Less than a year after researchers from Yamagata University’s Nazca Institute and IBM began training an algorithm on aerial photographs, the Peruvian desert yielded 303 previously unknown geoglyphs. The discovery doubled the catalogue of Nazca Lines and was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirmed project leader Masato Sakai.
Carved into the plain between 200 BCE and 650 CE, the motifs depict felines, birds, fish, human figures, and sweeping geometric patterns stretching hundreds of meters, many visible only from the air. Sakai’s team fed thousands of high-resolution images into its artificial-intelligence system, then processed satellite and drone datasets measuring several terabytes. The program detected faint soil contrasts that had escaped human surveyors for a century. Archaeologists later walked each location to validate the finds.
“We are facing a tool that multiplies our exploration capabilities,” said Sakai, according to Heraldo de México. “AI was able to process in months what would have taken us decades with traditional methods.”
The new map revived debates over why the Nazca culture etched the desert floor. Many of the freshly catalogued figures link together as continuous pathways, lending weight to the view that the lines guided ritual processions connecting worshippers with deities and the landscape. Their orientation also supports ideas advanced by German-Peruvian researcher Maria Reiche that the plateau formed an integrated ceremonial landscape.
For decades, the desert’s scale and traditional survey limits slowed research. João Fonte of ERA Arqueologia called AI’s impact “a jump in efficiency” that let studies once measured in years be finished in days. Archaeologist Alexandra Karamitrou welcomed the advance but warned that every digital lead must be checked on the ground to guard against false positives.
Similar methods are now being applied to burial mounds, hidden settlements, and shipwrecks worldwide. “AI optimizes the analysis of large volumes of data and accelerates discoveries in record times,” said Fonte, who described the present moment as a decisive turning point for archaeology. Karamitrou added, “Specialists must ensure that lines flagged by machines correspond to genuine cultural features and not to random soil disturbances.”
With 303 new geoglyphs added to the record, the Nazca Lines offer a broader canvas for exploring the beliefs and rituals of one of antiquity’s most enigmatic cultures. For the artists who scored them two millennia ago, the lines may have been a message to the gods; today they are also being read by machines, which are passing the story to human researchers.
Produced with the assistance of a news-analysis system.