Archaeologists have discovered a group of giant figures scraped into the hills of Peru's southern coastal desert that are believed to predate the country's famed Nazca lines.
About 50 figures were etched into the earth over an area roughly 90 square miles near the city of Palpa, 220 miles southeast of Lima, El Comercio newspaper reported.
The drawings - which include human figures as well as animals such as birds, monkeys, and felines - are believed to be created by members of the Paracas culture sometime between 600 and 100 B.C., Johny Islas, the director of the Andean Institute of Archaeological Studies, told the newspaper.
We don't know if "mystified" is really the correct word. True, we're mystified at how cranks like Erich von Daniken can continually make great heaping gobs of money off of promoting their crackpot theories, but we think "intrigued" is probably a better term for what we think about the lines.