Atacama desert geoglyphs, Chile

The Atacama Desert in north Chile is a desert plateau in South America covering an approx 1,000 km long strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains, in the rain shadow of Andes. It is the driest nonpolar desert in the world. And there are various geoglyphs in the desert.

A geoglyph is a manmade arrangement of the natural landscape to create a geometric or effigy form. Often dark coloured stones are placed on the lighter coloured ground.

Some of the geoglyphs can be seen outside the town of Arica. Arica is the driest city on earth. It is a port city with the Atacama desert right behind. Not far out of town are lama geoglyphs of Atoca in the Azapa Valley. The Atoka geoglyphs are located immediately to the east of Cerro Sombrero, 7 km from Arica. The figures made by an accumulation of stones and represent a typical caravan of llamas with their guide, and preceded by two dancing characters with anthropomorphic characteristics. Although our guide told us the 2 lamas in front of a shepherd are the ones that know if there are bad things ahead. Then more lamas behind the man. They are more than 1000 years old. This would correspond with the time of the Inca influence, (1000-1400). 

These scenes relate to caravan traffic that took place between coastal lowlands and the highlands for the exchange of goods. Llama caravans brought products such as charqui, quinoa and wool down from the highlands. These items were traded for products from the coastal valleys such as maize, red pepper, fish and seafood.

Further on are the La Tropilla geoglyphs which we didn’t see but also represent a group of camelids and anthropomorphic figures.

Beyond those are the Cerro Sagrado geoglyphs. The geoglyphs of Azapa are located on the slope of Cerro Sagrado, 4 km from the Atoka geoglyphs. They show human figures, llamas and lizards. This must have been an important place for the caravanners who made this route. 

The Azapa Valley is fertile and known for its production of olives, guava, mango, bananas as well as papaya plantations. 

A modern geoglyph!!

We then went onto the Archaeological Museum, this is run by Tarapaca university. The main feature is the Chinchorro mummies. See next blog.

See more on the Geoglyphyic art of the Atacama .

See more on the Azapa Valley on Wikipedia.