The Largest Little-Known Work of Art on the Planet: The Mystery of the Sajama Lines (12 photos + 1 video)
Bolivia's western plains hold a secret that's impossible to discern from the ground. The Altiplano plateau is crisscrossed with thousands of perfectly straight lines. They don't form animal figures like the famous Nazca Lines in neighboring Peru, but they are striking in their geometric precision. 
Some of these lines extend beyond the horizon, stretching for tens of kilometers through hills, rock piles, and thickets of brush. 
Bolivia's Altiplano mountain range is extremely arid and located at an extreme altitude.
Ancient architects worked with incredible care, as the terrain here is far from flat. The lines, named after the majestic Nevado Sajama volcano, Bolivia's highest peak, are lost in its shadow. From the surface, they are simply inconspicuous paths, easily overlooked. Only from a bird's eye view does the true scale of this most grandiose artistic canvas of the prehistoric era become apparent. 
Nevado Sahama Volcano
The width of each line is small, varying from 1 to 3 meters. But the longest ones reach 20 kilometers in length. The technology behind their creation is simple and ingenious. Ancient craftsmen scraped away the dark, oxidized layer of rubble, revealing the light soil below. The lines often radiate outward from a central point, usually a hill. 
Researchers believe that such sites may have housed ancient sanctuaries, burial towers (chullpas), or settlements. One theory is that Native Americans used these routes for sacred pilgrimages. Some modern roads connecting villages run directly along these ancient lines, and in some places, local residents still use them as trails. 
The total area covered by this network is approximately 22,500 square kilometers. This is 15 times the area of the Nazca plateau. If all the lines were stretched together, their length would exceed 16,000 kilometers. This scale makes the Sajama Lines the largest Andean artifact and the greatest work of art in the world. 
This wonder was created by many generations over hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. The dry climate of the high plateau, with its rare rainfall and slow-growing vegetation, has helped the lines remain almost pristine. 
The Nazca Lines in Peru have a distinct shape
Despite their close proximity to the famous Nazca Lines, the Bolivian geoglyphs were much less fortunate. Until 1932, virtually no one outside the region knew about them, until Argentine professor Aimé Felix Tschiffeli, famous for his horseback journey from Argentina to New York, briefly mentioned them in his notes in English. 
In the same decade, anthropologist Alfred Metraux introduced the lines into scientific circulation, publishing ethnographic studies on the Aymara and Chipaya Indian peoples. 
Interestingly, the first high-profile scientific study, conducted in 2003 at the University of Pennsylvania, caused a scandal. Bolivian archaeologists stated that the Americans had discovered nothing new: the lines had been studied using satellites since the 1980s, and their origin and purpose (ritual paths from the colonial era) had long been documented. Nevertheless, it was this project that drew attention to the problem of preserving the monument. 
Since then, research has continued. For example, in 2016, Adam Burge published a study on the ritual landscape. 
However, paradoxically, finding high-quality photographs of the lines online is still difficult. It's easier to see them in satellite images, where they appear in all their glory, these mysterious rays stretching to infinity. 
