Few archaeologists in history are
so remembered and honored for their contribution to
science and humanity as Maria Reiche. She is
unique in that she was not only a world class
scholar, though not formally trained as an
archaeologist, but that she made the study and
preservation of the Nazca lines her
life-long commitment.
In the end, she will be forever
remembered as a discoverer, a
scientist, and a protector of antiquity. She
was also one of the most honored heroines of
pre-Columbian studies by Peru, the country she devoted her
life to.
Editor's note: I am
pleased to say that I actually met and knew Maria.
Those National Geographic articles, and those in
other publications inspired my own interests in
Precolumbian studies, and it was my great privilege
to have met her on my own visit to Peru so many
years ago.
In a letter to her mother, a young
Maria Reiche tried to calm her mother's fears
about her future: "Dear
mother, you wrote to me about the great expectations
you have about my future. Compared to those
expectations. I'm a failure, and the world has the
right to expect more from me than I actually
deliver. But you are right, one should find oneself
first before trying to be something in this world. I
am only just beginning to discover what I really
want to do.
I don't understand in what way
what is going on inside of me will takes shape
externally. It's possible that I will live for a few
years more in complete anonymity until destiny
considers me worthy of taking over the task that it
has assigned me, the task for which I was born ... I
believe it involves a specific task for which I am
unconsciously ready, preparing myself and learning."
Maria wasn't wrong. Destiny had laid out an impossible task that
only her steel determination could accomplish: to
single-handedly explore, document, and protect the
product of another culture over two thousand years
old!
Maria Reiche-Grosse was born on May 15th, 1903 in
Dresden as the first child of the councilor of the
magistrates' court Dr. Felix Reiche-Grosse and his wife
Elisabeth. She spent her childhood with her younger
sister Renate and brother Franz at the Zittauer street.
Here began her early interest for natural scientific
observations. With 13 years Maria went to a school,
which is today the Romain-Rolland high school. Later
she thought thankfully back to her school years: "My
old teachers, by the heaven, would never forgive me, if
I would forget this time. The result of my today's work
belongs to the basis of this education ...".
In 1924 Maria Reiche enrolled at the Dresden
University of Technology. Two semesters she studied in
Hamburg. After four years studying (1928) she took the
examination for post grammar school in the subject's
mathematics, physics, philosophy, pedagogy and
geography. It followed unsteady years. Maria got again
and again only temporary works. Besides the National
Socialism started to become established in Germany. So
came the employment wanted advertisement of the German
consul in Cuzco just in time. He was looking for an
in-home
teacher. She applied and was chosen out of 80
applicants. In the February 1932 she went full of
expectation to Peru.
Maria Reiche stayed two years in Cuzco and moved
then to the capital Lima. There she earned her living
costs with German and English lessons, gymnastics and
massages. Later she obtained contracts for translations
of scientific texts and in the Museum of Archaeology she
preserved shrouds of mummies. On the side Maria helped
out her friend in a cafι, where a lot of foreigners,
professors, students and businessmen met. It was in
this cafι that she met the American specialist for ancient
irrigation systems - Dr. Paul Kosok. He was looking for
someone, who would translate his English article into
Spanish.
In December 1941 Maria travelled
for the first time to
Nazca. Dr. Paul Kosok had asked her to take a look at the
strange, dead straight depressions in the desert, which
looked like lines. At first he thought these were
irrigation ditches, but then he suspected that it is an
astronomical calendar installation. On June 22nd, the
solstice, he noticed, that the line, in which he stood,
went straight to the point, where the sun went down.
He asked if Maria Reiche could confirm this theory.
However, she actually started her research work in
earnest in the dessert of Nazca in
1946, because of her German citizenship, and the results
of the second world war, she wasn't allowed to leave the city Lima
until then. She remained in Nazca ever since,
until her death.
Maria as a
young child in Germany before World War I
Maria on right
with her sister Renate and mother
Maria as a
young girl
Maria as a
child in Dresden Germany (right) with her
sister Renate (left)
Maria Turned Archaeologist
In the middle of the night, long before sunrise,
Maria's working day was starting. She hitched a ride on
those
mornings at the local loading docks for trucks heading
out from the
town Nazca to the desert. Already, in the first days of
June 1946 she found a stylized drawing of a spider
between the lines. The spider was very hard to see,
because during the centuries the wind has blown a thin
layer of sand and small gravel over it. Little by little she
discovered more and more of the geoglyphs, but at the
very beginning that was not her main task. Her
initial task was to confirm Kosok's hypothesis that
they were irrigation channels.
But in time, her orientation
switched to the lines and symbol for what they were
- the artifacts of a lost culture. So with
measuring tape, sextant and compass, and other
instruments, she measured almost 1000 lines and
investigated them for their astronomical orientation.
Maria walked long distances without supplies, usually
just carrying measuring devices and a ladder.
To save the time, constantly
making the journey from the town of Nazca to the
desert, she eventually moved in a simple hut without water and
electricity at the very edge of the desert. She
dedicated to asking how these huge drawings
could be made to the level of this technical and artistic perfection, and
suspected a system of units was the answer, which could used
by the constructors to precisely draw
the geoglyphs in the soil of the desert.
She
investigated the Nazca drawings for more than 40 years
and received extensive help from the office for
aerial photographs of the Peruvian air force (SAN). They
provided her with a number of flights over the drawings, where
they provided her with invaluable aerial photos.
These same photos, in some cases are the only intact
record of some lines and symbols that have become
damaged over the years.
Maria
Reiche sweeping the Nazca Lines to maintain
their visibility
At first the inhabitants of Nazca laughed at the
woman who swept the desert, because Maria carefully
removed the sand and debris from the drawings with an
old broom. But
when the tourists finally discovered the Nazca lines,
through her efforts, and those of organizations such
as National Geographic, Doctora Reiche was soon
admired like a patron saint.
In 1955, it was Maria Reiche's
efforts that
prevented irrigation and agricultural development of the
Nazca plain. That fight against the bureaucracy
of Peru she won. She also became a very
successful author with the release of her book "Secret of the desert", which
she published in 1968 in German, English and Spanish.
She tirelessly promoted the
importance of the Nazca region to humanity and our
knowledge of the evolution of civilization. She used the American Studies Congress, held
in Lima 1970, to talk about the need for protection
of the geoglyphs, but in the end nothing happened.
So, using her own money, she paid
a watchman to guard the desert since 1976.
Also she worked with her sister Renate to have
a observation tower erected along the Panamerican
highway, both for her use, and for travels to better
see the geoglyphs. With that tower, she helped
prevent further damage that would have resulted from
countless tourist driving through the lines.
In 1993, at 90 years of age,
suffering from cancer and Parkinson's disease, she
published her last book "Contributions to the
Geometry and Astronomy in Ancient Perϊ". It
combines 40 years worth of articles, writings, and
manuscripts, of her investigations.
At last in
1995, after decades of work, Maria succeeded, and the
Nazca plateau and its lines were placed under protection of the
UNESCO. At the end of her career Maria Reiche
was decorated five times with: an honorary doctorate,
the highest decoration of the Peruvian government, as
well as the first class order of Merit of the Federal
Republic of Germany. She was also awarded honorary Peruvian nationality
so she truly became a daughter of Peru.
Maria's hat on a stick, lining up the
Nazca line that aligned with
the sun on the winter solstice. She used her hat and the stick
as a verification of alignment.
Marνa
Reiche standing with
Paul Kosok,
studying the Nazca lines.
Maria Reiche developed the theory that the ancient
Peruvians drew the lines to please the gods and secure
their good will. She called the desert an astronomical
calendar to remind the gods that the desert was dry and
needed water; that crops needed blessings; that the seas
needed fish. There are theories that the figures
correspond to constellations and the annual change of
the seasons. Other theories contend that the figures
represent a pantheon of gods and goddesses and were the
site of religious ceremonies. However, Maria did
prove that some lines corresponded and align
with calendar events.
Maria
and Paul
Kosok at work surveying the
desert in the late 1940's. Maria
is holding a
tupu
The geoglyphs
drew the attention of German mathematician Maria
Reiche, who worked as
Paul Kosok's translator. She
studied the lines from the 1940's to her death in 1998.
She lived nearby, walked and photographed the lines,
drew maps, developed theories, and drew the attention of
the world to Nazca.
Constantly exploring the hills and valleys documenting every line, symbol, and
shape.
Measuring and calculating angles and lengths
Maria developed her own methods of
measurement and geometric analysis
The tools of her trade - a measuring
tape, paper, and pencil
Maria
Reiche & Duncan Masson
Some of her renderings
Maria Reiche walking
one of her spirals
Maria
camping out in the desert while
continuing her surveys
Getting
above it all
Planning aerial surveys with the
Peruvian Airforce
Single handedly, Maria was
responsible for the prosperity of the town of
Nazca and the Ica region. Nazca being just
a small regional town along the Panamerican
Highway, wouldn't be of much importance without the
tourism the lines bring every year.
Without Maria's tireless work, and discoveries,
the lines could easily have been destroyed and
their true significance lost in time.
Because of her the town of Nazca
thrives on a brisk tourist trade, with numerous hotels and restaurants,
providing the
livelihood of the community. There is even a small
airport that bares her name, to cater to the travel agencies
that sell flights over her
desert.
But the name Nazca doesn't mean only the lines.
She was instrumental in helping develop and
understanding of the Nazca-culture, which developed between 200 BC and
800 AC in that southern coastal region. She
uncovered fantastic
woven goods and painted ceramics. These were the scenes of the
daily life, along with the mythological
world portrayed in glowing earth colors. There is a
direct relationship between the Nazcan pottery
and the symbols of the desert, and the designs
mirror each other.
A photo
of Maria Reiche's study
of spiral angles using
her paper cut out
patterns
Forever walking the lines of Nazca
As a mathematician, she was fascinated by
the geometries of the lines and symbols, and wanted to
not only document them, but also search for hidden
meaning in the geometry itself
Huerequeques, her favorite birds - almost her
pets as she wandered the desert.
In Her Own Words
"For more
than 40 years I have been privileged to live
with this mystery. At times the experience
has given me intense pleasure and at others
it has left me downhearted with my efforts.
But then everyone tells me that it is not
unusual to feel such things, and I think you
will agree with me that the Nasca lines are
not so straightforward as they first appear.
Many people have visited Nasca to see these
remarkable features and I would like to
thank everyone who has helped me. My
thoughts go particularly to the enthusiastic
support of the Peruvian National Air
Photographic Service in Lima and my sister
Renate.
Much still has to be done
before the meaning of every marking is
explained, and that will be impossible if
the desert is harmed. The surface is too
fragile to withstand any disturbance and
already some places have been severely
damaged. Since my first visits to Nasca I
have called for protection for this historic
desert. The people who lived here long ago
left a unique document which I believe
constitutes an essential chapter in the
development of the human mind. There is
nothing like it anywhere else in the world."
Maria Reiche
"I began my research in 1940, but then the war
came and Peru joined the allies. We Germans were not
allowed to leave Lima. In '46 I could see that the
solstice lines existed in different places
especially from centers, of which almost every one
of them has one, or two, solstice lines. There are
also solstice triangles! In general, one can say
that not only straight lines, but also the edges of
triangles and quadrangles, have specific directions
which are repeated everywhere. More than sun
directions there are moon directions, which is in
agreement with the knowledge that the moon was
observed before the sun.
For instance, the
big quadrangle beside the figure of the spider is a
moon direction and the other one beside the figure
of the Heron with the winding neck, is one side in
the single direction and the other side in the
solstice direction! Such a quadrangle could have
served to predict eclipses, which were a powerful
means of subjecting the people. Even Columbus used
an eclipse to frighten the people as he knew the
correct time to do so.
During this work
of measuring lines I saw that there were many
figures. I could recognize them because I had
seen one! Others couldn't.
That is why the
Pan American highway cut the figure of the lizard in
half. Before the highways construction in 1938
people drove randomly over the lines and figures
without seeing anything! From the air the figures
were not visible either due to the nature of the
soil at the time. You see the figures are of a
whitish color on a brown surface, this brown surface
is a thin covering of dark stone about 10 cm, which
suffers the process of oxidation giving the entire
region its particular brownish effect. Underneath
the soil is still whitish, not brown, comprised of a
mixture of rock that had been split into small
fragments due to extreme temperatures, and clay,
which ultimately was blown away by strong winds
coming down from the Andes. The huge basin was
filled with this mixture creating this flat surface
we call the Pampa. This is why we only have these
small pebbles on the surface.
There are
extremely strong winds here, even sandstorms, but
the sand never deposits over the drawings. On the
contrary, the wind has a cleansing effect taking
away all the loose material. This way the drawings
were preserved for thousands of years. It is also
one of the driest places on earth, drier than the
Sahara. It rains only half an hour every two years!
Now all this has changed due to air pollution. Huge
masses of dust and sand blow in from a large iron
mine southwest of Nasca and fill the entire region
with contamination, this produces precipitation, not
enough for agriculture, but enough to endanger the
figures.
The figures, the
drawings, are very superficial furrows never more
then 30 cm in depth, and very shallow. For this
reason the wind has obscured them by filling them
with small dark pebbles from the surrounding surface
like grain, making them difficult to detect from the
air. To make them more accessible for viewing I
cleaned them with a broom, one broom after another
throughout the years. I went through so many brooms
rumors circulated that I might be a witch! "
Maria Reiche
Maria in 1984
- In her
later years, she found it increasingly
difficult to walk, and eventually became
wheelchair bound.
Maria's greatest legacy is the awareness
she fostered of the need to preserve the past!
By making the past relevant to the preset, she
created the need to maintain it.
The Nazca lines have
become a major source of income, not only for Nazca,
but for Peru. Much is being done o preserve
what remains. But more needs to be done still,
while looters continue every day to destroy site.
Contributions to the Maria Reiche Association in
Peru directly help preserve the line and advance our
knowledge of these ancient wonders.
Researcher's desert house turned
into a Museum: A must see quick tour, you must stop
there as you cross the desert.
The Maria Reiche Museum is small
as museums go. There isn't much here, but it
is something of a pilgrimage. It is a personal
shrine, showing a bit of the life of a woman who
gave her whole life to understanding and preserving
one of the true wonders of the world.
This little museum was her simple
home, and shows you the life and life-style of a
dedicated scholar. It also shows you some of her findings, and
holds her
final resting place - within walking distance from
her beloved Nazca lines. If you plan on a
visit to the Nazca lines, you owe it to Maria's
memory to visit this museum, and make the largest
donation you can make, because without her, you
would not have the lines to see now.
Maria is buried in the museum,
with a simple burial marker - in the end, she added
herself as another kind of geoglyph.
Among the more interesting things
are the original sketches and photos of the lines,
which are quite a bit more clear than they currently
appear - since no one walks the desert sweeping the
lines.
In her bedroom, a Maria
Reiche mannequin continues to research the
lines, years after her death. Such was Maria
Rieche's dedication to Nazca.
Note some of her original
drawing posted on the wall
You will be
able to see a few of the artifacts that were
also found on her studies and excavations of
the Nazca desert.
A
Chauchilla mummy
Nazca
Ceramics
The small museum includes
many of Maria's original drawings of the
lines, as well as
Maria's beat up old VW van!
Marνa Reiche received
numerous awards and honors. At the end of the 70's she
was awarded "La Orden al Mιrito por Servicios
Distinguidos". Then in 1993, she was awarded
honorary Peruvian citizenship.
"La Orden al Mιrito por Servicios
Distinguidos"
Commemorative Postage Stamps
Maria has
had several postage stamps
carry her
likeness
Maria Reiche Neuman
Nazca Airport (NZA / SPZA)
From here the aerial study and observation of the Nazca lines
continues. Every flight offers the opportunity to
discover new geoglyphs, as well as catch a glimpse of
the lines while time remains.
Statue Of Maria Reiche
Statue Of Maria Reiche
On Avenida Maria Reiche in
Nazca
Maria Reiche
Gardens
Lima Peru
Maria Reiche Gardens is a new
public park, located overlooking the Pacific
Ocean, north of El Parque del Amor, in Lima.
The park is very nicely groomed with flower gardens
in the shape of some of the Nazca Lines that Maria
Reiche studied and discovered during most of her
life. The garden is illuminated at night with
the shape of the figures glowing in different
colors. If in Lima, it is well worth a visit.
Maria
Reiche Planetarium
Hotel Nazca Lines -
Nazca, Ica, Peru
Located
in the Hotel Nazca Lines in the town of
Nazca, the Planetarium offers nightly shows
on the Nazca lines and the various theories
about their purpose and origins. Open to the
public (you do not need to be staying at the
hotel to visit).
Maria Reiche,
95, Keeper of an Ancient Peruvian Puzzle,
Dies
By ROBERT
MCG. THOMAS JR.
Maria
Reiche, who spent half a century as the
self-appointed guardian of an obscure
pre-Incan culture's most mysterious legacy
-- a vast, dazzling tableau of giant birds,
animals, plants and intricate geometric
patterns scratched into the stark desert
floor -- died on June 8 in a hospital in
Lima, Peru. She was 95 and was known as the
Lady of the Lines.
To see the
lines near Nazca, in southern Peru, from the
air -- and there is no other way to make out
the fabulous figures, some hundreds of yards
across -- the vast tapestry looks very much
like the haphazard markings on a giant
child's chalkboard.
There is a
monkey with a whimsical spiral tail here, a
condor there -- a whale, a shark, a pelican,
a spider, a hummingbird, an owl-faced man, a
pair of hands, other birds and animals,
flowers, and an array of geometric shapes.
There is also a profusion of string-straight
lines, some extending for miles, none
suggesting an immediate explanation of why
they were drawn.
After
almost 60 years of intense, if highly
speculative, scholarly scrutiny, it is hard
to tell which is the greater mystery:
Why the
valley-dwelling Nazcan people would decorate
the surrounding desert mesas with figures so
large their shapes could not even be
discerned before the age of aviation 2,000
years later.
Or why an
adventuresome German woman who came to South
America on a whim to tutor a diplomat's
children would abandon all other pursuits to
devote her life to an almost obsessive
preoccupation with the Nazca lines.
Whatever
possessed her to make them her life's work,
almost from the time she first saw them in
1941, Ms. Reiche (pronounced RYE-kuh) was
the acknowledged and acclaimed curator of
the Nazca lines.
Living in
a small house in the desert so she could
personally protect the delicate lines from
careless visitors, Ms. Reiche -- who became
a Peruvian citizen in 1994 -- shooed away
intruders even as an old woman in a
wheelchair.
Over five
decades she meticulously measured and mapped
the intricate giant glyphs, swept away an
accumulation of black dust to restore 1,000
of the lines to their original brilliance
and used her own funds to hire guards and
finance research projects.
All the
while, she tried to figure out what the
lines meant to the Nazcans, who carved them
on a series of barren mesas covering 200
square miles of a long, narrow desert wedged
between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific
Ocean 250 miles south of Lima.
Whatever
possessed them to scrape away the covering
of fist-sized black rocks to expose the
yellow-white hardpan underneath in a series
of narrow trenches only a few inches deep
forming an array of giant patterns, the
Nazcans could hardly have wished for a more
geologically stable canvas to preserve their
mysterious handiwork.
The site
is one of the driest spots on earth, drawing
an average of only 20 minutes of rainfall a
year. Because of a buffering cushion of warm
air, it is virtually windless.
The result
is a land so devoid of erosion that a
footprint can last 1,000 years and the
tracks of chariots used by warring
conquistador factions in the 16th century
are still visible.
The lines,
which were discovered in modern times in
1926, were threatened by modern
encroachments. The Pan American Highway, it
was later discovered, had cut through a
giant lizard in 1939. But nobody could have
wished for a more dedicated or effective
protector than Ms. Reiche.
A native
of Dresden, Germany, who received a
mathematics degree from the local university
and who spoke five languages, Ms. Reiche
went to Peru as a tutor in 1932. She later
became a translator in Lima and met Paul
Kosok, a Long Island University scholar, who
became her mentor.
Mr. Kosok,
whose interest in irrigation led him to
investigate whether the Nazca lines might
have been irrigation ditches, quickly
concluded that the shallow trenches, which
range from 5 to 18 inches wide, could not
have been used for irrigation. But when he
happened to be standing near one of the long
straight lines at sunset on June 22, 1941,
he made a discovery that would change his
life and changed Ms. Reiche's even more.
He noticed
that the line pointed directly at the
setting sun, suggesting that it was a marker
for the winter solstice. Six months later,
Ms. Reiche discovered a line pointing at the
summer solstice, and a full-blown theory was
born: that the Nazca lines formed an
elaborate celestial calendar, or as Mr.
Kosok put it, ''the world's largest
astronomy book.''
Although
the initial interest was on the straight
lines, once Mr. Kosok had mapped the
intricate path of one circuitous line and
discovered that it formed a detailed image
of a bird, the interest broadened.
Ms. Reiche,
who took over Mr. Kosok's work in 1948 after
he left Peru, quickly discovered and mapped
18 other animal glyphs and over the
following decades elaborated on
Mr. Kosok's
calendar theory, deciding that at least some
of the glyphs were representations of
constellations.
The
calendar theory was clearly more plausible
than the one that held that the lines were
part of a guidance system for prehistoric
spaceships. But scholars whose various rival
theories held that the lines had religious,
social or even athletic significance nibbled
away at the calendar idea -- finding, for
example, that most of the lines did not
point to any celestial bodies.
But Ms.
Reiche may have made a miscalculation not
unlike that made by Columbus, who made his
accidental discovery of the New World
through a fundamental error: his belief that
the earth was much smaller (and the Indies,
therefore, much closer to Europe) than they
are. Her miscalculation may have been in her
conviction that at least some of the animal
figures were images of stellar
constellations.
Recent
scholarship by her protιgι, Phyllis B.
Pitluga, senior astronomer at the Adler
Planetarium in Chicago, concluded that all
of the animal figures are indeed
representations of heavenly shapes. But she
contends that they are not shapes of
constellations but of what might be called
counter constellations, the irregular-shaped
dark patches within the twinkling expanse of
the Milky Way.
Whatever
the explanation, largely as a result of Ms.
Reiche's work, the Nazca lines have become a
major tourist attraction and were designated
a world heritage site by Unesco in 1995.
And at her
death, Ms. Reiche, who leaves no immediate
survivors, was hailed as a national
treasure. President Alberto K. Fujimori of
Peru went so far as to suggest that the
Nazca lines should be renamed the Reiche
lines.
A note about
image quality: images of lines and
symbols taken by air or from satellite
images are adjusted to improve contrast and
visibility of the artifact (line or symbol).
The results vary from image to image.
We apologize for the quality of some of the
images, but it is due to the original source
images, and the difficulty of
photographing subject object.
NazcaMystery.com
An Archaeology Site
by Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
Maria del Mar Moreno, Sr. Editor; Kyra McGuinness,
Research Staff The
information presented is believed to be correct and accurate.
However,
please let us know of any errors.
This is a scholarly work for non-profit educational purposes.
Some content used under "Fair Use"
provision of section 107 U.S. Copyright Law.
Some content from third-parties.
All third-party copyrights acknowledged.
Sources credited where possible or known. If an item is
missing its source please let us know and we will correct it.
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Dr.
Maria Reiche And The Nazca Plateau
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