known that the Wari culture, which emerged around 600AD, had used the large temple complexes in the area that is now covered by the Peruvian capital.
Archaeologists believe Huaca Pucllana was initially built, however, by the Lima culture who lived there in around 200AD. There are around 350 of these ‘huacas’, or ceremonial complexes in Lima which predate Spanish colonisation.
The Ichma people are credited with constructing at least 16 including the Huaca Huantille in the Magdalena del Mar and the Huaca San Borja in the San Borja District.
Mummification was an ancient Andean way to worship ancestors
In the Huaca Huantille, at least nine mummies have been discovered, buried with ceramic items and jewellery.
Excavations in Pachacamac found a further 80 mummies in a burial chamber. In 2013, the remains of three skeletons from the Ichma culture were uncovered at a nearby site just a few yards from Peru’s national football stadium in Lima.
Dr Flores said: ‘So this is the first district in the country that has more than 1,500 years of known history to date.’
Recently new analysis techniques have enabled scientists to learn new details about the ancient mummified remains of people from the Incan civilisation and those that came before them.
The mummified bodies of children who died around 500 years ago have been discovered in remote parts of the Andes, thought to be victims of an ancient ritual sacrifice called capacocha. The children were drugged before being taken into the mountains to die, where the freezing dry climate preserved their bodies.
Man in Peru Caught Out Drinking With an 800-year-old Mummy!
A pre-Hispanic mummy of between 600 and 800 years old, was found inside the backpack of a delivery man from a delivery company in the Peruvian region of Puno, near Bolivia.
The 26-year-old Peruvian man who was caught with the mummy said, ‘Juanita’ was a kind of ‘spiritual girlfriend’ he kept it at home “and took it out to show his friends.”
Drunk in Charge of a Mummy
The police found three young men accompanied by a mummy that was inside a thermal delivery suitcase. The discovery occurred on Saturday, February 25, 2023, in the city of Puno, in southern Peru.
The group of friends was surprised by the police authorities in a routine check while they were consuming alcoholic beverages at the Mantaro viewpoint of Puno.
The 26-year-old had with him a delivery box from the company ‘Pedidos Ya’. Inside, there were human remains in a fetal position still bearing soft tissues with characteristics corresponding to a mummy.
According to the BBC , the young man described the mummy as ‘a kind of spiritual girlfriend’ as he had been sharing his room with it for some time.
The mummy was supposedly owned by his father, and was generally kept in a box next to the TV. It is unknown how the mummy came to be owned by his father.
The Ministry of Culture specified through a statement that the remains – classified as a national cultural asset – were identified as a mummified adult man presumably from the eastern area of Puno.
Sources from that office informed EFE that the individual would have been over 45 years old and approximately 1.51 meters (5 foot) tall, according to preliminary investigations.
An Odd Housemate
The authorities estimate that the human remains were 800 years old, and would likely come from the district of Patambuco. Apparently, they had been in the possession of the family for about 30 years, the authorities from the Peruvian Ministry of Culture informed various local media.
Photograph from the Ministry of Culture, which shows a pre-Hispanic mummy found inside the backpack of a delivery man.
The delivery man stated that the mummy was kept at his parents’ house and that he took it out to be seen by his friends from the neighborhood, according to the newspaper El Comercio .
The police confiscated the mummy and turned it over to the Peruvian Ministry of Culture. The delivery man and his two friends, aged between 23 and 26, have been detained and are being investigated for possible crimes against the country’s cultural heritage.
1,200-year-old Remains of Sacrificed Adults and Kids Unearthed in Peru
Peruvian archeologists have unearthed eight children and 12 adults apparently sacrificed around 800-1,200 years ago, they said on Tuesday, in a major dig at the pre-Incan Cajamarquilla complex east of Lima.
The remains were outside an underground tomb where the team from Peru’s San Marcos University found November an ancient mummy thought to be a VIP bound with ropes, in a fetal position.
Archaeologist Pieter Van Dalen said the bodies, some mummified and others skeletons, were wrapped in various layers of textiles as part of ancient pre-Hispanic ritual, and had likely been sacrificed to accompany the main mummy.
A Peruvian archeologist works at an excavation site to recover the remains of one of 14 pre-Incan mummies, six children and eight adults which are nearly 1000 years old, at the archeological complex in Cajamarquilla, Peru.
“For them, death was not the end, but rather a transition to a parallel world where the dead lived,” Van Dalen told a news conference. “They thought that the souls of the dead became protectors of the living.”
Van Dalen said the burial pattern was familiar, citing the tomb of the Lord of Sipán, a ruler from 1,700 years ago found along with children and adults sacrificed to be buried with him.
A view shows a tomb at an excavation site where archeologists work to recover the remains of 14 pre-Incan mummies, six children and eight adults which are nearly 1000 years old, at the archeological complex in Cajamarquilla, Peru.
“This is precisely what we think and propose in the case of the mummy at Cajamarquilla, which would have been buried with these people,” he said. “As part of the ritual, evidence of violence has been found in some of the individuals.”
Yomira Huamán, part of the team, said that along with funeral items, there were musical artifacts such as the “zampoña,” a wind instrument of Andean origin with several wooden tubes in the form of flutes.
“Our investigations suggest the mummy of Cajamarquilla would be a man of approximately 35 years. This character did not have any organs, meaning he was eviscerated after death,” she said.
A member of the media takes a picture of a pre-Incan mummy unearthed at the Cajamarquilla archaeological site and believed to be between 800 and 1,200 years old, at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima, Peru.
Peru is home to hundreds of archaeological sites of cultures that developed before and after the Inca Empire, which 500 years ago dominated the southern part of the continent, ranging from southern Ecuador and Colombia to central Chile.
“The complex has only been excavated 1%,” Huamán said. “I think Cajamarquilla has much more to say, much more to tell us.”
Ancient Amazon Cliff Art Shows Humans Meeting Giant Ice Age Creatures
This huge collection of ancient cliff art paints a dramatic picture of early humans and giant beasts in the Amazon. Early inhabitants worshipped and hunted elephant-like mastodons and giant horses – alongside other Ice Age animals – back when the lush rainforest was a parched savannah.
At least that’s according to the extraordinary paintings, made with red ochre by long-dead artists.
They are believed to be between 11,800 and 12,600 years old and took at least hundreds of years to create. Experts are staggered at the scale of the find, one of the largest of its kind in South America.
Marie-Claire Thomas
Located in the Serranía La Lindosa region of Colombia, the discovery has been dubbed “The Sistine Chapel of the Ancients”. However instead of a beautiful man-made structure this canvas is all Mother Nature’s handiwork.
The cliff face paintings number in the tens of thousands and were spotted across a trio of rock shelters. Cerro Azul is the biggest, stretching nearly 3 miles. There are around 8 miles’ worth of historic artworks in total. The quality is said to be highly realistic for the time.
Human figures are depicted with colossal creatures. How big were they? Mark Robinson, speaking via a statement from the University of Exeter, refers to “giant herbivores, some which were the size of a small car.”
This “megafauna” gave Robinson and co a possible insight into the ancient artistic exhibit. Examples of extinct wildlife, such as super-sized sloths and mastodons, offered major clues concerning dates. As Business Insider writes, “by about 11,600 BC, humans had likely killed many of the mastodons off.”
Other features daubed include trees, hand prints and “geometric shapes”. A tree wasn’t just a tree to humankind in the dying years of this Ice Age.
Quoted by The Guardian, team leader Prof José Iriarte (University of Exeter) says plants had souls, and that they communicated with people “in cooperative or hostile ways”.
The group, funded by the ERC (European Research Council) and made up of experts from Britain/Colombia, also noted the surroundings.
Artists took their lunch to work with them it seems, before leaving litter on site. Delicacies like frog, armadillo and piranha were consumed, according to the University’s statement.
Marie-Claire Thomas
It sounds like the painters needed their strength. Some art is so high up it required drones to take a gander. Images of towers made from wood are displayed.
Reportedly the artists clambered onto these before jumping down. All that work was worth it in the end. Quoted by the statement, Prof Iriarte says the art was “a powerful part of culture and a way for people to connect socially.”
The team began investigating the area in 2017. It was no easy task. For starters the journey there was punishing. Once they completed a 2 hour drive from the town of San José del Guaviare, they had a 4 hour trek to look forward to.
And access was only permitted after the signing of a peace treaty in 2016 between the Colombian government and FARC (the People’s Army). A civil war raged there for half a century. Even then additional permissions had to be sought to avoid danger.
While the cliff paintings were known about since April this year, the find was kept under the radar till now. A TV crew from Channel 4 joined the group throughout the process. Exciting details are about to be revealed to the public as part of a new series, ‘Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon’.
Presented by archaeologist Ella Al-Shamahi, it really was a matter of life and death. As reported by The Guardian, at one point the party had to sneak past a highly venomous bushmaster snake in the dark.
Archeologists in Peru found a 1,000-year-old adolescent mummy wrapped in a bundle
Archaeologists have unearthed a more than 1,000-year-old mummy on the outskirts of Peru’s capital, Lima.
The mummified adolescent was wrapped in a funerary bundle, with ceramic objects, rope, bits of skin, and hair nearby, and found in an underground tomb.
Archaeologists believe the mummy, found at an archaeological site in Cajamarquilla, is one of 20 buried in the area likely killed as a ritual sacrifice.
The mummified adolescent was found in a “good state of conservation,” said archaeologist Yomira Huaman, in charge of the Cajamarquilla research project affiliated with the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.
The adolescent lived between 1,100 and 1,200 years ago and might have belonged to the Lima or Ichma cultures.
A worker wraps skeletal remains and parts of the funerary bundle of a mummy found by Peruvian archeologists in the ruins of Cajarmarquilla, in the outskirts of Lima, Peru.
The mummy was discovered about 220 yards from where the first mummy of Cajamarquilla was found, explained Huaman, referring to another mummy found nearby last year.
‘From the ceramic analysis, we have identified that it was mostly occupied by the coastal presence, the late Lima culture, also a strong influence of the Ichma culture,’ said Huaman.
The way the teen was buried was unlike other mummies that have been discovered in the past.
Ceramic objects and rope were found near the burial bundle.
Most bodies in Cajamarquilla have been found in simple tombs or funeral chambers, while the adolescent was found in what appeared to be a storage container.
Archaeologists, also they have uncovered the ruins of four pyramid-shaped temples and walls laid out almost like a maze.
While best known for the mountaintop Inca royal retreat of Machu Picchu, Peru was home to a number of pre-Hispanic cultures that flourished in the centuries before the Inca empire rose to power, primarily along the country’s central coast and in the Andes.
The Lima civilization was known for its ceramic artwork, which included styles such as Maranga and interlocking patterns that reflected the nearby Moche culture.
Scientists Discover 168 Mysterious Nazca Geoglyphs in The Desert Sands of Peru
The Nazca desert in Peru is like an art gallery for the gods above. Yet even with decades of surveillance from the skies, we’ve barely explored a small wing of this fading collection of giants among the stones.
Last year, an archaeologist in Peru told The Guardian he thought scientists had found only 5 percent of all the Nazca lines out there in the desert.
Researchers at Yamagata University in Japan are now working with local archaeologists to change that, and their latest haul of ancient lines nearly doubles the previous number of known designs.
Drone surveys and aerial images in southern Peru have now identified 168 new geoglyphs in the Nazca Lines World Heritage Site, with roughly 50 of these large-scale geographical drawings depicting human-like figures.
One of the humanoid illustrations even appears to be sporting a bit of facial hair, Homer Simpson-style.
Some of the other designs etched into the landscape feature birds, orcas, cats, and snakes. A few are just simple lines or trapezoidal patterns.
It’s hard to say when the designs were made, but clay pots found near the lines date back to a time between 100 BCE and 300 CE.
Many of the ancient illustrations are scratched into a flat terrain, making them difficult to see from nearby vantage points. Because the lines were constructed through the removal of rocks and debris to reveal contrasting-colored soil beneath, erosion has only contributed to difficulties in their discovery.
Drones have become our celestial eyes in the skies. These flying devices have allowed experts to glimpse the Nazca Lines with more clarity than ever before.
Some of the information they are gathering is even being analyzed by artificial intelligence programs, which can pick out different patterns faster and more reliably than the human eye. In 2019, a new Nazca line design was actually discovered by AI.
The Nazca lines are one of history’s most intriguing mysteries, and even if archaeologists find more, it might not bring us any closer to understanding their purpose.
For some inexplicable reason, between 500 BCE and 500 CE, societies in southern Peru constructed simple lines, shapes, and figures across the landscape, many of which can only be seen in their entirety from directly above.
The lines have been interpreted in numerous ways over the decades, but the most common explanation is that they were meant for gods in the sky who were looking down on humans. Another popular theory suggests these figures and patterns were drawn for ritualistic astronomical purposes and was meant to somehow reflect the stars.
In 1994, when a part of the Nazca desert was designated a World Heritage Site, only about 30 ‘geoglyphs’ had been found, and they were mostly of plants and animals.
As it turns out, that was just the tip of the iceberg. By 2019, archaeologists had found nearly 200 geoglyphs in total, several of which depicted humanoid figures.
With these latest additions uncovered by researchers from Yamagata University, the official number of known Nazca lines is now 358.
In all likelihood, there are still many more ancient artworks hiding out there in the desert.
With permission from the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, scientists at Yamagata have made it their mission to tally as many of these mysterious designs as they can. The team plans on mapping out the full length and width of the desert canvas along with the help of local archaeologists.
