By Deutsche Welle
Sep 24, 2024, 9:33 PM EDT
Japanese scientific research using artificial intelligence (AI) has discovered 303 new geoglyphs in the Peruvian Nazca desert in six months (south), which almost doubles the total number of these mysterious lines known, which are more than 2,000 years old, its authors announced.
“Using AI in the research has allowed us to map the distribution of the geoglyphs more quickly and accurately,” said archaeologist Masato Sakai of Yamagata University, presenting the results of the study at a press conference at the Japanese embassy in Lima.
Sakai stated that The findings were the result of joint work between the Nasca Institute of that Japanese educational institution and IBM Research..
Precision and speed
“The traditional method of study, which consisted of visually identifying the geoglyphs from high-resolution images of this vast area, was slow and carried the risk of overlooking some of them,” said the scientist, endorsing the use of AI as a tool.
The research has been accepted by the scientific community and was published this Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the prestigious journal of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
Among the figures discovered are “giant linear geoglyphs” that “predominantly represent wild animals”but there are also “small” ones in relief with “motifs related to human activity, including humans and domesticated camelids.”
To discover these 303 formations “A vast amount of geospatial image data produced from aircraft was analyzed to identify priority areas of probable geoglyphs for field studies,” the research adds.
“This represents a 16-fold increase in the rate of discovery using IBM AI” and demonstrates how this powerful technology accelerates discoveries in fields such as archaeology, the PNAS article notes.
The Nazca Lines, a World Heritage Site
Research reminds us that The discovery of the 430 Nazca geoglyphs that were known before this discovery took almost a century.The famous Nazca Lines, recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, are about 2,000 years old and take the form of geometric and animal figures, which can only be appreciated from the sky.
The real meaning of these geoglyphs is an enigma: Some researchers consider them to be an astronomical observatory, others a calendar. The mysterious place where the formations are located is located about 400 kilometers south of Lima, in the desert. The first geoglyphs were discovered in 1927.
The inhabitants of the Nazca culture civilization occupied the area from 200 to 700 AD.
ee (afp, Yamagata University)