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Large 2k-year-old cat discovered in Peru's Nazca lines
- callamdelaney 6y agoIt has a road but they only just found out it's a cat?
- qwertox 6y agoThe photo you see is of the cleaned up terrain, where the cat's existence is obvious. Most likely that's the reason. > The figure was barely visible and was about to disappear due to its location —on a fairly steep slope— and the effects of natural erosion. The cleaning and conservation of the geoglyph was carried out last week. [1] [1] https://andina.pe/ingles/noticia-nazca-lines-new-giant-geoglyph-of-feline-discovered-in-peru-818050.aspx https://andina.pe/ingles/noticia-nazca-lines-new-giant-geogl...
- bigbubba 6y agoIt sure does look like a cat, but maybe it's actually a runway for alien spacecraft.
- antonvs 6y agoOnce they invented inertial dampers, runways that zig-zagged like a cat's ears became a fun way to take off and land.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoThe shapes formed by Nazca lines can only be seen from the sky, that's the weird thing.
- bigbubba 6y agoThe cat in question clearly looks like a cat at ground level, where the photographer was standing.
- mjw1007 6y agoAccording to the article, the cat wasn't made by the Nazca who made the famous lines, but an earlier culture a few hundred years previously.
- WalterBright 6y agoThe ratio of the dimensions of the base of the Egyptian pyramids to their height includes pi as a factor. I once saw a TV show that concluded that since there's no evidence the Egyptians knew what pi was, space aliens must have been involved in their construction. Later, some wag pointed out that if one uses a measuring wheel one cubit in diameter to lay out the base as a number of revolutions, then made the height as an integral number of cubits, you unwittingly wind up with pi in the ratio.
- 8bitsrule 6y agoAt least some of those lines might be visible from higher terrain nearby. That might be part of the fun.
- JdeBP 6y agoSee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24820449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24820449 for original Peruvian coverage.
- JdeBP 6y agoThe Smithsonian has better reporting of this than the BBC, and is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24889016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24889016 .
- zachruss92 6y agoI'm not saying I believe any of the crazy conspiracies related to the Nazca lines, but I really do wonder what they actually are. The mysteries behind a lot of these ancient megalithic structures make me wonder about how sophisticated these presumed primitive civilizations actually we're.
- WalterBright 6y agoIt's hard to have a sophisticated civilization without writing.
- AlotOfReading 6y agoThis is mostly a myth. Modern archeologists generally don't use writing as a criterion for 'advancement' anymore specifically because certain areas like the Andes never really used it. It also raises difficulties with other groups like the Aztecs that didn't have 'full' writing, but were nonetheless quite sophisticated.
- WalterBright 6y agoThe Aztecs certainly did have writing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_writing It's far better than the primitive icon systems favored in modern user interfaces.
- AlotOfReading 6y agoThe qualifier 'full' is important here. The article even makes note of this: > ...some scholars have understood the system to not be considered a complete writing system... In particular, the written and spoken forms aren't precisely equivalent. Some archaeologists consider this a bigger deal than others (I'm more on the "not a big deal" side), but it's worth noting.
- WalterBright 6y ago
- kerng 6y agoNyan cat! I thought at first this is fake - as it does look a little "funny". But it seems legit. This might indeed be the original Nyancat. Ancient hackers.
- h2odragon 6y agoThis might be all thats left of someone's time travel experiment
- dhosek 6y agoSurely I'm not the only one to be disappointed that there isn't a very large and ancient feline sneaking around among the lines eating mice and other small animals.
- bntyhntr 6y agoMe too! Disappointed to say the least
- _where 6y agoI don’t think that’s necessarily a cat.
- morganvachon 6y agoFair warning: The link breaks the back button with a redirect loop.
- yumraj 6y agoIs it me or the cat looks very different from the usual Nazca lines drawings.
- aeortiz 6y agoIt's older than the Nazca, according to the article.
- Pompidou 6y agoI believed cat was introduced in america by C.Columbus. Maybe it's another felinae ?
- bmy78 6y agoIs it an alien cat?
- jdlyga 6y agoMust be from Sky Garden.