In a groundbreaking development, researchers have harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to unearth three previously undiscovered "Nazca Lines" in Peru. As LiveScience reports, these vast figures, etched into the Nazca Desert around 2,400 years ago, include a pair of legs spanning over 250 feet, a 62-foot-wide fish, and a 56-foot-wide bird. The deep-learning system used to identify these geoglyphs reportedly works 21 times faster than a human, revealing these hidden gems from aerial photographs of the desert.
According to their report published in the July edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science, the researchers have been searching for Nazca geoglyphs since 2004. Led by Masato Sakai, a professor of anthropology and archaeology at Yamagata University in Japan, they utilized a deep-learning system developed in partnership with IBM Japan and IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in the US. It was trained using data from 21 known Nazca geoglyphs, and from there, it identified elements of these geoglyphs, enabling the location of new figures with unprecedented speed and accuracy.
As The Travel reported in early 2023, researchers from Japan and Peru have, in recent years, discovered more than 150 new Nazca Lines. Over two years, they employed high-resolution aerial photography and drones, finding additional geoglyphs depicting stylized versions of humans, llamas, alpacas, snakes, and birds. All are believed to date to between 100 BCE and 300 CE. (More Nazca lines stories.)
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