Declassified December: "The Nazca Lines"

Summary

Podcast Summary: Bigfoot Collectors Club

Episode: Declassified December: "The Nazca Lines"
Date: December 10, 2025
Hosts: Michael McMillian & Riley Bray

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Overview

In this special "Declassified December" release, hosts Michael McMillian and Riley Bray revisit a favorite episode from their exclusive Supercast feed, taking listeners on a journey to Peru to explore the ancient and mysterious Nazca Lines. Through casual, humorous, and insightful conversation, they dig into the history, theories, and symbolism behind these enormous geoglyphs, while also reflecting on the ways such ancient wonders connect to broader questions about culture, time, and humanity's place in history. While maintaining their trademark playful banter, the hosts offer a rich discussion of archaeology, pseudoarchaeology, and what new technologies are revealing about the enigmatic desert drawings.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction, Updates, and Community Banter

• [01:05 – 14:19] Michael and Riley open with updates about the podcast, planned live events (episode 300), and merchandise. They riff about classic films and actors, mixing pop culture references—an ongoing theme throughout.
• They humorously expand the in-show “Apple Family” canon, referencing My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, and hypothetical Apple-branded family members.
• Notable Quote:
  “We’re trying to carve our own lines on the Internet here.”
  – Riley Bray [74:45]

2. Listeners’ Comments and Roadside Americana

• [14:19 – 21:39] The duo reads and reacts to listener comments, with highlights including a discussion of “Foamhenge” (a Stonehenge replica made of Styrofoam) and its eccentric artist Mark Klein.
  • They connect Klein’s artistic drive and kitschy roadside attractions to their love for cultural oddities.

3. Recent Developments in Nazca Research

• [28:04 – 34:21] Transition into main topic with a recent news article:
  • AI and drones have uncovered 303 new geoglyphs near the Nazca Lines, nearly doubling the known figures.
  • Japanese researchers at Yamagata University and IBM collaborated on the discovery, finding smaller glyphs that prior flyovers missed.
  • These smaller glyphs appear to serve practical or communal purposes, possibly as markers or 'billboards' for locals rather than for ritual or cosmic significance.
• Notable Quote:
  “It took nearly a century to discover a total of 430 figurative Nazca geoglyphs... it took just six months to discover 303 new ones with AI.”
  – Michael McMillian (paraphrasing article) [30:41]

4. AI as a Force for Good in Archaeology

• [32:49 – 34:46]
  • Riley expresses enthusiasm for AI being used to further real research, contrasting it with the proliferation of AI “slop.” He underscores his appreciation when AI is used as a tool for deeper understanding rather than cheap content creation.

5. Nazca Lines: History, Theories, and Culture

a) What Are the Nazca Lines?

• [37:10 – 44:14]
  • Michael describes the Nazca Lines as a collection of 700+ geoglyphs, including animals, geometric shapes, and spirals.
  • They discuss the most famous figures (spider, monkey, hummingbird, cat, killer whale, "astronaut") and how many of these are only visible in full from the air.
  • Quick sidebar into preferred breads for peanut butter toast—a running, light-hearted motif.

b) Discovery and Rediscovery

• [44:14 – 48:11]
  • The earliest Western mention: Pedro Cieza de León (1553), who thought they were road markers.
  • True significance and visibility not recognized until aerial views in the 1920s and later investigations.

c) Cultural Context

• [48:11 – 50:59]
  • Nazca culture: ~200 BC – 750/800 AD, preceded by the Paracas.
  • Paracas made the earliest, smaller glyphs, some matching glyphs from their pottery and art.
  • Larger, more famous geoglyphs are attributed to the Nazca.

d) Creation and Preservation

• [50:59 – 53:20]
  • Created by removing a thin layer of oxidized red pebbles, exposing lighter soil.
  • Arid climate (less than 1 inch of rain/year) and “natural sealant” from rare dew have preserved the lines for centuries.

e) Notable Figures and Patterns

• [53:20 – 55:28]
  • The "astronaut": humanoid figure that appears to wave at the sky; cited by ancient aliens proponents.
  • The monkey, spider, condor, whale—some animals are not native to the region but linked by trade or symbolic import.
  • Mount Palpa: features lines resembling an airport runway, fueling both genuine and fringe theories.

f) Early Theories: Astronomical or Calendar Functions

• [56:30 – 61:04]
  • German researcher Maria Reiche popularized the idea that the lines were an “astronomy book” or calendar, correlating to constellations and solstice alignments.
  • Later skepticism: Further research pointed out inconsistencies; some contemporary archaeologists posit that the astronomical explanations are incomplete or only apply to some lines.

g) Contemporary Theories: Rituals and Water

• [62:00 – 65:19]
  • Johan Reinhard and others: glyphs are markers or ceremonial pathways related to water—a critical resource in the desert.
  • Many animal glyphs have associations with water or fertility (e.g., spiders = rain, whales = abundance).
  • Lines likely hosted communal rituals appealing for rain and survival.

h) Debunking Ancient Aliens

• [65:34 – 68:00]
  • The “ancient aliens” narrative is dismissed; modern humans could easily have created these with available tools.
  • Claims about elongated skulls and non-human DNA are dispelled as ritualistic body modification, not evidence of extraterrestrials.
• Notable Quote:
  “They were smart, sure... When you have nothing else to do but create your culture, you have time to make giant glyphs.”
  – Michael McMillian [61:45]

i) The Nazca Lines as 'Earth Tattoos'

• [66:09 – 66:41]
  • Riley suggests the lines are akin to tattoos: “They mark time, they tell stories, they identify the culture. They’re aspirational, a plea for life and fertility, and it just feels very human.”

6. Modern Risks and Relevance

• [68:47 – 69:38]
  • Threats to preservation include tourists, squatters, and even misguided environmental activism (e.g., Greenpeace protest damaging the site).
  • Reflection on transience, the sweep of human history, and what endures.

7. Broader Reflections: Time, Legacy, and Perspective

• [70:03 – 73:41] (Closing thoughts)
  • Discussing the Nazca lines inspires the hosts to reflect on the scope of ancient cultures, societal resilience, and how civilizations can vanish after thriving for centuries.
  • The 10,000-year clock project is raised as a modern parallel: humanity’s attempts to grapple with deep time.
• Notable Quote:
  “The Nazca lines make me think about time scales and humanity’s place on this planet. It connects us to the ancient past and it makes us think of the distant future. And that is cool.”
  – Riley Bray [73:13]

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• AI & Archaeology:
  “It took just six months to discover 303 new figurative geoglyphs.” [30:41]
  – Michael McMillian

• On AI's Purpose:
  “I love it when it’s used in a way that advances knowledge and ability and not to generate slop… when it’s used in a novel way to advance science or our understanding… then yeah, I think it’s really an exciting tool.” [32:49]
  – Riley Bray

• On Creation & Cultural Legacy:
  “They were smart, sure… people could make this back then. They were just very smart. Again, like Stonehenge… when you have nothing else to do but create your culture, you have time to make giant glyphs.” [61:45]
  – Michael McMillian

• On Human Creativity:
  “These feel a lot like tattoos, like on the earth, you know. They mark time, they tell stories, they identify the culture, they are aspirational… it just feels very human.” [66:18]
  – Riley Bray

• On the Mystery’s Human Roots:
  “It’s kind of more racist stuff—nonwhite people, could they really make something like this? And the answer is yes, they could.” [66:41]
  – Michael McMillian

• Contemplating Impermanence:
  “Doesn’t that make you think about like, now?... How long has the modern world been cooking?... What collectively we could be creating if we put our minds to it.” [70:15]
  – Riley Bray & Michael McMillian

• Legacy of the Nazca Lines:
  “The Nazca lines make me think about time scales and humanity’s place on this planet. They connect us to the ancient past and… the distant future. And that is cool.” [73:13]
  – Riley Bray

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Nazca Lines and AI Discovery — [28:04 – 34:46]
• Historical Overview & Cultural Context — [37:10 – 53:20]
• Creation Methods/Preservation — [50:59 – 53:20]
• Ancient Aliens Debunked — [65:34 – 68:00]
• Reflection on Civilization and Time — [70:03 – 73:41]

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Tone & Language

Playful, humorous, self-deprecating, and enthusiastic—the hosts hop between joking banter and earnest awe for their subject. They maintain an accessible, conversational tone, using pop culture analogies (“Jack Lemmon of the paranormal,” “Earth tattoos”), but also highlight the power of scientific curiosity and contemplation.

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Conclusion

This episode blends deep historical insight with a playful sensibility, making the subject of the Nazca Lines both fascinating and approachable. Michael and Riley provide historical context, explain new scientific developments, and push back on pseudoscientific interpretations, all while inviting listeners to reflect on legacy, time, and creativity—leaving us in awe of both ancient wonders and modern discovery.

Transcript

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[Riley Bray]

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[Michael McMillan]

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[Riley Bray]

From director James Cameron.

[Michael McMillan]

This world goes much deeper than you imagine.

[Riley Bray]

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[Michael McMillan]

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[Riley Bray]

Avatar, Fire and ASH. Rated PG13. Be inappropriate for children under 13. Get tickets now.

[Michael McMillan]

Hello club scouts and welcome to declassified December Week 2 here on Bigfoot Collectors Club. Now I want to stop here and say I'm sorry that I was not around last week to introduce this month's theme to Classify December, where we take episodes from BCC the Other side over on bcc.supercast.com that's our bonus episode channel. And what we like to do in the month of December, at least in the past couple years, is unlock some of the best episodes of the previous year and share them with you so you get an idea of some of the shenanigans going on over at the BCC clubhouse on Supercast. All three episodes this month are handpicked as some of the favorite episodes from your fellow club scouts [e-mail] cast.com so last week we had our David lynch episode with Eric Edelstein. Unfortunately, I was out of town dealing with a family emergency. Riley was on the road, so I wasn't able to sit here and introduce this. That's why I'm doing it now. And this week we have a very special fun episode that tied into our big strange vacation from the summer. It's an episode all about the Nazca lines. So you're going to hear that in a second. And then next week we'll have another one of these for you. And then we're going to be coasting through the holidays until the show officially returns with brand new episodes in January. So let's get right into it and enjoy this episode of the Nazca lines, part of Big Strange Vacation with Riley and me from last summer. And just a reminder, if you enjoy episodes like this one, there are a lot more, 313 more. 14 by this point. Soon over at bcc.supercast.com.

Get in loser. We're going on a big strange vacation.

[Riley Bray]

Vacation.

[Michael McMillan]

Big strange vacation.

Big strange vacation.

Big strange holiday.

Big strange vacation. Y' all got room for one more? Hello, I'm a little lovely tadpole boy. And I can't wait to go on my big strange vacation with all my friends.

Pack your bags. We're going on a big strange vacation.

Big strange vacation.

Welcome to Bigfoot Collectors Club. Big strange Vacation Novo launched into the room. That's when you know it's time to start the podcast.

[Riley Bray]

Yep, right when I click record is when he decides he wants to tangle himself in my headphone cable.

[Michael McMillan]

He knows the. He knows the pattern now.

[Riley Bray]

He does. He does.

[Michael McMillan]

Not really my story to tell, but I'm going to tell it anyway. Friend of the show, Tom Everett Scott.

He told me once that he was working. I can't remember what movie he worked with Jack Lemmon on. Okay, do kids know who Jack Lemmon is these days?

[Riley Bray]

Do I know who Jack Lemon is? Whoa. I know the name.

[Michael McMillan]

Hot. The Odd Couple.

[Riley Bray]

Okay, sure, sure.

[Michael McMillan]

You probably know him from Grumpy Old Men.

[Riley Bray]

Ah, yes, of course.

[Michael McMillan]

So Jack Lemmon, one of my all time favorite actors.

[Riley Bray]

Okay.

[Michael McMillan]

You know, he's an older guy. He passed away a number of years ago.

[Riley Bray]

Looking at IMDb right now.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, come on, rattle off a few more of his. He did the L. Did he do the last weekend, or was that Frank Sinatra?

[Riley Bray]

I've got a drive ad. Here we go. Okay. The apartment.

[Michael McMillan]

Yes. The apartment's one of my favorite old men.

[Riley Bray]

Legend of Bagger Vance, Odd Couple, too. Puppies for sale.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay, on the Simpsons. This is some later stuff. You got to go back to the 650.

[Riley Bray]

I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling. That's life. Buddy. Buddy. Airport Wednesday. Geez, this guy.

[Michael McMillan]

Work dude. He's a star.

[Riley Bray]

I'm still scrolling. I'm not even down to the early stuff.

[Michael McMillan]

The apartment. You've never seen the apartment?

[Riley Bray]

I haven't.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, that's a great. Jack Lemon. Jack Lemon. Shirley McLean. Maybe a little problematic by today's standards, but it's, like, considered a classic.

[Riley Bray]

A different time.

[Michael McMillan]

It's a different time. It's about a guy who, like, rents out his apartment to businessmen so they can have affairs with their mistresses while they're at work.

[Riley Bray]

Chill.

[Michael McMillan]

And he falls in love with Shirley MacLaine, who is the.

The. The, like, elevator woman. Like the belt. Like, not the bellhop, but, like, she, you know, the elevator operator.

[Riley Bray]

Elevator operator. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

And if memory serves me correctly, he's bummed out because he's in love. He falls in love with her and then finds out that, like, she is his boss's mistress, played by Fred McMurray.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, okay.

[Michael McMillan]

So it's like an old school, like rom com, but it's a, you know, it's a classic movie.

[Riley Bray]

Well, he was also in the wackiest ship in the army.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, the wackiest ship. Jack Lemmon. He's great. He. Anyway, so.

[Riley Bray]

All right. Yeah, Jack Lemmon. Now we know who that is.

[Michael McMillan]

Glengarry Glenn Ross. That's the one I'm. That's who I was thinking of too, from the Simpsons. They're like, oh, Gil's gonna, you know the salesman Gil on. That's based on his character in Glen Garry Glenn Ross. So Jack Lemon, before every take, would quietly whisper magic time. And then he was like right before they called action.

[Riley Bray]

That's amazing.

[Michael McMillan]

Every time that.

[Riley Bray]

I love that.

[Michael McMillan]

So magic time.

[Riley Bray]

Magic time.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, yeah. For the fortune cookie, which I watched over the pandemic and was not that great. Also kind of problematic in areas.

[Riley Bray]

I have a friend that I work on set cruise with and his. His little thing that he'll. He'll do a similar thing, but he goes, make it real.

[Michael McMillan]

Make it real. I love that.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Hi, everybody. Welcome to bcc the other side, the parallel dimension of Bigfoot Collectors Club. And welcome back to your big strange vacation all summer long. We are taking a look at the weirdest, spookiest and most mysterious places in the world. I'm your host, Michael McMillan, and with me always is the mystical mood music master, Riley Bray. I mean, that about sums it up, doesn't it?

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, that's nice. I like that. Put you in a nice mystical mood.

[Michael McMillan]

Nice mystical mood. That was submitted by Robert Dunn right over here on the other side. Thank you, Robert.

[Riley Bray]

Thank you.

[Michael McMillan]

Happy 4th of July to our fellow American Americans who are hanging on by the skin of their teeth right now.

And you know, happy Independence Day to the rest of the world.

Sorry, sorry, everybody. We're trying.

I wanted to let everybody know in case they missed it on Wednesday's episode announcement that you can get for a limited time now in the new merch Shop, our reissue of our wet hot alien summer shirt. The cool kick ass vaporwave shirt. One of our all time best sellers. One of my favorite designs by James Mulholland that we've ever done. That that'll be up in the. The merch shop as of this record and I will put a link for that in our show notes.

[Riley Bray]

I gotta go order one before it's too late.

[Michael McMillan]

I know my old one disappeared I think Kate took it and then I never saw it again.

[Riley Bray]

All of my BCC merch I end up giving to friends and then I have, like, none of it. Pam from Tomy has my. That Glow in the Dark one. That was my favorite hoodie.

[Michael McMillan]

That one. That one, I think. Excuse me while I adjust my camera for those of you watching on the Cosmic Chair membership. That one, I feel like, is like a true collector's item of the show because we'll never be able to recreate that. That was done by a different company.

[Riley Bray]

Legal reasons, we can never re release that one.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, I have mine, but it's covered in cat hair. But if you've got that Glow in the Dark hoodie, take care of it because that will never, ever come out again.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, that was a special one.

[Michael McMillan]

Hold on to that one. Some of the other ones we'll be able to. We'll be able to do again, but for in limited batches. We gotta. We got a request for The Bigfoot Portal 1. Our old school.

Little friends of printmaking, who I love. People have said, hey, I. I started listening to the show after that that logo came out. You know, it was no longer available, so I'm missing that one. So that. That might be one that we could reissue. Maybe this fall would be fun. Like a good. A good back to school T shirt. I feel like.

[Riley Bray]

Yes. Assuming we still have schools in the.

[Michael McMillan]

Fall, that could be possible. You never know.

There's always tomorrow or not.

Y of tomorrow and things coming in the future. This episode of the Other side, if I've done my math my maths correctly, is episode 299.

[Riley Bray]

Whoa.

[Michael McMillan]

Of the. Of BCC the other side. It's our. Yeah. Official 299th bonus episode.

[Riley Bray]

Jeez. So you've been doing this for a while.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, guys. So Riley and I thought.

And we haven't figured this out yet because we're both on the verge of, like, other things in our life that we got to. We got to figure out. But mid. Mid July will be Our next episode. BCC 300. And what we were thinking about doing was maybe doing it as a live Patreon hang with you guys listening. So all Patreon members could, like, log on and. And we could just do it together and then. I'm sure we've not done this before. I'm sure there's a way to preserve it and make it an episode, but I think it would be fun to do that.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

And during that.

Live hang episode, whatever we want to call it, we're Going to make a big announcement about the future of bcc. The other side. We've kind of teased it in the past couple weeks. We've been working on it behind the scenes, and I think we'll have a big, fun announcement for you guys over there in the three. It feels good to do it in the 300th episode.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, there's a nice symmetry.

[Michael McMillan]

I think so. Yeah, it's. It'll be the beginning of a new era for bcc. The other side, that's. That's basically, you know, more for us than you guys. I guess, in a way we'll find out, but I think for you guys.

[Riley Bray]

Too, it should be better.

[Michael McMillan]

Should be better. It's gonna be better.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah. Just keep saying that until it is.

[Michael McMillan]

It's gonna be better. So that'll be in a couple weeks. We'll get our together and we'll figure that out and then we will let y' all know in advance. We could do it on a Friday when the episodes typically come out. Or we could do it on, like, an evening sometime that's not a Friday. You know, that might be better for everybody else who's listening at home or watching at home. We could kind of do it. It wouldn't. It won't be as much of a, like, live stream as we have done in the past. It's going to be more of a casual Kiki hang with your BCC boys and I'll prepare some high strangeness for it and all that stuff, so don't worry about that.

[Riley Bray]

But yeah, it's like live before a studio audience.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, it'll be. But I want it to feel kind of like we're hanging out with our buddies and we can hopefully interact with people. We got to figure out how to make this happen, but we want to make it happen. So stay tuned, keep your eyes glued on your emails is what I'm saying. As we. As we work that out, we gotta talk to Jessica Napic. She and Tenny do a lot of live Patreon Hanks over there. So.

[Riley Bray]

Okay, we don't know what we're doing with that, but we'll figure it out.

[Michael McMillan]

We'll figure it out. And then if you can't make it, we will.

We will preserve the episode so you can watch it, and we'll make that available to all paid members of bcc. The other side, regardless of tier, and then I guess that's it. So probably around the. We're looking at, like, the week around August or weekend around August or. Sorry, excuse me. July 18th around. Around there. Around where the 300th would have come out. So stay posted. Riley and I will figure it out. You're in good hands, everybody.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, it's all going to work out.

[Michael McMillan]

It's all going to be great. Okay. Hey, Riley, will you do me a favor? Will you reach over there should be a corn cob pipe over. I think it was sitting next to your computer. Can you grab that? Yep. Just pull that down. Can you just tap it out a little bit?

I was taking a nap. What do y' all want?

Must be time for commenters club.

[Riley Bray]

Sure is.

[Michael McMillan]

All right. There goes Apple crust. Adrian Squirrel Baron recently said the Apple family is expanding, so we're eagerly awaiting Apple butter.

[Riley Bray]

Ooh.

[Michael McMillan]

Well, let me say one thing, Adrian. I create the apple family tree around here, not you. Apple butter's good. I also like Apple Dumpling as, like, a baby, but I think Strawberry Shortcake be or My Little Pony beat us to that. Is there a My Little Pony named Apple Dumpling?

I think so. I think Apple Dumpling is one of those ponies that, like, millennial guys in the 2010s really wanted a date.

[Riley Bray]

Right, of course. That the Brony movements. Yes.

[Michael McMillan]

Remember the Bronies? Remember when the Bronies had a chokehold on American culture?

[Riley Bray]

Really captured the imagination. Yeah, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

My Little Pony. Let's see. Because the one I'm thinking of had, like, a cowboy hat. Oh, no.

[Riley Bray]

Apple Jack. Right?

[Michael McMillan]

There's Apple Jack, but there is Apple Dumpling from My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. Apple Jack, I think, is the, like, cowgirl one. That makes me nervous when I think about Bronies too much. You know what I mean?

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

But I think there was also. What was the baby and Strawberry Shortcake called?

[Riley Bray]

I have no idea.

[Michael McMillan]

Come on, Riley. Why didn't you play with more toys? Yeah. Applejack.

[Riley Bray]

I don't know.

[Michael McMillan]

And then baby. Apple Baby. Hold on, everybody. This is going to be a real cash episode. By the way, Apple Baby. In Strawberry Shortcake, I think there was an apple dumpling. If memory serves me correctly, Apple Dumpling. Yeah. Was the baby.

[Riley Bray]

Wow, look at that.

[Michael McMillan]

But it was dumpling. So Apple Jack's off the table. Apple dumplings off the table.

[Riley Bray]

How about apple fritter? Can we have one of those?

[Michael McMillan]

Apple fritter. Apple fritter is non human. I will tell you that. That I can tell you. But it's on the table. There's a lot that we can do here, everybody. Apple pie.

Apple computer. That's the robot member of the family.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Hi, y'. All. I AM Apple Computer, how may I serve you? He's the most annoying.

[Riley Bray]

Shut up.

[Michael McMillan]

I do a quick googs for you all.

[Riley Bray]

Return to store.

[Michael McMillan]

I feel like I am low on battery.

[Riley Bray]

Let it die.

[Michael McMillan]

Apple Computer, stop. Shut down. Apple Computer, shut down. Going to sleep.

[Riley Bray]

Apple Watch.

[Michael McMillan]

Apple Airtag Apple Watch is the sentry card for the Apple tree.

[Riley Bray]

Apple Vision Pro. It's the member of the family one really wants around.

[Michael McMillan]

Apple Laptop is a stripper.

[Riley Bray]

Anyways.

[Michael McMillan]

Anyways, guys, if you're taking care of the cannon, start filling this stuff out.

[Riley Bray]

Well, big old family shit out.

I like that. We're worried about IP of My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake, but the entire Apple product lineup?

[Michael McMillan]

Apple Computer, Not a problem. Not a problem. Because there's never been a character named Apple Computer, as far as I know.

[Riley Bray]

There you go.

[Michael McMillan]

So it's just what's been used before and how it's been used, you know? All right, let's. Oh, I. Before we continue, we also have to issue a correction from last week. I mistakenly said that it was Mundane Anomaly's mother who was named Rita. And when we were talking about Rita the rock.

Lover was Rita the Big Troll. Remember? The troll with the rump?

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, yeah. Well, how could I forget?

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. It's actually Big Murph Energy's mom named Rita. Who says my mother's name is Rita? That was very uncomfortable. She will not be going and getting any of it. I'm sorry, but if your mom. If your name is Big Murph Energy and your mother's name is Rita, you're both getting all of it. Okay?

[Riley Bray]

You're getting it. We don't make the rules.

[Michael McMillan]

We don't make the rules. You cannot argue about your mother not getting any of it when your name is Big Murph Energy. True as. As. Apple.

Apple. Apple sugar might say.

Apple Cinnamon sugar might say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Big Map Energy.

[Riley Bray]

Does she work at the local diner?

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Riley Bray]

Calls everybody honey and sweetheart Honey.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Apple Cinnamon Sugar. There you go. Two more characters added to the apple. And we thought that Apple. Apple Applesauce was. Was last year. Turns out the Apple Core Universe is only getting bigger.

[Riley Bray]

I see what you did there.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay, what does Kitty Quilligan have to say?

I'm so tempted to get into Apple Computer.

[Riley Bray]

So is the looming threat of Apple Computer at any moment. Well, Katie says this with all the talk about different henges. Surprise. No one has brought up Foamhenge in Centerville, Virginia. I've been there two times. It Is a replica of Stonehenge made out of styrofoam. Not great for the birds, but the kitsch level is off the charts. The artist, Mark Seline, also built Dino Kingdom, and now it looks like Dino Kingdom 2. If you're ever near Natural Bridge, Virginia, which is a beautiful place. It is definitely worth checking out. Here is an article I found on Mark Klein.

[Michael McMillan]

Wow, this is cool. Foamhenge. I love it.

[Riley Bray]

I've heard of that, actually.

[Michael McMillan]

It kind of just looks. You know, this would be a great place to, like, go and film a fun druid movie at. You know what I mean? We gotta get w. Dave Keith, outsider filmmaker, and to get out here and make a. Make us a druid movie. Dave, get out there.

[Riley Bray]

I'm looking at this article. This guy seems pretty cool.

[Michael McMillan]

Mark Klein of Enchanted Castle Studio.

[Riley Bray]

I like his vibe.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, yeah? What's his vibe?

[Riley Bray]

He's just, like, kooky art guy.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

And he's pretty. Pretty good sculptor.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. This foam hedge looks awesome. It's, like, realistic looking. He's not doing like. It is kitschy, but he's not doing like it. You know, it's. It doesn't look like foam. It's. It's fake rock.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, it's.

[Michael McMillan]

It's cool. What's the.

[Riley Bray]

He's very committed to the vest and white fedora look. But you know what?

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, wow.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, with the wraparound shades. But you know what you do you Mark.

[Michael McMillan]

You know, it's practical. He works outdoors a lot. He's trying to, you know, get sunlight. Oh, yeah. He loves posing. I like this pterodactyl that he made.

[Riley Bray]

Look, I back it. I like this guy's vibe.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, dude. He also, knowing nothing. He collects muffler men molds. You know about the muffler men, right?

[Riley Bray]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Where they, like. Yeah, you see it at, like, a gas station.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. The big giant muffler guys.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, he's.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, wow.

[Michael McMillan]

He's collected some cool roadside stuff. I love Dinosaur Kingdom too. There's dinosaurs in, like, a funeral parlor and eating, like, a Civil War soldier. Yeah. What are we doing? Why aren't we at Dinosaur Kingdom 2?

[Riley Bray]

Let's go right now.

[Michael McMillan]

Let's hit it. Where was this?

[Riley Bray]

Washington. This guy kind of seems like someone I could have become in an alternate timeline.

[Michael McMillan]

I was gonna say, like, this guy's got some Riley vibes to him.

[Riley Bray]

I could. I could see. I could see myself going down this road.

[Michael McMillan]

I. Timeline definitely could. Like, if you've just been born, what, 15 years earlier, 20 years earlier, maybe. I like this. I feel like he's got it figured out. Yeah, he's having fun. He's looking inspired.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah. Good for you, Mark.

[Michael McMillan]

He says it doesn't matter if there are a hundred people on the tour or two. Everyone gets the best tour I can give them because the number doesn't matter. The matter doesn't number.

[Riley Bray]

Hell yeah, Mark.

[Michael McMillan]

Damn, I like that.

[Riley Bray]

Why say that about shows? It's like if you know only a few people showed up, you're playing a dead bar is like it doesn't matter. You always play like you're playing to a stadium.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

What?

[Michael McMillan]

That's right. Time. Time comes for us all. Oh, the wheels of time keep turning. And the older we get and the older I become, the more I find myself wanting to be more intentional about the way I live, the way I eat, and the way I take care of my body. And let me tell you, this has never been truer for me than right now. Which is great that we have our sponsor today, Mosh bars. Now Mosh, which you may have heard about on Shark Tank, was founded by Maria Shriver and her son Patrick Schwarzenegger with a simple mission. To create a conversation about brain health through food, education and research. Maria's father suffered from Alzheimer's, and ever since then, she and Patrick have dedicated themselves to finding ways to help other families dealing with this debilitating disease. So Moss joined forces with the world's top scientists and functional nutritionists to go beyond your average protein bar. Each Mosh bar is made with ingredients that support brain health like ashwagandha, lion's mane, Collagen and Omega 3. So it's a good go to protein snack that's gonna satisfy you, but it helps you live intentionally too. That's important. They also have a game changing brain boosting ingredient that you're not gonna find in any other bar. It's the only food brand boosted with Cognizant, a premium nootropic that supplies the brain with a patented form of citicoline. Mosh bars. Hey, that all sounds great, world's top scientists. But do they taste good? The answer is of course yes. And I would say they taste better for me, this is my opinion, than most if not all other bars that I have tried. Okay? They come in nine mouth watering flavors, including three new plant based flavors for you vegans. Chocolate chip cookie, hazelnut chocolate chip and peanut chocolate chip. But here's the best part. To make you feel good, Mosh donates a portion of all proceeds from your order. To fund gender based brain health research through the women's Alzheimer's movement. Now why gender based? You're asking? Well, 2/3 of all Alzheimer patients are women. Come on, you gotta study women's brains. If. If 2/3 of all Alzheimer's patients are women. Come on. Mosh is working closely to close the gap between women and men's health research.

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Okay, well, why don't we get into the reason that we're all here? It's time for some historical high strangeness once again. And we're gonna segue into this week's destination via a news article that came out quite recently from the Guardian. Get ready, my friend Riley, because it's time for some.

BCC news. All right, this, and when I say recent, I mean within the last calendar year. But it applies to what we're talking about today. And we might have mentioned this earlier on the show. I don't remember, but who cares? Here we go. Someone will tell me. Archaeologists use AI to discover 303 unknown geoglyphs near the Nazca lines. Does this sound familiar to you?

[Riley Bray]

It sounds familiar in that I think we did talk about this once before. But let's keep it cooking.

[Michael McMillan]

Well, let's keep it cooking. So last September.

This article came out and it's about a study that was done I think in Japan at the University of Yamagata. I'm kind of paraphrasing here. I'm going to read it in a second. But basically, in 2022 and 2023, these archeologists used AI to uncover more glyphs in Nazca, Peru. So archaeologists using artificial AI Intelligence. Artificial intelligence AI have discovered hundreds of new geoglyphs depicting parrots, cats, monkeys, killer whales and even decapitated heads near the Nasca Lines in Peru. And they find that nearly doubles the number of known figures at the enigmatic 2000-year-old archaeological site. A team from the Japanese University of Yamagata's Nazca Institute. I love that they have a NASCA Institute in Japan.

[Riley Bray]

Institute, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

In collaboration with IBM Research. There's a name that I haven't heard of and I haven't heard in a long time. I destroyed all of IBM. The only IBM I know of is when I have to take a poo.

[Riley Bray]

That's when you say IBM.

[Michael McMillan]

I b am.

I told him when we logged on that I was a little punchy this morning.

[Riley Bray]

That's good. That's all right. It's all right.

[Michael McMillan]

So they discovered 303 previously unknown glyphs of humans and animals, all smaller in size. This is the thing that I learned while researching today is that you got big geoglyphs and then you got smaller, like fun size geoglyphs, like our fun size high strangeness over here.

And smaller in size in the vast geometric patterns that date from AD 200 to 700 and stretch across more than 400 square kilometers of the Nazca Plateau. The new figures, which date back to 200 B.C. provide a new understanding of the transition from the Paracas culture to the Nazcas. Now, remember the name Paracas because we're going to talk about it later. Who later created the iconic hummingbird, monkey and whale figures that make a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Peru's most popular tourist attraction after what do you think? That's right. Machu Picchu, of course. With a drone, you can cover several kilometers in a day, said Johnny Isla. The use of AI in research has allowed us to map the distribution of geoglyphs more quickly and accurately, said the archaeologist Masato Sakai of Yamagata University, presenting the research at a press conference at the Japanese Embassy in Lima on Monday. The use of AI combined with low flying drones. Excuse me, drones revolutionized the speed at a rate which the geoglyphs were discovered and rate at the which the geoglyphs were discovered, according to a research paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper said, while it took nearly a century to discover a total of 430 figurative Nazca geoglyphs using an AI system covering the entire Nazca region, it took just six months to discover 303 new figurative geoglyphs. Now, Riley, this must interest you, because I know that you love aspects of artificial intelligence and this sounds like something that you would use it for. Let's use it to find more mysterious geoglyphs.

[Riley Bray]

Yes, I love it when it's used in a way that advances knowledge and ability and not to generate slop. I hate the slop. So just. Just to be clear, I'm not Team Slop, Just so everyone knows. But yeah, when it's used in a novel way to advance science or our understanding of our own history or language or our place in the world, in the universe, then yeah, I think it's really an exciting tool.

[Michael McMillan]

It's really cool. He added that the newly discovered geoglyphs were so small, between 3 to 7 meters across, that they would have not been detected by flyovers of the past, which discovered the giant images, lines and trapezoids that crisscross Nazca's vast desert plain. The mysterious lines that attract tens of thousands of tourists every year include a mysterious humanoid figure. We're going to get into this too. Known as the astronaut animals. And vast geometric patterns, including perfectly formed spirals and trapezoids which stretch for miles. We can say that these geoglyphs were made by humans. For humans, they often show scenes from everyday life. Isla said the new geoglyphs also differed from Nazca culture's vast geometric patterns and zoomorphic figures in their meaning. Isla explained. We can say that these geoglyphs were made by humans. For humans, they often show scenes from everyday life, Whereas the geoglyphs of the Nazca period are gigantic figures made of mo on mostly flat surfaces to be seen by their gods.

So really cool stuff and a nice segue into this week's destination on big strange vacation, which I'm sure by now you have all figured out.

Riley, any response before we move on to this new discovery and using drones and AI to like, find cool new characters in the. In the Peruvian arid climate.

[Riley Bray]

What's interesting that they were had these smaller ones that were like markers for people. And it was like, you know, maybe I was saying here, you know, some of them maybe represented familial groups or like, this is an area with water, or this is an area of Fertile land or like. So they were like. They served like a functional role. Yeah, they use the same thing to communicate with their gods on a larger scale. I think that's very interesting and cool.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, I heard one archaeological archaeologist say that it. They were sort of like primitive billboard bill billboards. Kind of like, as you said, been in an accident. Yeah. Yeah, Please, I can get. Call me. I will get you. I don't know what Peruvian dollars were back then, but we'll just say seashells maybe. Boy, we're gonna get in trouble.

[Riley Bray]

We're gonna. I'm gonna get yelled.

[Michael McMillan]

Google.

[Riley Bray]

Google Ancient Peruvian money.

[Michael McMillan]

Yes, please. Yes. It might be barter. I don't know. I wasn't part of my research package.

[Riley Bray]

Well, what did you find? Ancient Peru use no form of currency.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay, great. So whatever.

[Riley Bray]

So they probably also didn't have lawyers. Accident attorneys either.

[Michael McMillan]

Did they? Want to date fictional horses?

[Riley Bray]

Yes.

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[Michael McMillan]

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[Michael McMillan]

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So, here we go.

[Michael McMillan]

It's time for this week's high strangeness on the list of mysterious places. Few have captured my imagination quite like the Nazca Lines. The Nazca Lines are a collection of over 700 geoglyphs found in the high desert plateau of Nazca in Peru. Predominantly named after the straight lines composing elongated geometrical patterns and spirals stretching more than 800 collective miles.

The Nazca Lines refer to the zoomorphic shapes as well, featuring a wide variety of giant animals, including a spider, a monkey, a hummingbird, a cat. Which cat is actually one of the smaller ones, But I like him because, you know, he's big compared to us killer whales and humanoids only fully appreciated from the sky, the Nazca Lines are a stunning display of artwork that traces back to 200 B.C. or, excuse me, 400 B.C. due to the size and aerial aspect ratio. Enthusiasts of the unknown marvel at the thought that the arid plateau of pompous de Humana must have been have once been a Runway for the gods or ancient aliens. Pour a hot beverage in your mugs, club Scouts, because it's time for our next destination in our big, strange vacation. The Nazca Lines. Or how much I learned about geoglyphs over coffee and peanut butter toast. Peanut butter toast now, Riley. God, it's the best, isn't it?

[Riley Bray]

I love want it right now. It's as. Even when I was a kid is one of my favorites.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, it. It's the thing from my childhood that's not changed. The satisfaction, you know? And I go through phases where I'm like, that's. Sometimes it's all I want for breakfast is just two little slices of peanut butter toast.

[Riley Bray]

You go, sourdough, white bread, wheat bread.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay, sidebar, everybody. So I think.

I prefer sourdough in general if I'm going to have any bread or any toast in general, because I do think I have a bit of a gluten intolerance. And sourdough is, like, low in gluten, so it's easier on my tum tums. And I enjoy it. I think it's great on a blt. Nothing better.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

And, you know, we can put in some vegan bacon in there or whatever you want to do.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Now I don't eat wheat bread at all anymore because that stuff makes me wheat. Really affects my allergies and. And gluten stuff I have learned. So I get, like, really bad stomach cramps and I get, like, sinus issues when I consume wheat. So even though it's multigrain and wheat's healthier, I've. Now if I'm gonna have a. A trashy little sandwich or some peanut butter toast, I get like, the cleanest, like, most organic, cleanest white bread on the tiniest slices that I can find.

[Riley Bray]

Okay. Okay.

[Michael McMillan]

So I know, I know. It's all turns into sugar in your bloodstream. It's not great for you. But I think white bread butter, then peanut butter on top is like a thin layer of butter. Let it melt and then put the peanut butter on.

[Riley Bray]

Wow.

[Michael McMillan]

It's the way to go.

[Riley Bray]

Might I. I go. I love rye bread. I know, but rye with peanut butter, it's so good.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay, all right. It's not a big rye guy.

[Riley Bray]

No, that was my. That was my favorite.

[Michael McMillan]

More sour. I just don't think the sourness and the peanut. The peanut butter go hand in hand for me.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, I could see that.

[Michael McMillan]

I don't know. I don't wanna. I don't want to rain on your peanut butter parade by any means.

[Riley Bray]

Okay, well, this. Yeah. Okay. Moving on.

[Michael McMillan]

I just wanted. Anyway, I. I've also given this episode the subtitle because we've had to shuffle some stuff around in the schedule. This was planned for a later episode. So this is going to be a little bit more casual, unscripted approach to this topic today.

[Riley Bray]

I love it.

[Michael McMillan]

I started some of the research, but I did a lot of it today before the record. So I want to ask you, other than what you've already learned in this episode, and I know it's a lot. Riley, what do you know about the NASCAR lines? Because I. I want to say not a lot. I'm surprised by how few. It's about 50. 50. When we've been doing history and mystery this summer, people have even heard of the Nazca line. So what do you know about them?

[Riley Bray]

I feel like people have seen them, but they don't know the name. You know, it's like that song you've always heard, but you don't know who it's by.

[Michael McMillan]

I like.

[Riley Bray]

I feel like that's the. The Nazca line phenomenon.

[Michael McMillan]

I. We're like Jack Lemmon, like. Oh, I know that guy.

[Riley Bray]

Right. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Michael McMillan]

NASCAR line of. Actor line.

[Riley Bray]

They're the Jack Lemon of paranormal.

[Michael McMillan]

Yes. That's a better way to put it.

[Riley Bray]

Or not. Paranormal, historical, whatever.

[Michael McMillan]

They fit in. They fit in there. I think they're part of the paranormal. Seven wonders of the World, I think.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah. Okay. So. I mean, it's so hard to divorce what I've just heard from what I already knew. But I knew they're in the high desert in Peru. I knew that they are. I knew there were multiple of them. They depict animals.

[Michael McMillan]

I.

[Riley Bray]

Particularly when I think of it, I think of, like, there's like a bird and a spider.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. There's a big hummingbird and there's a condor. I'm gonna put photos up for everybody on Instagram and on the Patreon Post, and I even put some up here for you in the Google decks or docs so you can look at some of these pictures. So I've provided the spider, which is badass. It looks like the venom.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, yeah, there it is. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's so cool. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

There's a giant. Because there's also flora in there as well. There's this giant tree. There's a flower which is not pictured. There's a condor, which is the third one here.

[Riley Bray]

That one's badass.

[Michael McMillan]

There's a big ass whale, which is rad.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

There is the ast. The. The astronaut who looks like an alien. Grace.

[Riley Bray]

That of course is from ancient aliens. Yes.

[Michael McMillan]

And he's cool. Yeah. This is the one that the ancient aliens guys always point at because he's also very visible from the ground because he's on a hillside. And if you're not looking at the picture, he's kind of like. I mean, he looks. He looks like a. Like a childish drawing. I want to say kind of cartoony. Kind of cartoony. Like kind of like. Like Smurf feet, you know, like big, big like balloon feet or like a.

[Riley Bray]

Bit of a like Squidward vibe.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, he's got a Squidward vibe. He's got two big circular eyes and one arm is at his side and the other is like waving as if waving up to the sky. Yeah, it's very cute.

[Riley Bray]

He is quite cute.

[Michael McMillan]

And then.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, I was just to finish my knowledge of this. The thing that makes them interesting is that they are so large that you can't see them from the ground. You can't tell what it is. So the question is, how did they figure this out and what were they for? That's kind of always been my takeaway.

[Michael McMillan]

Well, we're gonna get into that right now. How's that sound?

[Riley Bray]

Sounds good.

[Michael McMillan]

So let's talk about the first mention of the Nazca lines in written history that we have it. And I'll say Western written history, I guess just. Just in case. Appeared in a 1553 document by the Spanish conquistador named Pedro Pizarro.

[Riley Bray]

Okay.

[Michael McMillan]

And let me double check that because as autocorrect. Clean that up for me. I don't think that that is the name of this man's name, but it.

[Riley Bray]

It was Pascal.

[Michael McMillan]

Pedro. Pascale. It was.

Vamp for me here.

[Riley Bray]

I'm also. Okay.

[Michael McMillan]

Talk about that monkey. To look at the monkey one is great.

[Riley Bray]

He's got a very long and curly tail. It's like this cool spiral. And he's got some crazy looking fingers. He's kind of like scooping the earth. They're very cartoonish, like kind of. I mean, I guess it would make sense that it's an illustration line drawing style because they're giant line Drawings.

[Michael McMillan]

But, yeah, they're very like. I mean, the. The. The monkey looks like.

The LEGO monkey.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, yeah.

The. The hummingbird kind of looks like the American spirit logo.

[Michael McMillan]

It does this, I have to say. Like, these Nazca lines have also, like, a very, like. Let's just say I knew a lot of frat boys in 1998 who had tattoos that look like this whale on their ankle who also smoked American spirits. You know, I knew this was wrong. It's. Pedro Ciesa de Leon is the. Is the conquistador. So he had first written about the Nasca lines in a document about his travels in Peru, his colonization of Peru, and thought that they were road marker. Like, he thought he could see the lines on the ground and thought they were like roadways and, like, road markers. He had no idea what they were from the aerial view, so he thought they were trail markers. But it wasn't until the 1920s, when explorers and, like, naval pilots started flying over the area, that they look down and they're like, holy. And in fact, there was an archaeologist by the name of Mejas Zeppi, who's Peruvian, who was out on a walk, like, in this area, like, hiking through the plateau, and he looked down from the hillside and was like, wait a minute. I can see these giant glyphs. And that kind of kicked off the. The beginning of the rediscovery of the Nazca lines in. In, like, 1927. So it really wasn't until the 30s and then the 40s when this stuff really started picking up in the culture and people started rediscovering them. So the Nazca people existed from. From about 200 B.C. to 100 A.D. oh, no, sorry. 400. Let's see, from 500 A.D. and then till about 750 A.D. the. The. Before them were the Paracas. Sorry, sorry. Excuse me. I'm getting too excited. Everyone needs to calm the fuck down and let me do my. This is a. This is the cup all over again. This is Phidias's cup. Let me just chill everybody out. So the Nazca phase was 200 B.C. to 500 A.D. but they existed into about 750, 800 A.D. that's when the civilization eventually fell.

[Riley Bray]

Got it.

[Michael McMillan]

And they. They think the Civilization declined around 800 AD because there were floods in the plane. And they think that actually some of the terraforming that the people had done in the plane was actually, what, doomed. They were already in decline. And then, like, torrential floods. It was like an El Nino year or an El Nino decade or era or whatever. And it. It basically the weather wiped out the rest of the declining culture around 750 AD.

So they were in this area of Peru from. From 400 A.D. or, sorry, 400 B.C. on. Excuse me, 200 B.C. on. Before that. Everyone chill out. The Paracas people were hanging out in this area. And the Paracas people are the folks that started the Nasca line craze. And they're the ones that actually came down. Came down off the coast up into the plateau, and they started drawing the smaller Nasca line, the billboards that we were talking about. Now, they knew some of those existed, but the. The way that they know that the Paracas people started this off is that some of the most recent discoveries they just made using that AI, they can match one to one like the cat and some of these other glyphs to pre existing Piraka symbology that exists in their artwork in other places.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, that's interesting. So they trained the model on the existing symbols, and then they had it search the.

[Michael McMillan]

No, they found the glyphs, basically training on the nascalines themselves. And then while researching the glyphs went, hey, this cat looks familiar. And they were able to compare the cat that they found, the smaller cat to existing Piraka symbology that's in their artwork. And go. This confirms the theory that the Paracas people were here first and doing some of this stuff.

[Riley Bray]

All right, the original line drawers.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. So it's kind of like if you think about in Stonehenge when the. The Welsh people came down and they brought the. The big. The. The blue stones and then more people started adding to it. That's kind of like the Paracas people came down from the coast, they went up into the arid high desert, and they started building these glyphs, making these glyphs cool. Then the Nazca people took that tradition a couple hundred years later and for the next hundred years ran with it and made the giant ones.

[Riley Bray]

Got it. Got it.

[Michael McMillan]

And they added, you know, like the big monkey and the big hummingbird and the big. The big condor.

[Riley Bray]

Right, Got it.

[Michael McMillan]

So the lines were created by removing the top layer of these oxidized red pebbles that are in the area, which reveals this lighter soil underneath. It's kind of like if you've seen the Last Jedi and don't get me started, I like that movie where the Battle of the Crate where they're like on the salt planet and the top layer of the white salt reveals, like the red. The like red crystals underneath, like they could do that here. Where there was a darker top layer, they would remove that, exposing this wider. They say it's sort of like a white yellow sand or soil. And what happens is because of the climate, the dew, the. There's very little moisture. And what moisture there is, like, in the mornings would create a sealant over that exposed area. And because they never get any rain, they get less than one inch of rain. Rain per year. Per year annually in this area.

[Riley Bray]

Wow.

[Michael McMillan]

It basically, like sealed off that exposed layer of the. Of the white soil and has preserved these for hundreds of years.

[Riley Bray]

Wow.

[Michael McMillan]

Because the climate is just like keeping them trapped there basically in their position, which is awesome.

[Riley Bray]

That is really cool. So, yeah, they're. They're. They're dug in. They're not.

[Michael McMillan]

They're dug in.

[Riley Bray]

They're subtractive, not additive. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

So it's kind of like carving into a tree, except they do it in, like, etchings. They're etchings, yeah. So the way that they do it was they would dig down about 13 inches deep. So most of the lines are about a foot deep. And then they're anywhere from about a foot wide to up to like 6 or 7ft wide. And some of the larger ones. So it's. It's not that deep. You know what I mean?

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

And I think that that's why when you're. If you were just seeing it from ground level, they would kind of look like trails or, you know, you might be able to go, wait a minute, there's a lot. Because there's so many lines too, that crisscross and create these geometric patterns and stuff. There's a. There is one pattern called the sun, star and cross. Glyphs that look like straight up crop circles. You know, you have a lot of the crop circles type patterns in some of these as well.

So there's some notable figures and glyphs. The Elastronata, the astronaut or the spaceman, which is a prominent figure representing a humanoid standing on a hillside, waving to the sky. There's the monkey, which we talked about. It's intriguingly depicted despite the absence of monkeys in the region.

[Riley Bray]

That's interesting.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. Which I find very interesting. So. But they knew about monkeys and they knew that monkeys came from.

[Riley Bray]

Were there like trade routes or something, or maybe they.

[Michael McMillan]

Yes, absolutely. And they. These people knew about the coast because there's. There's whales there as well. So there's like, animals that are not found in this desert that are represented in or represented here. And a lot of it as we'll get into, I think are also animals that have a connection to water. Like monkeys are from places where there's a lot of rainfall. Whales are obviously in the ocean, and spiders would also. Spiders were symbolic of rain as well in, in their symbology. So there's the monkey, there's the astronaut, there's a giant spider, there's the sun, star and cross glyphs. And then there's Mount Palpa, which is a high plateau that resembles a peak that has been shaved at the top. And if you look at this thing, it really looks like, to the ancient alien people's credit, it looks like a Runway carved into the top of a mountain. I mean, it looks like planes would be landing here. It looks like an ancient airport. It's kind of. It is very, very weird, right? And the way that they talk about it is the. These lines look almost stamped on the ground as opposed. Like if they hit a hillside, they still keep going straight in a straight line over the hill. So it's almost like it's tattooed on the texture. So they were very good at like keeping these straight lines even if they were going into valleys and like dips and hills.

[Riley Bray]

So they maintain the aerial perspective.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, it's really, really cool.

[Riley Bray]

That's interesting.

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[Michael McMillan]

So there was the. The Peruvian archaeologist who I mentioned, Maihas Zeppe. He starts to. He starts to really take this stuff seriously in the late 1920s and starts to. He's the one that's like, hey, we should study these glyphs and figure out exactly what. What these are. And there was another Historian, a guy named Paul Kossick, who. Or Kosik, who was a American. And he came down in the 1940s and noted that the line seemed to align with the winter solstice sunset and started calling this entire display some type of astronomical calendar and said that this is. One of his quotes was he described the NAZCA lines as the largest astronomy book in the world. World. And then there was this other. Around that time, he, A contemporary of his was this German woman named Maria Riker. And Maria was like the. They called her, I think, the lady of NASCAR or the woman of nasca. She was German, but she was raised and educated in the United States. This woman seems really cool, and I would love to learn a lot more about her now. A lot of what she's. She theorized.

Has been, over time, built on or changed, just as we know more about the science. But she spent four decades devoted to learning about the NAZCA lines and bringing global attention to this area. It's because of her that there were photos of the NASCA lines in those cool books that we would check out in the library as kids. Oh, wow.

[Riley Bray]

Amazing. Amazing.

[Michael McMillan]

And she's this really neat lady. There are photos that I found of her where she's like, literally, she looks like a witch. Like she's a little old lady in a shawl with a broom. And she seemed to be very sickly in her old age, but she was still hanging out, like in a wheelchair and, like, overlooking the Nazca Plains. Like, this was really part of her identity. And she continued the idea that these were astrologically linked. And she thought that some of these were glyphs. The big ones that the NAZCA people made were replications or correlations to constellations in this. In the night sky.

[Riley Bray]

Has that held up? Is that true?

[Michael McMillan]

Not totally, but not a lot of what the. The astrological thing has been. In the 70s, that started to be revisited because there were all these other lines that didn't really line up with astrological stuff. And there was a. A guy named. Excuse me, let me see. It was a man or woman. Oh, yeah. This woman, Phyllis B. Petluga, who was a protege of Reichi and a senior astronomer of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, concluded this is in the 90s. They thought that the animal figures represented heavenly shapes. But, and this is according to the New York Times, she contended that they were not shapes of constellations, but rather. I love this term, counter constellations, referring to the irregularly shaped dark patches in the Milky Way.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, Which I love this between the stars.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. So that was a theory for a while as well. But people, a lot of people who've come later have basically like criticized the astral astronomical stuff for like not really counting for all the details. Kind of like how the ancient alien people like to, you know, selectively pick things. Now I'm not comparing her to the ancient alien people. She did not like the ancient alien theory, the. The chariot of the gods. To Eric von what's his name.

Dankin theory of ancient aliens. Maria Reich he was like, that stuff's nonsense. This was made by humans and was later there was this guy named Nichols, last name of Nichols, who I think it was John or Jack Nichols. Basically was able to in the last 20 years completely recreate all like a lot of these glyphs at their size using.

Tools that they would have had handy at the time. And he could like bang some of these out in a weekend. Like it really didn't take ancient aliens to do this. Like people could make this back then. They're just, they were just very smart. Again, like Stonehenge. They were smart, sure. You know, and give. They're way smarter and way more mathematically equipped and archaeologically equipped and equipped with tools at the time to. To pull off this stuff. And they had time, you know, like again, this is one of those things where like Stonehenge, this is a tradition and a custom that's passed down hundreds of years.

[Riley Bray]

Right.

[Michael McMillan]

And when you have nothing else to do but create your culture, you have time to make giant glyphs, you know, totally in the side of the earth.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah. No doom scrolling for them.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. So the most recent theories, one of which has been put put forward by Johan Reinhard, is that the lines play a role in water. Played a role in water related ceremonies. That these straight lines and symbols basically were used during water gatherings and rituals. And like Stonehenge, people from all around may have come here to. For water rituals, to basically pray for more water to get through the. The rest of the year.

And, and survive that way. Right. So that's why you have these zoomorphic glyphs that are animals that are related to water or come from places where water is bountiful. It's to appeal to the gods and say, please make sure that we can continue to survive for another year. Because it's such an arid climate. And they built like underwater aqueducts and they had like spiral wells. So they knew how to use the groundwater, preserve groundwater really well. And so they had a whole infrastructure for like obtaining what little water and retaining what little water came into their, into their climate.

And Anthony Avenue, who's another, another archaeologist, supported this idea by Johan Reinhardt and said that the lines were possibly designed for communal gatherings and rituals rather than for astronomical purposes. So it's a little of both at the end of the day. Like Stonehenge. Yes. We, they may have come there on the winter solstice to do some of these ceremonies. So there are things that line up with astrological, with the astrological stuff with certain times of the year, but that might be to correlate with when their rituals took place.

[Riley Bray]

Sure.

[Michael McMillan]

But it wasn't necessarily like, this is a map to the universe here, to the known sky.

[Riley Bray]

Right. That's wishful thinking. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. So the hummingbird also. The hummingbird is one of my favorite ones that symbolizes fertility in the culture, which again, is like rebirth, renewal, obviously. And yeah, the monkeys represent water richness and the spiders associated with rain. So they really think this is all about, you know, water rituals and, and, and rain. Rain rituals and killer whales which appear in local mythology in Peru, which I was surprised by. I always think of killer whales as like Pacific Northwest. Yeah, but they, I guess migratory though, right? Yeah, I would assume they, they, they are symbols of strength and abundance. So again, a lot in like the flowers growing, the trees growing, these are all like life affirming, water affirming symbols. Right. That make a lot of sense. So. Yeah, so we're looking at line serving as ritual pathways for ceremonies. And not all of these lines were created by the Nazca people, but the Paracas people who came before them, they're still finding more lines. And some of the lines that they discovered in that AI ritual or. Excuse me. Yeah, the AI Rit AI ritual.

[Riley Bray]

Now that sounds like.

[Michael McMillan]

I love that in the AI study.

Were of humans doing ritual ceremonies, which kind of backs up the idea that this is what this, this space may have been used for. So that's the nascal lines. I don't think it's aliens. You know, one of the.

[Riley Bray]

No, definitely not.

[Michael McMillan]

The, the, the. One of the big ancient alien things is like there were people who lived in this area, tribes that would do the.

The thing where they would elongate their skulls when babies were born. They would put them between planks and then work. And so one of the ancient alien things is like they were making themselves look like the aliens who visited, you know, and you see stuff which is like, okay. Or this was just a ritual, you know, this is just a custom people did.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah. You know, just body modification.

[Michael McMillan]

Just body modification. You see it in different cultures around the world. We, we do it all the time. Body modification is a very big part of American culture right now.

[Riley Bray]

All culture, really.

[Michael McMillan]

All culture.

[Riley Bray]

And on that note is like, these feel a lot like tattoos, like on the earth, you know.

[Michael McMillan]

Yes.

[Riley Bray]

They mark time, they tell stories, they, you know, sort of like identify the culture. Like they are aspirational, you know, they're, they're like a plea for life and fertility and it's like they, it, it just feels very human.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, very, very, very human. I agree. And, and it's not, they were not difficult to, to make, you know, and the ancient alien stuff really just goes to be, just goes to further, you know, it's just kind of more racist stuff of like, you know, non white people back then. Could they really make something like this? And the answer is yes, they could. They absolutely could. They had the time, they had the means, they had the devotion, they had the dedication and they had the ritualistic, you know, desire. You know, when something is like, it's linked to their survival in their minds, in their culture. So they absolutely had the time and the means over hundreds of years to continue this custom. You know, it's sad that they, that they're, they were eventually wiped out. And ironic too that it was by water. Yeah, you know, very strange.

[Riley Bray]

Careful what you wish for.

[Michael McMillan]

I know, exactly. The other thing is, you know, you watch the ancient alien stuff and it's like they have found skulls there that are elongated, that don't have like human, the same human physiology, you know, and they'll do like DNA tests and it's like, oh, it's, it's similar to stuff in Western Europe, you know, or it could be like another.

Possible like branch on the Homo sapien tree, you know, like Neanderthals or whatever, you know. But it's not to keep looking for, they keep looking for aliens in this area, you know, and saying that it's all Ollie, aliens. But there are UFO sightings here. But they're UFO sightings pretty much everywhere.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

So I, I feel like this does cut down on the mystery a lot for me, but it's still awesome and it's fascinating and I love that we're, we're living in an age where now science is allowing us to find glyphs that they never knew were there. That is really rad.

[Riley Bray]

Totally. Yeah, it's very cool.

[Michael McMillan]

I guess a window into the past. Yeah. And I guess the big risk right now is like shitty tourists and squatters are starting to endanger the preservation of these lines. And like Greenpeace went there like next to the hummingbird and like spelled out a thing about saving the planet. Meanwhile, they like, destroyed part of the site.

[Riley Bray]

It's like, Guys, guys, you're not helping.

[Michael McMillan]

You're not. This isn't working. Like, okay, but, but can you. If you want to preserve the planet, then preserve the historical site that you're also making a point on.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

You just seem annoying when you do this stuff. I get it. We're in a climate emergency. I know. I think about it every day. I'm terrified by it. But like, let's not ruin the hummingbird, guys.

[Riley Bray]

At least that'll still be here when we wipe ourselves out.

[Michael McMillan]

Yep, yep, yep, yep. So there you go, everybody.

[Riley Bray]

A.

[Michael McMillan]

A brief, but I think informative.

[Riley Bray]

I learned.

[Michael McMillan]

Overview. Overview of the Nazca lines.

[Riley Bray]

Very good, Very good.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, well, what do you think? What's your final, final thought? Just the. That they're cool. Cool Earth tattoos.

[Riley Bray]

I like Earth tattoos made by an interesting culture that thrived for a thousand years and then vanished. It also just like. Doesn't that make you think about like, like now? Yeah, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

It makes me think about like, what collectively we could be creating if we put our minds to it.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, that too. Well, and I was also say about like these, these ancient cultures that lasted for so long and peaked and thrived for so long and then they just want. They're just gone.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

And it's like, how long has the modern world been cooking?

[Michael McMillan]

I know, I know.

[Riley Bray]

Years.

[Michael McMillan]

I know. And you hope you're. You know, I always look back, I'm like, you kind of hope you're in like a sweet spot, you know, and in some ways I feel like we're all in a sweet spot right here. But we might be towards the end of the sweet spot. That's kind of.

[Riley Bray]

We lived through a sweet spot.

[Michael McMillan]

We definitely.

[Riley Bray]

Our parents lived through us.

[Michael McMillan]

I mean, yeah, they did.

[Riley Bray]

You know, there's always problems. Humans are trouble. Qualifier. Qualifier qualify. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. It just. This stuff is. It puts time in perspective in a cool way, you know, and it also makes you think about like, lasting things of your society and, and this idea of permanence or at least like transcending, you know, long time scales. Like, it does make me think about that 10,000 year clock. And I know that Bezos was behind that. But it is a cool project to.

[Michael McMillan]

Refresh me on That. I know that vaguely, and I think we've talked about it on the show before.

[Riley Bray]

It's a clock somewhere in some remote desert. I don't even know where it is. But it's a purely mechanical clock that's designed to encourage long term thinking. And it's supposed to run continuously without any intervention for 10,000 years. Yeah, I do think it was a Bezos project.

[Michael McMillan]

But listen, here's the thing. All these guys started out as nerds with cool ideas. It's the, it's the. It's the money that corrupts them eventually, you know, it's the power and the money that corrupts you. So you just have to be. You start out with good intentions and then you can become just a. A. Another rich asshole, you know?

[Riley Bray]

But, yeah, I think about that a lot. And even like, you know, like in architecture and buildings and stuff.

[Michael McMillan]

The Clock of Long Now. Is that the one?

[Riley Bray]

I don't know. I think I've just heard it referred to as the 10,000 year clock.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, yeah, there's a 10,000 year clock. There's also the Clock of Long Now. The Long now foundation in San Francisco.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, it looks like that's.

[Michael McMillan]

I think it's the same thing. The Long Now Foundation. I had a friend who was into this like, a number of years ago. He would talk about the Long Now a lot.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, I see. They're based in San Francisco. They built it somewhere else. Oh. So I think. Okay. The father of the clock is Danny Hillis. He's been thinking about this clock since 1989. It takes once a year, the century hand advances every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. So. Okay. All right. It's not Bezos. Maybe he just helped fund it.

[Michael McMillan]

I think Bezos helped find it because there are pictures of Bezos next to this thing, I believe.

[Riley Bray]

Okay. Oh, oh, oh. Thank you for your interest in the clock. Sincerely, Jeff Bezos. There you go. All righty. Well, it's an interesting project.

[Michael McMillan]

It's an interesting project. Time. Let's think of time.

[Riley Bray]

Let's think about time. Let's think about. That's what the Nazca lines make me think about. That. They make me think about time scales and humanity's place on this planet. It connects us to the ancient past and it makes us think of the distant future. And that is cool.

[Michael McMillan]

Yep.

[Riley Bray]

And also, they're cool drawings. I like them.

[Michael McMillan]

And I still get confused between BC and AD Sometimes it happens. And when one is going backwards and when one is going forwards.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

All right. Everybody.

[Riley Bray]

BC backwards.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. And then it's BCE or ce, which I understand which is which. But almonera and all that. Yeah. I just got too many. When I have too many numbers in front of my face, I start my. I'm bad with numbers. All right, everybody.

[Riley Bray]

Hey, don't worry about it. We'll get called out. We got called out the other day for saying classic cs, which is like sort of. Sort of like saying ATM machine.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, fuck off, everybody.

I have said it's a real cs.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

But then it's. It's become now a classic C. A classic C. It's a classic.

[Riley Bray]

Classic saucer.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, I get. It's a. That's kind of what I mean. It's a classic classic. It's like, you know, emphasis. An emphasis on it. I know, guys, this is, well, essentially free, everybody. Okay. Essentially. Even though you're here on the other side, a lot of those episodes we make, they're for free.

[Riley Bray]

We're doing our best free. We're trying to carve our own lines on the Internet here.

[Michael McMillan]

Right.

[Riley Bray]

With our little shovels.

[Michael McMillan]

Did someone say Internet?

[Riley Bray]

God damn it. Apple computer.

[Michael McMillan]

All right, everybody, thanks for being here. We'll see you in a couple of weeks for, I believe, what will be. We believe will be a live Patreon hang episode. For our 300th episode over here on BCC. The Other side. More information to come. Go check out the merch shop. Go get your wet hot alien tees. They'll be gone by the time or. Or water bottles or stickers or whatever. They'll be gone. Thank you, by the way, to everyone who's come by the fourth wall shop. We're very excited. You guys are excited about it.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah. And let us know when you get your stuff if you. If it is indeed an improvement because we're. We're. We're trying. We listen and we're trying.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. Oh, I owe an apology.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

To one of our friends.

[Riley Bray]

I. Sizing thing.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. So I was confused with fourth wall sizing. So I thought the super soft tees were women's sizes. So when I was first setting it up. Up on the day of, I. I put that as what that was. Now, part of me was misled by the fact that the models for all of those super soft tees were all women. And they look to be like a little bit more of a women's cut. And then about 24 hours later, I was like, wait a minute, this is wrong. And so they got chained, they got changed within the first. I would say few days of the show. And so that was a change that I quietly made and didn't tell anybody. So I know that there's some of you that are really looking women's cuts and I didn't see at the time because I went to look that the fourth wall specifically had women's cuts. But I will go back in before y' all hear this episode and make sure because I still. We're in the time machine here. So I'll make, I, I'll see if not, I'm sorry and if you bought one and, and they won't take it back and you're, you're upset with it, let me know. Just DM me. We'll work it out.

[Riley Bray]

Out. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

So there you go. Sorry about that, everybody. But otherwise I've seen some friends post, post their their merch on. If you post a picture of you wearing your shirt or carrying something, a tote, tag us in your stories on Instagram. We'll repost that for you. Oh yeah, it's very fun. Dale Star posted themselves in at the this week and I, I reposted. I love that stuff. So it's very fun to seeing you guys seeing us and having fun with the show. So indeed tag us. Okay everybody, that's it for now. We'll see you in a few weeks. Have a great holiday weekend. We love you. Where there's love, there's kisses.

[Riley Bray]

Thank you, Adri.

[Michael McMillan]

Thank you. Hey, great moms. I have so much love for you. I bm now control Alt Del.

Bigfoot Collectors Club is executive produced by Riley Bray and Michael McMillan and engineered and edited by Riley Bray. Our theme song is Come Alone by Sun Eaters courtesy of Lotus Pool Records. For ad free listening and bonus episodes every month, join BCC Clubhouse on bcc.supercast.com Want to see us watch video episodes and exclusive content on YouTube.com adfocollectors.

And Doug. Here we have the limu emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Fairy underwritten by.

[Riley Bray]

Liberty Mutual Insurance Company Affiliates excludes Massachusetts.

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