Peru's Puzzling Lines

The cover story on this month's issue of National Geographic is The Genius of the Inca. Throughout the issue there are stories, images, and graphics about the Inca and about other Ancient Americans. As always National Geographic has produced some good online materials to supplement and complement the new issue. One of those online resources is titled Ancient Americans.

Ancient Americans is a set of eight articles, image collections, and interactive animations. One of the interactive animations that I found particularly interesting is the Nasca interactive. The Nasca interactive features a map of geoglyphs created by the Nasca in Peru's southern desert. Click an image in the key to see the corresponding geoglyph appear. To learn how the geoglyphs were created explore the interactive animations Creating the Geoglyphs.

Applications for Education
The Nasca interactives could be useful supplements to the images students might find in a world history textbook. The interactives allow students to see the process of creating the geoglyphs found in Peru.