Archaeologists have discovered a 2,000-year-old feline carved into a hill in southern Peru, the country’s Ministry of Culture announced last week.
The cat geoglyph is 121 feet long and is part of the United Nations World Heritage site, the Nazca Lines, located about 400 km from Lima. The discovery was made in renovations at the popular tourist site.
The silhouette of the feline was slightly visualized and disappeared due to its location on a hillside and the erosion of the herbs, the Ministry of Culture reported on Thursday. After cleaning and preservation work, archaeologists discovered a series of well-defined lines ranging from 11 to 16 inches wide. for its stylistic characteristics, the figure dates from the end of the Paracas period, around 100 BC. 200 BC.
“The representations of felines of this type are not unusual in the iconography of ceramics and textiles of Paracas,” the ministry said in a statement.
The geoglyphs and lines of Nasca and Palpa are a collection of massive engravings depicting imaginary figures, creatures and plants engraved on the surface of a coastal desert between 500 BC. and 500 A. D. According to the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO), geoglyphs would have had ritual astronomical functions. Lines and geoglyphs were added to the World Heritage List in 1994.
“They are the highest notable organization of geoglyphs in the world and are unrivalled in their scope, scale, quantity, size, diversity and ancient culture to any painting in the world,” UNESCO said.