With the help of AI, they identified three new figures in the Nazca

Scientists used AI to keep recognizing hitherto unknown shapes in Nazca lines in Peru, which were recorded in the desert 2400 years ago.

The largest recently discovered figure is a single pair of legs, measuring over 250 feet (77 meters) in diameter. Researchers also found a fish figure measuring 62 feet (19 m) across and a bird measuring 56 feet (17 m).

The researchers reported the new geoglyphs in the July issue of the journal. Journal of Archaeological Sciences.

Lead author of the study, Masato Sakaiprofessor of anthropology and archeology at Yamagata University in Japan, has been searching for Nazca geoglyphs since 2004 using satellite imagery, aerial photography, aerial photography lidar and drone photography.

It took Sakai’s team at the Yamagata Nasca Institute about five years to analyze high-resolution aerial photographs of the entire region, during which time they identified several new geoglyphs.

But when they obtained higher-resolution aerial photographs in 2016, they turned to an artificial intelligence technique known as “deep learning” to study them in collaboration with IBM Japan and IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in the US, which conducts cutting-edge research. . artificial intelligence research.

Sakai and colleagues trained with data from just 21 known Nazca geoglyphs, which they divided into “elements”.

The authors wrote that the system could be useful in cases where human specialists might miss geoglyphs in aerial photographs.

Pilots discovered the first geometric lines and patterns in the Peruvian desert or pampas in the 1920s, and subsequent explorations unearthed extensive geoglyphs depicting hummingbirds, monkeys, whales, spiders, flowers, geometric patterns, and tools.