New 'Nazca Lines' discovered
New ancient, man-made markings have been found on the Earth - in Kazakhstan, to be precise.
So the former Eastern-bloc country now has something to shout about rather than Borat.
The geoglyphs are huge drawings only seen clearly from the sky and are similar to the famous 'Nazca Lines' in Peru.
The Kazakh markings, near the remote Karatau Mountains, are of a human figure in between two weird structures.
UFO nuts like to think that such graffiti is proof of aliens, but I'm not sure why as they are simply created by placing rocks or removing the top layers of earth.
Not exactly the cutting-edge of technology.
Anyways, here are some Weird Science Facts about the more well-known Nazca scribblings.
They were created between 200BC and 600AD.
The lines, situated in a rocky desert, were made by removing the dark surface stones to reveal the lighter subsoil beneath.
They've lasted so long because there is practically no erosion in the area.
Figures include a monkey, condor, round-headed human, spider and tree.
Apart from aliens, another theory is that ancient Nazca people used hot air balloons to float in the air and see their handiwork.
The general consensus is that they were used to honour the gods.
Weird Science Factoid: Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously. Note to self: Don't do that...
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Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
