Satellites solve the mystery of these ancient Peruvian aqueducts

Using satellite imagery, researchers from the Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis (IMAA) in Italy have solved a longstanding mystery surrounding a series of ancient, intricately-designed structures located in the same region as Peru’s Nazca lines.

Known as puquios, these carefully-constructed rock-lined holes are also artifacts left behind by the Nazca civilization, and according to recent BBC and Discovery News reports, they served as a hydraulic system that enabled the people to gain collect water from subterranean aquifers, thus enabling their survival in a region that often experienced long-lasting droughts.

While experts had long known that the puquios were essentially aqueducts, new research from IMAA’s Rosa Lasaponara and her colleagues has revealed the true extent of their design. Using satellite images, they were able to discover the placement of these holes in relation to sources of water and settlements, and found that the system was far more complex than first thought.

“What is clearly evident today is that the puquio system must have been much more developed than it appears today,” she explained to the BBC earlier this month. “Exploiting an inexhaustible water supply throughout the year the puquio system contributed to an intensive agriculture of the valleys in one of the most arid places in the world.”

Puquios enabled water to be stored – and some still work!

Based on the craftsmanship required for the creation of the Nazca lines, the ancient geoglyphs shaped like various creatures, plants, and other figures in southern Peru, it probably will not come as a surprise that the people were able to piece together a series of corkscrew-shaped tunnels that channeled wind into underground canals to force water towards the driest areas.

If more water wound up being transported than was needed, the remnants were stored in surface reservoirs, explained Lasaponara, who details her research in her upcoming book Ancient Nasca World: New Insights from Science and Archaeology. This enabled the Nazca civilization to have access to water for the entire year, and for both domestic and agricultural needs, she added.

The construction of the puquios “involved the use of particularly specialized technology,” that also required a strong knowledge of the area’s geology and the annual variations in the amount of available water, she told the BBC. Similarly, their maintenance “was likely based on a collaborative and socially organized system, similar to that adopted for the construction of the famous ‘Nazca lines’ which in some cases are clearly related to the presence of water.”

The puquios’ origins had remained mysterious because they could not be analyzed using carbon dating techniques, but the new analysis reveals that the Nazca people that called this part of Peru home from around 1,000 BC to 750 AD were exceptionally well organized, said Lasaponara. She added that, perhaps even more impressively, many of these aqueducts are still usable today.

—–

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The post Satellites solve the mystery of these ancient Peruvian aqueducts appeared first on Redorbit.

redOrbit.com
offers Science, Space, Technology, Health news, videos, images and reference information. For the latest science news, space news, technology news, health news visit redOrbit.com frequently. Learn something new every day.”