Where are the Nazca Lines?

The Nazca Lines are huge designs scratched into the desert floor about 400 km south of Lima in Peru. They were made by the Nazca culture between roughly 500 BC and AD 500 by removing reddish surface stones to reveal lighter ground beneath. The drawings include hundreds of straight lines and geometric shapes, plus about 70 figures of animals and plants such as a hummingbird, a monkey and a spider. Many are so large that they can only be fully appreciated from the air or nearby hills. The extremely dry, windless climate has preserved them for around 2,000 years, and they became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.