DRAWING LINES Ever since the trouble we had in Kuwait some years back, we have talked about “drawing lines in the sand”. The idea comes in handy every time we are involved in affairs of a desert area. It usually means that the time has come to call a halt to whatever unpleasant actions might be in progress.
There is one desert area where “lines” were drawn long, long ago and we don't, to this day, know why they were drawn, by whom, how, or if their being where they are means anything in our civilization now in its 2lst century of development.
The display was unknown until the 1930's when aircraft were survey
ing the area seeking new sources of water. Many travelers on the earth's surface must have wondered about the straight path they used as roads and at the regular crossing of the roads leading to no place in particular.
Air surveys revealed an inventory of seventy such figures which they came to call “Biomorphs” including spider, a giant humming bird, a monkey with a spiral tail and a pelican a thousand feet long!
Specialists have counted about nine hundred other designs called “Geomorphs”. These are mainly geometric drawings of simple lines, cycles, fixtures, shapes and complex systems of lines. There are straight lines in abundance. The longest of these lines measures nine miles!
We have used the term “drawing”. In truth the process used in Peru might be call “with-drawing”. The area is covered with scattered, reddish colored rocks. If you wished to form a dark line, form the rocks in such a place as needed. If you want a wider line, more rocks, please! To make a wide road or what appears to be landing strip or runway to flyers.
That's how the Inca did it in Peru – Bolivia, too. No hurry. Take your time. People who keep count of such things tell me pre-Peruvians did their share of such drawings at about 200 B.C.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 9-6-06 [c355wds]
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