Between the Lines: The Mystery of the Giant Ground Drawings of Ancient Nasca, Peru

The Nasca Lines are one of the world's great enigmas. Who etched the more than 1,000 animal,human, and geometric figures that cover 400 square miles of barren pampa in southern Peru? How did the makers create lifelike images of monkeys, birds, and spiders without an aerial vantage point from which to view these giant figures that stretch across thousands of square yards? Most puzzling of all, why did the ancient Nasca lay out these lines and images in the desert? These are the questions that pioneering archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni seeks to answer in this book.

I was a bit doubtful about this book - *another* book on Nasca lines? However, despite some rambling on about "wonders of the world", which I thought beside the point, it has some useful background information about the Nasca and Inca peoples.What this book does is successfuly emphasise how little we actually know about Nasca and the Pampa. The lines were NOT ment to be seen from above in a plane but formed,in some now indescribable way, a central part of community and spirital life of these people for centuries.I found this book wandered around all over the place on topics not related to the lines or Nasca people, but I found it useful to fill in background information on the people themselves (what litte of it exists) and that is what I was after. I now know that most of Andean archaeology is based on a large dose of guesswork.The lines are approched by the author in context to their enviroment and the people who built them - a wise and long overdue assement in my view.This book is worth it for the background information on the Nasca even if it dosen't offer any real "answers".

I thought that the author did a superlative job as far as being comprehensive in regard to the various theories that have been advanced to explain the Nazca line enigma. The illustrations were excellent and, in most cases, the photography was the best available at the time of publication. Anthony F. Aveni also was very thorough in his integration of ideas from other sources such as pottery, textiles, and native customs. If anything negative can be said of the work, it might be that the author has included too much between the covers. For example, it may not have been necessary for him to have devoted an entire chapter to other wonders of the ancient world which tends to tire the reader who, understandably, is more concerned with getting at the mystery at Nazca. At one point one tends to forget what the book is really all about. I realize that Mr. Aveni is wanting to give us a thorough presentation for comparison to the Nazca ground drawings and, thus, qualify them as the Eighth World Wonder from ancient times. He goes perhaps a bit too far in satisfying his own desires in this venture. He can, perhaps, be forgiven for his gallant attempt at providing an interesting 'filler'.In conclusion, I would have to say that any serious student of the Nazca phenomenon would find Aveni's book invaluable. The book is an up-to-date work providing information on all previous theories by archeologists, anthropologists, astronomers and others, while at the same time mustering supporting evidence for the author's own arguments. While Aveni may not have solved the Nazca riddle, he has been successful in guiding the reader around previous pitfalls in thinking, and, at least, has shown what the Nazca lines are NOT.