The Spider of the Nazca Lines

Here you see the Spider, one of the most important geoglyphs that form the Nazca Lines amid the arid coastal plain of southern Peru. The Nazca peoples constructed this and other shapes and lines between 500 BCE and 500 CE, in one of the world’s driest regions. Today the Nazca Lines are a UNESCO World Heritage site covering about 19 square miles. Best viewed from an elevated height, the purpose of Nazca Lines remains unknown.

The lines that made up the shapes like the Spider here were very shallow — only about six inches deep and a little over a foot wide. It is amazing that they are still visible — the brutal terrain has discouraged human occupation, but also the way the Nazca peoples made these lines preserved them. Namely, they removed the reddish iron oxide surface layers, and the subsoil beneath is a yellowish limestone. There was moisture in the morning desert air that hardened this new layer into a shell. The land of the Nazca peoples had (and has) very little wind, which protected the shapes.

One theory to explain the lines is that they refer to astronomical signs — like other neolithic memorials, they perhaps take on an important feature at certain times of the year. The astronomer Phyllis Pitluga argued, for instance, that the spider is an “anamorphic” diagram that corresponds with the constellation Orion. Others disagree. A second explanation is that the Nazca Lines served religious purposes, such as relating to prayers to the divine for good weather. The Spider figure is one commonly associated with rain among Andean peoples.

The Nazca people learned to thrive in their arid world — besides the Lines, they made complicated weavings and pottery, and built subterranean aqueducts known as “puquios” to transport water for farming and drinking. Teams of archaeologists have discovered many new geoglyphs in the decade preceding 2020.