They Searched the Desert for Ancient Nazca Lines. Then Hundreds of Hidden Figures Started Appearing.

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Lines crafted in an ancient Peruvian desert are more than random curves and angles. People of the Nazca culture—and, potentially, pre-Nazca Paracas culture—created drawings on the ground between 200 B.C. and 700 A.D. that measure up to 1,200 feet in size. A new research study employed artificial intelligence to find 303 previously unknown examples of these famed geoglyphs.The new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes how researchers used AI learning (the authors partnered with experts from IBM) to spot the faint lines captured by drone footage. The team used on-the-ground experts to confirm the new sites—one of which even featured an orca whale wielding a knife.

The lines and figures etched across Peru’s Nazca Desert were never random marks in the dirt. People of the Nazca culture—and possibly the earlier Paracas culture—created ground drawings between roughly 200 B.C. and 700 A.D., some stretching up to 1,200 feet across. In a 2024 study in PNAS, a Japanese-led team used artificial intelligence to identify 303 previously unknown geoglyphs at the site. That number is no longer the whole story.

In July 2025, Yamagata University and Peruvian officials announced 248 additional geoglyphs found through AI-supported field surveys conducted in 2023 and 2024. Of those, 160 were figurative geoglyphs, raising the known number of figurative geoglyphs to 893—a crucial distinction in a landscape filled with lines, geometric forms, and smaller representational figures.

Masato Sakai of Yamgata University, said in 2024 that AI allowed researchers to map geoglyph distribution more quickly and accurately. The PNAS paper reported that the six-month study produced results 20 times faster than traditional methods. Johny Isla, Peru’s chief archaeologist for the Nazca Lines, told The Guardian that work once measured in three or four years can now be done in two or three days.

What these geoglyphs and others like them were used for is still a mystery—but one that’s starting to possibly become clearer. The newer Yamagata materials argue that many smaller figures were arranged along paths in recurring themes—human sacrifice, wild birds, domesticated animals—and may have carried stories or messages for people moving through the desert.

Known broadly as the Nazca Lines, the lines and geoglyphs of Nazca and Palpa were named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994. Before the 2024 PNAS study, 430 of these geoglyphs were already known. The AI-assisted work has changed that baseline quickly, first with the 303 newly confirmed geoglyphs reported in PNAS and then with the additional discoveries announced in 2025.

The Nazca creations come spliced into two categories. The largest of the group are considered line-type glyphs, and were made by carving into the landscape and using rocks to scrape away soil and reveal new colors below. Due to the color contrast and size, the larger glyphs were often the first ones discovered by modern researchers. The largest designs are generally geometric shapes, while others show wild animals or plants.

The second type, known as a relief glyph, features white and black stones to create smaller images—often only 30 feet in size. Thanks to their less intense contrast with the natural landscape and their relatively small size, relief glyphs have traditionally been more difficult to uncover. The recently uncovered geoglyphs are of human-like figures and animals, including a 72-foot-long killer whale with a knife.

“On some pottery from the Nazca period, there are scenes depicting orcas with knives cutting off human heads,” Sakai toldNew Scientist. “So, we can position orcas as beings that carry out human sacrifice.”

In the 2024 study, almost all of the 303 new confirmed glyphs were relief-type figures. About 80 percent depicted humanoid figures, decapitated heads, and domesticated animals, with llamas appearing often.

The authors wrote that the relief-type designs are found near foot trails, leading researchers to believe that they were meant to be seen by small groups traveling along the paths. The line-type glyphs (which often show wild animals) are more closely linked to rituals and are found near ceremonial pathways, where they were potentially drawn large enough to be seen by the Nazca gods. Typically, the largest creations are only fully viewable from above.

The study reported that this recent research vastly improved accounts of relief-type figurative geoglyphs, revealing the differences between them and line-type figurative geoglyphs beyond style and size (they also vary in their motif depictions, relation to trails and ceremonial locations, and distribution). “Taken together, this makes a compelling case for different nature and purposes of relief-type and line-type figurative geoglyphs,” the study authors wrote.

“We can say that these geoglyphs were made by humans for humans, they often show scenes from everyday life,” Isla told The Guardian. “Whereas the geoglyphs of the Nazca period are gigantic figures made on mostly flat surfaces to be seen by their gods.”

The search isn’t close to finished. Yamagata’s July 2025 materials said more than 500 AI candidates remained unstudied. And in a November 2025 interview with Peru’s Andina news agency, Sakai said AI-assisted work had already uncovered more than 500 new figures and that more than 600 candidates still remained to be analyzed, with the possibility that known figures could eventually exceed 1,000.