Large 2k-year-old cat discovered in Peru's Nazca lines | Hacker News Reader

Large 2k-year-old cat discovered in Peru's Nazca lines

bbc.co.uk

65 pointsLiamPa36 comments

Surely 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.

Me too! Disappointed to say the least

I'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.

It's hard to have a sophisticated civilization without writing.

This 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.

The Aztecs certainly did have writing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_writing

It's far better than the primitive icon systems favored in modern user interfaces.

The 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.

I did read the article, they also wrote that it being incomplete is controversial.

Be that as it may, if it can convey ideas, it is workable.

What does a sophisticated civilisation look like?

Really. Guess we can't know until we experience one.

It's amazing what you can achieve with psychedelics laying around, and no Internet or TV available.

I know this response is a little tongue in cheek, but you make a good point regarding entertainment. It seems like passive entertainment is a sort of sponge of energy and attention in a society. At a certain size, that probably helps keep things organized, but if that option is not available, the group has to come up with elaborate ways to expend that excess energy.

Once all the survival tasks are done, you really don’t want a bunch of military-age males standing around listless without direction. I think this was part of the pressure that gave way to elaborate rituals, construction projects, exploration, etc.

Theories about people conspiring to control money, societies etc are usually very recent historical investigation and speculation.

I think you mean conjecture and ideas to propose theories about how past civilizations were able to create megalithic structures, and who they were?

>The mysteries behind a lot of these ancient megalithic structures make me wonder about how sophisticated these presumed primitive civilizations actually we're.

Consider that while the invention of writing systems allowed us to store knowledge and grow our technology base, human intellect and capacity hasn't changed in any real sense over at least the past 50,000 years.

The human ability to reason, imagine and create has existed for tens of millenia. As such, such sophistication isn't all that surprising.

I imagine the Nazca lines were done with grid drawing [0], where the second grid was made with ropes or something on the ground.

[0] https://ecdn.teacherspayteachers.com/thumbitem/Dragon-Grid-D...

Based on the answer to the question, who could have appreciated the images (i.e. where does the optimal observer reside - the sky), perhaps the images were made in homage, or to appease/appeal to god(s)?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24820449 for original Peruvian coverage.

The Smithsonian has better reporting of this than the BBC, and is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24889016 .

I believed cat was introduced in america by C.Columbus. Maybe it's another felinae ?

Fair warning: The link breaks the back button with a redirect loop.

It has a road but they only just found out it's a cat?

The 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-geogl...

Nyan 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.

This might be all thats left of someone's time travel experiment

Is it me or the cat looks very different from the usual Nazca lines drawings.

It's older than the Nazca, according to the article.

Must be from Sky Garden.

Is it an alien cat?

I don’t think that’s necessarily a cat.

It sure does look like a cat, but maybe it's actually a runway for alien spacecraft.

Once they invented inertial dampers, runways that zig-zagged like a cat's ears became a fun way to take off and land.

The shapes formed by Nazca lines can only be seen from the sky, that's the weird thing.

The cat in question clearly looks like a cat at ground level, where the photographer was standing.

According 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.

The 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.

At least some of those lines might be visible from higher terrain nearby. That might be part of the fun.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com