"Any quest for the truth must invest considerable time in studying all possible solutions. I am amazed at the way other authors will research and write books [on this theme] in less than a year, but I am not at all surprised that they end up simply rehashing existing material."
-Alan F. Alford

The most frustrating aspect of any scientific research is when we are forced to admit defeat, that we have arrived at a dead end, that there is no way to uncover anything more. Ingenious and valiant attempts may be made to continue research, but on occasion, the inevitable must be accepted. Archaeology may rise above all other sciences, as the one field in which the most information is simply beyond grasp. There are many ancient mysteries that have yet to be explained, but it is beyond our power to completely verify suppositions of what happened in prehistory. People can take one of two routes in attempts to explain these perplexing phenomena: one is that of the scientist, who will gracefully yield solutions that may not be popular, pretty, or precise; the scientist will defer gently to the scientists of the future, who may be able to completely understand the ancient enigmas. The other route is that of the charlatan, who will take advantage of the opportunity to create extravagant, outlandish theories that violate any and all principles of science, but solve the mysteries for the entertainment of adventure-hungry masses. It is with this introduction in mind that Alan F. Alford's "A New Theory on the Nazca Lines" should be examined.

The truth about history is rarely as exciting as what can be fictionalized. When the opportunity arises, a charlatan will create history. For centuries, people have wondered how Stonehenge was constructed, how the stonework at Macchu Picchu could be so precise, how the Egyptians were able to raise 60 foot multi-ton obelisks, and so on. Whereas experimental archaeologists have only been able to scratch their heads in frustration for many of these cases, charlatans have proposed hundreds of theories involving races of giants, biblical miracles, and, in Alford's case, ancient astronaut "gods" living on earth. It would certainly be an exciting world if any of these theories could be proven true. Unfortunately, few bear any traces of true research, and simple facts have been completely, deliberately, overlooked. Even if all the facts had been taken into account, these fringe theories fall prey to Occam's Razor— the principle that the explanation that requires the fewest leaps of logic is usually correct. Based on modern knowledge, it is more likely that hundreds of people moved giant slabs of stone across England, than that giants picked boulders up like pebbles to construct Stonehenge.

The Nazca Lines are a popular subject for fringe science of this nature. Located in southern Peru, they cover an area of about 520 square kilometers. The Lines consist of numerous incredibly straight lines, wide wedge-shaped sections, and "geoglyphs," gigantic line-drawings of animals. People created the lines by scraping away the top layer of earth and revealing the yellow soil underneath. The geoglyphs, which include a spider, a monkey, a whale, and a lizard, to name a few, are of such magnitude— the lizard is more than 590 feet long— that they cannot be fully viewed except from the air. Some of the lines point toward mountains, and a frustratingly small twenty percent point to contemporary celestial events such as the heliacal rising of stars. (Westwood 98) There does not seem to be any unifying reason for the lines, much less the geoglyphs. How and why were figures constructed that could not be completely seen? This is the mystery adored by non- scientists; it is a magnificent opportunity to create elaborate fantasies involving supernatural events.

In "A New Theory on the Nazca Lines," Alan Alford informs us that we must make a "major paradigm shift - the recognition of an advanced prehistoric, worldwide culture... ...if we study the Lines as part of an integrated pattern of worldwide prehistory, as I have done, a plausible answer emerges." This "paradigm shift" is fully explored in his book "Gods of the New Millenium," in which he uses this race of gods to explain human racial origins, the functionality of the Great Pyramids, Machu Picchu as a star-clock, the significance of Petra, a historical basis for the "giants" of the Bible, a claim that nuclear weapons were used in ancient times in the Sinai peninsula, and of course, an explanation of the Nazca Lines (Eridu 1). From the outset it seems clear that any unifying theory that would explain all these phenomena would be rather weak.

And weak it is: in "A New Theory of the Nazca Lines," Alford explains that the god Viracocha was the artist at Nazca, around the year 2200 BCE, using an aircraft technology that directed a "cutting beam" onto the desert plain below. Certain "Negroid slaves," from the nearby stoneworking site of Tiahuanacu in Bolivia rebelled and stole "one or more of the aerial craft belonging to Viracocha, and took turns to deface the Nazca plain in a wanton act of vandalism." The slaves eradicated some of Viracocha's drawings with the large wedge-shaped lines, and also drew crude figures of their own. Alford throws in one more twist: the slaves were exiled to "nearby" Easter Island (2,300 miles away), where they used their skill at stonemasonry to construct the gigantic stone heads that are found there. He also mentions that those slaves who did not rebel "eventually wound up in Mesoamerica as the Olmecs" where they carved large stone heads with "distinctive African features."

It is not hard to find flaws in Alford's theory. If we accept a "major paradigm shift," however, the theory is completely acceptable. In other words, Alford's theory remains plausible within the system of logic he has created. To make that shift, readers must believe that there was a race of ancient superbeings with an advanced level of technological skill, unequaled today. These superbeings were not inclined toward logical efficiency, however, and instead of enslaving local natives, they brought slaves from Africa and taught them stonemasonry. We must believe that the Gods also accidentally taught the slaves how to fly aircraft, and the slaves flew several hundred miles from Tiahuanacu so that they could vandalize the scratch-pad of the gods. We must believe that some of these African stonemason rebels were exiled to a Pacific Island where they constructed hundreds of stone heads and then vanished entirely, and that other slaves went several thousand miles to Mesoamerica and also constructed stone heads before disappearing around 400 BCE. Unfortunately for modern science, the technology used by the superbeings must have been made of mud or wood, and after sitting unused for thousands of years, has decayed so as to be unrecoverable, making this whole theory a test of faith. This theory holds up completely, as long as readers use no scientific or logical thinking.

An alternative viewpoint to Alford's states that the Nazcans were a happy, clever, agricultural people. Probably using rope and wood, they swept aside the dirt and created lines and figures for ceremonial purposes. (Feder 169) Making perfectly straight lines is not difficult with ropes, wooden poles, and very simple geometry. It has been suggested that an individual family would take care of a geoglyph for ceremonial purposes, for many generations. (Westwood 102) With over 12,000 years of settlement at Nazca, the people were hardly pressed for time, and it seems a reasonable assumption to believe that the figures might have been corrected and re-corrected towards perfection over the generations. This theory also explains why many of the geoglyphs show more artistic skill than others. Fully proving either theory is difficult, but Alford's theory is based on fantasy, while the scientific belief is a conjecture with a factual basis.

Besides being based on unprovable assumptions and spurious science, it is clear that Alford's theory is highly racist. Even if the general gods-on-earth premise of Alford's theory was acceptable, the use of "Negroid slaves" seems unlikely; there is no evidence of Africans crossing the Atlantic until recent times. Beringia, the land route linking the hemispheres, was used by migratory peoples who became the many variaties of Native Americans— not what would be called "Negroid." It seems highly unlikely that any group from Africa zipped diagonally across Asia to Siberia so that they could move through Alaska, down the coast, along Mexico, and finally settle on the dry plains of western South America. Therefore the race of superbeings must have "flown" to Africa to bring back slaves. Why they did this, instead of using the locally available workforce, would be anyone's guess— we must assume that for all their technological skill, the gods were not very smart. The list of incongruities between Alford's theory and logical reality continues to grow. His theory suggests that the "distinctive African" Olmec and Easter Island heads would be similar, but they are far from it— and there is nothing distinctively African about Olmec heads. It is close to saying that all people look the same, as long as they are not white.

The rave reviews of Alford's book are impressive, if one ignores their sources. Marcus Walker calls it "one of the most factually sound and exciting books to be released for over a decade." Walker is the author of "UFOS: The Biblical Connection." Alien Encounters magazine writes that readers will be "blown away by theories which may literally change your life." Ordinary people have made even stronger reviews: Daniel Braunschweig writes that Alford's book "is changing the way I perceive life. [Alford has] such a widespread knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, archaeology, theology, genetics and at the same time the ability to make it understandable to the layman." Tor Erikson states, "I consider [this] book to be possibly the finest work ever written on the subject of human origins." (Eridu 1) It seems highly ironic that there is so much praise from sources which claim the governmental and scientific communities are conspiring to suppress the truth. The true conspirators are the writers who defraud their readers, using contrived "scientific" data to lend credence to fantastic theories, glamorize the past, and make money.

The significance of the popularity of concepts like Alford's is painfully clear. Avid readers combine a lack of scientific knowledge with a hunger to bring a sense of supernatural romance to their lives. The lack of scientific knowledge can be blamed on increasingly low standards of public education, and a limited desire to learn more. The hunger for romance is more individual and harder to place— it could be due to strange, seemingly paranormal experiences in one's life, a desire to adapt religion to a world that seems increasingly secular, or any sort of personal problems. A dangerous side effect of this trend is the use of this kind of fantasy to create cult movements— evidenced by the recent Hale-Bopp comet mass suicide. The trend is also dangerous to the scientific community, because it breeds ignorance and may make it difficult for students to choose a valid source when there is conflict. It is clear from the reviews that many readers actually believe Alford is a reliable source of information about modern science.

Criticism of non-scientific theories like Alford's are omnipresent. Why aren't the fantasies driven away? On television, there are numerous programs specializing in explanations of paranormal phenomena and ancient mysteries, including the hugely popular drama The X-Files. Alien Encounters, Sightings, and UFO Magazine are all popular periodicals. On the Internet, it is often hard to find scientific facts through all the flights of fancy. Rather than dying in the face of criticism, it seems that the presence of pseudoscience has drastically grown in recent years. Furthermore, it does not seem to be a passing trend— the idea of ancient astronauts, for example, dates back long before its popularization by Erich von Daniken in the 1970's. The authors, whether they believe what they are writing or not, are capitalizing on the trend to make money. Why do people persist in buying and believing?

"Archaeologists and Egyptologists," Alford says, "are especially guilty of trying to make history match a pattern of continual cultural evolution. My paradigm suggests that what has actually happened is a cultural degradation. It is for this reason that there are so many anomalies in the history books... I would like to think that if I find half as many anomalies in my thesis that I will go back to the drawing board." (Alford interview) This is the kind of strong, misleading statement that causes readers to believe in a conspiracy of scientists. Aside from being inaccurate (as evidenced by Julian Steward's theory of multilinear evolution) it is also degrading to the science. It is important for the future of archaeology, and science in general, to understand movements like Alford's and be able to counteract them. What group of people believe that this sort of misinformation is gospel? Why is the paranormal more popular than accurate science? Where has science failed to grab the reader? Is it simply an issue of writers taking advantage of the gullible and weak-minded, or is it a failure on the part of science to provoke interest in general?

These questions can be answered by a comprehensive study of the readers versus the public in general. It seems probable that individuals with better education will be more prone toward scientific answers to ancient mysteries. However, the preponderance of pseudo-science (including Alford's article) on the Internet, which requires some technical knowledge to use, suggests that there is a more deeply-rooted social trend at work. This trend could undermine the future of science. Growing anti-scientific movements cannot be overlooked. A study of the pseudo-science movement as a whole could find the source of the problem and redirect the public ideal, before the popularity of myth eclipses that of reality.

The Nazca Lines are one of many ancient mysteries on this planet, and it is possible that we will never learn the true reason why they were constructed. What we can learn from the lines, however, is of the rigid dichotomy between science and fantasy. As long as they remain a mystery, scientists will study the lines and charlatans will dream up absurd explanations for them. The scientist's incomplete but accurate theory will always be better than the charlatan's complete and inaccurate one. The public must be forewarned and conditioned to tell the two apart.