The Nazca Lines: Signals to Viracocha?

The Nazca Lines—vast geoglyphs etched into Peru’s southern desert by the Nazca culture between approximately 500 BCE and 500 CE—remain one of the most captivating mysteries of ancient South America. Spanning hundreds of square kilometers, these enormous figures of animals, plants, geometric shapes, and humanoid forms are only fully appreciable from the air. While mainstream archaeology often attributes them to ritual functions such as water worship, astronomical observation, or social/territorial signaling, this article explores a complementary perspective drawn from my own independent research into Andean oral traditions. Inherited by the Inca Empire in Cusco roughly 900 years after the lines’ main creation, these traditions describe the desert markings as sacred “paths” or signals associated with Viracocha, the creator god, and a mythic era predating the Inca. This viewpoint, preserved in early colonial records, offers a culturally resonant lens that merits consideration alongside other interpretations.

In the Inca worldview, centered in the highland city of Cusco, history and mythology intertwined through oral transmission and quipu records. As the empire expanded southward in the 15th century under rulers like Pachacuti, Inca forces encountered these enigmatic desert features and absorbed local stories from conquered peoples. These accounts portrayed the lines as relics from a distant past, created by pre-Inca devotees or saintly figures—sometimes referred to as “Viracochas” in plural—to guide or summon the return of Viracocha himself. This bearded wanderer-god, who emerged from Lake Titicaca to shape the world and then departed westward into the Pacific, was believed to have left behind sacred imprints. From Cusco’s Coricancha temple, where ceques (radial sacred lines) organized ritual life, the Incas reframed these desert markings as devotional pathways, possibly invoking rain and fertility in the arid landscape.

The clearest historical echo of this tradition appears in the 1586 relación geográfica by Spanish magistrate Luis de Monzón, who documented what the “old Indians” of the Nazca region told him: the “paths we see today” were built in remote times before the Incas by peoples guided by saintly beings called Viracocha, who were followed by the local inhabitants. Monzón, viewing the features from the ground, mistook them for ancient roads, but the oral narrative he recorded ties the markings explicitly to a mythic creator figure and his anticipated return. Scholars such as María Rostworowski and Tony Morrison have since highlighted this account as a valuable ethnohistorical clue, suggesting the geoglyphs may have served as clan-specific beacons or invocations aligned with Andean cosmology.

Monzón’s report remained largely overlooked for centuries, buried in colonial archives and only republished in the late 19th century. From the ground, the lines appeared as disjointed trails, their full artistry and scale invisible. It was only with the advent of aerial photography in the 1920s and 1930s—through surveys by Toribio Mejía Xesspe, Paul Kosok, and Maria Reiche—that the world recognized their true grandeur. Ironically, this modern technological breakthrough revealed designs that seem oriented toward a celestial observer, lending visual support to the ancient idea of signals meant for a descending deity. Recent discoveries of additional geoglyphs via AI analysis further emphasize patterns linked to water and ritual, echoing the fertility themes in Andean lore.

This research does not claim to provide a definitive explanation for the Nazca Lines, but rather highlights an interpretation rooted in Inca-preserved oral traditions that deserves a place in the broader conversation. It coexists with established theories of astronomical, hydrological, or ceremonial purpose, adding a layer of cultural continuity that bridges pre-Inca and Inca worldviews. By examining these early colonial records and the persistence of Andean sacred geography, we gain a deeper appreciation for how ancient peoples may have engaged with their landscape—not as isolated artworks, but as living dialogues with the divine.

In short, the Nazca Lines may have functioned as sacred signals to summon Viracocha’s return, a possibility preserved in Inca oral traditions and early colonial accounts.