The use of AI combined with low-flying drones revolutionised the speed and rate at which the geoglyphs were discovered, according to a research paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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”.