Mysteries From The Ancient World That Have Been Solved

The Nazca people were an ancient civilization in what is now Peru, perhaps best known today for the mysterious Nazca lines, intricate and complex miles-long line drawings of subjects such as a hummingbird, a jaguar, trees, flowers, and a monkey. These drawings were made by cutting shallow incisions into the soil of the Nazca Desert, about 250 miles south of Lima, and many are so big they can only be fully viewed from the air. The Nazca people made these geoglyphs some time between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D. and were in many other ways a sophisticated and advanced society as well, including developing an intricate system for irrigating their crops. However, despite all the complexity and sophistication of the Nazca society, this entire civilization vanished about 1,500 years ago, and for years, no one could explain why.

In 2009, as the BBC reports, researchers were able to finally provide some insight into the disappearance of this once formidable culture by studying the soil record. It seems deforestation was at the heart of it: The Nazca cut down too many huarango trees to plant maize, not knowing that huarango trees were basically the only thing holding the ecosystem together. Without this keystone plant in place, the area basically became a desert and the Nazca were swept away by El Nino-related floods. It almost seems like there might be a lesson for modern society to take away from the destruction of a once-flourishing society through their own hubris and negligence, but ... nah, probably not.

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