Yamagata University unearths 303 Nazca Lines in Peru

Yamagata University said Tuesday 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, added that the Nazca Lines are highly likely to have been created for the purposes of rituals and information sharing. The findings were published in 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.