Traffic snarls Peru’s mysterious lines
Garbage trucks roll over Nazca Lines on their way to dump 
A truck on the Pan-American highway passes beside Peru's mysterious Nazca Lines in a 1998 photo. Desperate to find a place for trash generated by its growing community, the town of Nazca set up a dump inside a section of the archaeological site.ASSOCIATED PRESS
LIMA, Peru, Oct. 14 — A coastal town set up a garbage dump inside Peru’s mysterious Nazca Lines, sending trucks rumbling across the markings etched into the desert sands more than a millennium ago, authorities said Tuesday. THE LINES cover a 35-mile stretch of desert 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of Lima and are among Peru’s top tourist attractions. They have mystified scientists and were added to the United Nation’s Cultural Heritage list in 1994.
Nazca Mayor Daniel Mantilla explained that the town decided to use the area as a dump in frustration after failing to get the Peru’s National Institute of Culture to approve a site.
He said that the town stopped using the dump — which has refuse reaching about knee-high and spread across an area 200 yards (meters) long and 60 yards wide — a week ago and is now using another one on the outskirts of town.
Alberto Urbano, a site archaeologist with the culture institute, said a landfill location, 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Nazca, was approved in 2001, but Mantilla said the distance made it too expensive for the cash-strapped municipality to use.
While from the ground the site seems to be a maze of lines, from the air, figures — among them a hummingbird, a monkey, a whale, a spider and a space alien — can be seen, some spanning to 900 feet (275 meters) long.
Urbano said the trucks damaged two trapezoid-shaped lines.
Ruben Garcia, a director with the culture institute, said the government was considering fining the municipality. No clean up plans had yet been made, he said.
The lines, thousands of them in all, were made by the Nazca and Paracas cultures by clearing darker rocks on the desert surface to expose lighter soil underneath.
Scientists debate why the lines were built. Among theories, they may have served as a calendar, a map of underground water supplies or even as landing strips for alien spaceships.
One of the most well-known figures is of a whale and is about a mile away from the dump, Urbano said.
The lines are loosely guarded, and problems periodically arise.
Three months ago, highway officials moved a truck weighing station 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of the lines to prevent cargo trucks from driving over them to avoid paying tolls, Urbano said.
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