Figures made for walking, best seen from the sky.

The Nasca lived on the southern desert coast and western Andean slopes of Peru between about 200 BC and AD 650, in one of the driest regions on Earth.1 They grew out of the earlier Paracas culture of the Pisco and Ica valleys, about 200 km to the north; genetic studies suggest the two were the same people, and they shared a belief that water came from the ancestors.1

Water ruled everything. Cahuachi, a large ceremonial center that peaked around AD 50–300, sat where highland water reached the coast and tied the two worlds together.1 The Nasca are best known today for their polychrome pottery and textiles, painted with mythical beings, animals and plants.1 Music mattered too: in 1995 Giuseppe Orefici's team found 27 ceramic panpipes at Cahuachi, apparently broken on purpose as offerings.1

From around 100 BC the climate grew drier. Desertification, deforestation and rising conflict, visible in more warrior imagery late in the period, likely pushed people to higher ground and helped bring the culture to an end.1

The figures were made by removing the dark, oxidized stones on the desert surface to expose the lighter ground beneath. The dry, stable climate has preserved them for two millennia.1 Hundreds of straight lines, triangles, trapezoids and spirals share the pampa with animals and plants.2

Pelican 285 m. Figure lengths from Britannica;2 other sources give larger sizes for some figures (the hummingbird is often quoted near 93 m). The QR row is our estimate, explained below.

What survived two thousand years can be erased in an afternoon. In 2014, activists walked onto the site to lay cloth letters beside the hummingbird and left marks that drew worldwide criticism.56 In 2018 a truck driver ignored warning signs and left deep tire marks over an area of about 50 × 100 m, damaging three geoglyphs.6

The lines are best seen from the air, with licensed operators, and never by stepping onto the pampa.

The Nasca made images whose full shape only shows from high above. A QR code works the same way: it only makes sense to a camera. How big would one need to be for a satellite photo to scan?

The smallest QR (21 × 21 squares, plus a 4-square margin on each side) needs about 4 image pixels per square to decode reliably. Today's best commercial satellites capture about 30 cm per pixel,7 so each square needs to be about 1.2 m: a code roughly 25 m wide, 35 m with its margin. Smaller than the hummingbird. At the 10 cm per pixel newer satellites are aiming for, it shrinks to about 12 m.8 Our simulated 30 cm image below decodes to miqr.us.

We would never build anything on or near the Nasca pampa. A real "read from space" code would go on private land with permission, such as a farm field or a rooftop.