Archaeologists In Peru Used Artificial Intelligence To Uncover Ancient Geoglyphs Of Killer Whales, Two-Headed Snakes, And Other Creatures Carved Into The Ground

Archaeology may be concerned with revealing the past, but it has long embraced cutting-edge technology in its investigations. Archaeologists have used robotics, LiDAR, drones, and now artificial intelligence in recent years.

Yamagata University researchers in Japan used the technology to identify four new Nazca geoglyphs in Peru. The ancient Nazca peoples carved them into the rough environment of modern-day southern Peru between 500 BCE and 500 C.E. They are in the hundreds and show a wide range of genuine and mythical species, such as killer whales, two-headed snakes, llamas, and strange humanoid forms.

The current findings, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in July, are an extension of studies begun by Yamagata’s researchers in 2016 (though early surveys began in 2004). First, they employed airborne images with a ground resolution of.1 metre per pixel to cover the entire Nazca plateau, which is approximately 150 miles square. Then, over the course of five years, researchers painstakingly identified geoglyphs, frequently cross-referencing their findings with onsite surveys. This final stage involves working with IBM to train A.I. to find geoglyphs that had been missed in prior searches.

The most recent Nazca geoglyphs depict a humanoid figure clutching a club, a wide-mouthed fish, a pair of 255-foot-long legs, and a bird (skeletal and abstract in an almost Alex Calder-like manner).

“Our approach allows DL [deep learning] to learn representations of images with better generalisation performance, enabling the discovery of targets that have been difficult to find in the past,” the researchers said in their article. “Our method contributes to archaeology by establishing a new paradigm that combines field surveys and AI, leading to more efficient and effective investigations.”

The researchers claim that using AI to find new geoglyph candidates is 21 times faster than using the naked eye. Given that Yamagata University’s most recent inquiry concentrated on a small northern section of the Nazca plateau, expect its machine learning models to make other findings in the near future.

The Nazca geoglyphs were discovered in 1927 by Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe and earned fresh academic interest in the 1980s. The Nazca geoglyphs were designated a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site in 1993.