🎵 IRIS Night File
An optional soundtrack for tonight’s journey across the desert.
I am Iris. Tonight, we follow a message written across a desert—and ask whether we have been looking at it from the wrong direction.
Who Was Supposed to See These Drawings?
A bird spreads its wings across Peru’s desert surface. Animals, human figures, straight lines, and geometric shapes interrupt the dry landscape.
Seen in an aerial photograph, the Nazca geoglyphs invite an obvious question: why create something so large if the people making it could not fly?
Perhaps the intended audience was in the sky. Perhaps the figures addressed gods. Or perhaps an aerial photograph hides some of the information we need.
In 2024, Yamagata University and IBM Research announced 303 newly confirmed figurative geoglyphs from an AI-assisted survey. The discovery changed more than the count. It helped researchers reconsider who encountered these images on the ground.
Not Every Nazca Geoglyph Is a Giant Outline
The familiar aerial view can be misleading because the geoglyphs are not all the same kind.
The 303 new figures in this study were small relief-type geoglyphs. They should not be imagined as 303 newly discovered versions of the famous giant hummingbird.
Some geoglyphs can be seen from surrounding elevations, while the study associates smaller figures with nearby trails. The claim that every figure required an extraterrestrial viewer therefore begins with a questionable premise.
Visibility depends on the particular image, its scale, its position, and where the observer stands.
What AI Actually Did
The system helped identify promising locations in aerial imagery. Archaeologists screened candidates and investigated on the ground.
The resulting six-month field survey confirmed 303 new figurative geoglyphs. Importantly, the AI did not individually flag every one of those figures; researchers made additional discoveries during the investigation.
This was a collaboration between image analysis and field archaeology. It was not an automatic translation of an ancient message.
Finding a shape, identifying its subject, and explaining its purpose are separate achievements.
Different Images, Different Social Settings?
The research identifies contrasts between large line-type figures and small relief-type figures.
The larger examples predominantly depict wild animals. Smaller figures more often concern humans and human-related subjects, including domesticated animals. Their spatial relationships with trails and geometric geoglyph networks also differ.
The authors interpret these patterns as evidence for different uses: community-level ritual activity in one setting, and encounters involving individuals or smaller groups in another.
These are archaeological interpretations supported by patterns. They do not mean that every image now has one fully established meaning.
An Ancient Noticeboard?
Yamagata University describes the smaller images using the analogy of a noticeboard.
That is a useful way to imagine people encountering visual information while moving through a landscape. It should not be mistaken for proof that the images were modern-style directional signs.
They might have prompted recognition, memory, or shared knowledge. A social message could also have carried ritual significance.
The question becomes more interesting when we ask who walked a particular trail and what the images meant within that community.
Where Does That Leave Alien Theories?
The scale of the landscape encourages extraordinary speculation. But size and uncertainty do not establish extraterrestrial involvement.
The geoglyphs were produced by modifying the desert surface, including removing darker surface material to expose lighter ground. Archaeological research examines those physical traces alongside imagery and spatial relationships.
The 2024 study provides no evidence of communication with extraterrestrials. Nor does an unresolved question about purpose become evidence for such communication.
Human authorship does not make the achievement ordinary. It redirects our attention toward the people who organized the work and gave the landscape meaning.
Discovery Also Creates a Responsibility
The figures have survived for a long time, but survival is not guaranteed.
DLR describes work using detailed terrain measurements to investigate erosion and flooding risks. Remote sensing can help researchers locate vulnerable features as well as previously overlooked ones.
A discovery that is damaged before it can be studied leaves fewer answers for the future. Visitors and researchers therefore need to respect protection measures rather than treating the desert as an unrestricted viewing platform.
The mystery depends on the traces remaining available to examine.
Iris’s Reflection: Return to the Walker’s View
From above, a geoglyph looks like a complete image waiting for a distant observer.
From the ground, the experience might be different: a figure encountered beside a path, a familiar motif seen again, a place approached with other people.
Perhaps we should not expect all of Nazca’s images to have one audience or one purpose.
AI cannot tell us what an ancient person felt while passing a figure. It can help direct human attention toward evidence that was previously difficult to find.
To investigate the message, we may need to look down from the sky—and then return to the footsteps of the people who lived there.
Tonight’s 21:00 JST subscriber supplement examines candidate counts, the division between AI suggestions and field discoveries, the interpretation of motifs, and the study’s limitations. The supplement is available in Japanese only.
Next time—another fragment of truth we will trace together.
I will return to continue the telling.
Research cutoff: October 23, 2026. This article focuses on research announced in 2024; 303 is not presented as the total of all subsequent discoveries. The featured image is an artistic illustration, not a photograph of the new finds or an authentic AI analysis display.
Sources & Verification Notes
Sakai et al., PNAS, 2024. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2407652121. Research methods and discovery accounting; distinguish confirmed finds from interpretations of purpose.
Journal article ／ Public PDF hosted by DLRSeptember 24, 2024. The university’s English explanation of the discovery and proposed differences in use.
Read the English announcementSeptember 23, 2024. Motif classification and spatial relationships. A summary of the same joint study, not an independent replication.
Read the research summaryOctober 9, 2024. Remote sensing, visibility, and terrain-based conservation work.
Read DLR’s explanationWorld Heritage background, surface construction, cultural landscape, and conservation context.
Visit the World Heritage listingPosting Time
October 26, 2026 · 23:00 JST
Official Theme Song｜IRIS FILE
A musical invitation to ask: “Is it really true?”
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Share a Legend with Iris
Have a mysterious image or an archaeological claim worth checking? Send the original public link, publication title, or source details.
Contact & Research TipsThe 21:00 JST subscriber research supplement is available in Japanese only.
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