No one knows what its purpose was, but wandering a large maze hidden in the desert is not my idea of a good time. Via Discovery News:
A large labyrinth lies in the midst of Peru’s Nazca Lines, according to the most detailed study on the enigmatic desert etchings created between 2,100 and 1,300 years ago. Completely hidden in the flat and featureless landscape, the labyrinth was identified after a five-year investigation into the arid Peruvian coastal plain land, about 250 miles south of Lima, where the mysterious geoglyphs are located.
The 2.7-mile labyrinth features 15 corners that would bring the walker away from and towards a large hill before turning into a spiral passageway. Walking the entire path would have probably taken about an hour. The labyrinth’s well-preserved edges suggest it was walked by a few people in single line. Unfortunately, there is no way to know the meaning of the structure and how it was used.
“As you walk it, only the path stretching ahead of you is visible at any given point,” Clive Ruggles of the University of Leicester’s School of Archaeology and Ancient History, said. Ruggles and colleague Nicholas Saunders of the University of Bristol’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology walked more than 900 miles of desert, tracing the lines and geometric figures carved between 100 B.C. and 700 A.D. by the Nasca people. “I was almost certainly the first person to have recognized it for what it was,” Ruggles said.
