Yamagata Univ. Newly Identifies 303 Nazca Lines in Peru

Yamagata, Sept. 24 (Jiji Press)--Yamagata University in northeastern Japan said Tuesday that it has newly identified 303 Nazca Lines geoglyphs in southern Peru.

The national university, which has a research institute focused on the World Heritage drawings, also said that the Nazca Lines are highly likely to have been created for the purposes of rituals and information sharing.

The findings were published on the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the same day.

Yamagata University identified the geoglyphs using artificial intelligence technology in cooperation with IBM Research of the United States. Researchers found the drawings through field surveys conducted from September 2022 and February 2023 of sites selected with the AI technology from aerial photographs.

This method led to a significant reduction in time compared with the conventional method of finding sites with the naked eye, the university said.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]