Randolph flashes a knowing smile. “Well, son, let’s just say they don’t call it the White House for nothing.”

JOURNAL OF JULIUS GABRIEL

JOURNAL OF

JULIUS GABRIEL.

The Nazca plateau in southern Peru is a barren desert, 40 miles long and six miles wide. It is a desolate, unforgiving flatland, a dead zone cradled by the Andes Mountains. It also happens to have extraordinarily unique geology in that Nazca’s underlying soil contains high levels of gypsum, a natural adhesive. Remoistened each day by the morning dew, the gypsum literally keeps the indigenous iron and silica stones that proliferate in the desert glued to its surface. These dark pebbles retain the sun’s heat, giving rise to a protective shield of warm air that virtually eliminates the effects of the wind. It also makes the plateau one of the driest places on Earth, receiving less than an inch of rain every decade.

For the artist wishing to express himself on the grandest of scales, the Nazca plateau becomes the perfect canvas, for what is drawn upon this plateau tends to stay there. Yet it was not until a pilot flew overhead in 1947 that modern man first discovered the mysterious drawings and geometric lines carved upon this Peruvian landscape thousands of years ago.

Then and more than 13,000 lines crossing the Nazca desert. A few of these markings extend for distances exceeding five miles, stretching over rough terrain while miraculously remaining perfectly straight. Although some would like to believe the lines represent prehistoric runways for ancient astronauts, we now know them to be astronomically aligned, marking the positions of the winter solstice, the equinox, the constellation of Orion, and perhaps other heavenly bodies as yet unbeknownst to us.

More bizarre are the hundreds of icons illustrating animals. At ground level, these colossal zoomorphs appear only as random indentations made by the scraping away of tons of black volcanic pebbles to expose the yellow gypsum below. But when viewed from high in the air, the Nazca drawings come alive, representing a unified artistic vision and engineering achievement that has survived unscathed for thousands of years.

The artwork of the Nazca plateau was completed at two very distinct time intervals. Although it seems contrary to our notion of evolution, it is the earlier drawings that are by far the superior. These include the monkey, the spider, the pyramid, and the serpent. Not only are the likenesses incredibly accurate, but the figures themselves, most larger than a football field, were each drawn using one continuous, unbroken line.

Who were the mysterious artists who created these desert images? How were they able to accomplish such a magnificent feat on such a grand scale? More importantly—what was their motivation for carving the figures into the plateau in the first place?