The geoglyphs in this 200 million-year-old desert have baffled scientists who are scratching their heads about where they’ve come from. Geoglyphs are a type of land art, occasionally rock art, found in various sites worldwide.
These ancient artworks are drawn into the landscape, with experts noting their creations coming from previous successive cultures.
The Atacama Desert in Chile is a wonder in itself. It is the only true desert to receive less precipitation than polar deserts, making it the driest non-polar desert in the world and the second driest overall.
The Desert is found within the McMurdo Dry Valleys, west of the Andes Mountains, and is home to thousands of geoglyph discoveries.
The Atacama Desert has the largest discovered geoglyph that resembles a human-like figure. The art depicts stick limbs and a crown-looking headpiece adorning its head.
Known as the Atacama Giant, the gigantic geoglyph is one of nearly 5,000 that have been discovered in the Atacama region in the last three decades.
This artwork, presumed to be from the Tiwanaku and Inca people who dwelt in this region of South America, sits on the slopes of Cerro Unita and looks northeast in the Atacama Desert.
The Atacama Giant stretches 119 metres tall and “is the biggest human figure known to have been produced in prehistory,” states Karsen Lambers of Leiden University’s cult of Archaeology in a Human Environment study published in 2020.
These ancient figures and designs all vary in age, with some being as old as 1,200 years, while others were discovered in the 16th century.
Chile’s Ministry of National Assets declared this giant artwork a Protected National Asset in 2020, along with countless other geoglyphs worldwide.
These impressive designs are created on the ground by arranging stones, sand or gravel and creating a contrast using the surrounding area as a backdrop.
Either materials are arranged to different spots or removed to help balance and create the different textures or colours needed for it to stand out.
The meaning and purpose of creating the Atacama Giant and other geoglyphs remains unknown and is shrouded in mystery.
Marika Labas from the University of New Hampshire wrote of it in a 2012 article, saying: “Supposedly, each of the four spikes protruding from the giant’s head will align with the sun or the moon during specific times of the year.
“Others have even suggested that they were created by other-worldly visitors.”
In 2020, a giant 2,000-year-old cat among the Nazca lines was discovered in Peru, and in 2023, the largest known cat, geoglyph, was discovered in Chile.
The Atacama Giant is described as a colossal geoglyph. With its large design stretching across the vast Atacama Desert, it’s the largest of all its kind.
