Nazca Lines — Hummingbird Geoglyph
A major geoglyph on the Pampa Colorada (Nazca Plateau), Ica Region, Peru, created by the Nazca culture, c.200 BCE–600 CE. The hummingbird figure is approximately 96 metres long, created by removing the reddish surface pebbles to expose the lighter yellow-grey soil beneath. One of approximately 70 zoomorphic figures among the hundreds of Nazca Lines. UNESCO World Heritage Site (inscribed 1994). Only fully visible from the air — rediscovered by Western scholarship through aerial survey in 1939.
Scholarly Significance
Anchor the Nazca Lines cluster; introduce geoglyph as a medium, landscape-scale art, and contested iconological interpretation. Establish Pre-Columbian South American anchor distinct from the existing Inca cluster.
Patronage Context
Created by the Nazca culture; no surviving written records identify specific patrons, priests, or commissioning authorities. The scale and organisation of the Lines implies coordinated community or state-level effort.
Notes
- ·The hummingbird is depicted as a single continuous line — the characteristic Nazca Lines technique uses an unbroken path that forms the entire outline of the figure without the line crossing itself.
- ·The lines were created by removing the dark reddish iron-oxide-coated pebbles from the surface of the desert pampa, exposing the pale yellowish-grey ground beneath. The removed pebbles were piled on either side of the cleared strip.
- ·The extremely dry, windless conditions of the Pampa Colorada have preserved the lines for approximately 2,000 years.
- ·Paul Kosok made the first systematic aerial survey of the Lines in 1939; German mathematician Maria Reiche spent decades studying and cataloguing them from the 1940s onward.
- ·The iconological meaning of the lines remains contested among scholars — see associated claims for competing interpretations.
- ·UNESCO inscription 1994 as 'Lines and Geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa'.