Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

A helicopter looks as tiny as a toy in the face of Hubbard Glacier in Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, the largest of all national parks.
Photograph by Chris Johns

Location: Alaska
Established: December 2, 1980
Size: 13,188,000 acres (5,336,994 hectares)

Even in a state famous for its size, Wrangell-St. Elias stands out. It is by far the largest of our national parks—almost six times the size of Yellowstone. You fly over it and see mountains beyond mountains, glaciers after glaciers, rivers upon rivers. You float a river and watch the moods and mountains change by the minute. As you walk the tundra, you find Dall's sheep and mountain goats grazing.

Four major mountain ranges converge here: the volcanic Wrangells, the Alaska, the Chugach, and the St. Elias—tallest coastal mountains in the world. Together they contain 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the United States, 4 of them above 16,000 feet (4,877 meters). There are more than 150 glaciers; one, the Malaspina, is larger than Rhode Island. In 1980 Wrangell-St. Elias and adjoining Kluane National Park Reserve in Canada, along with Glacier Bay NP and Tatshenshini in British Columbia, were designated a United Nations World Heritage site.

Vast and rugged as it is, the park is not a fortress. Two roads lead into small communities, remnants of the gold- and copper-mining towns that thrived in the early days of the 20th century. Today not mining but the nearly limitless hiking, rafting, kayaking, and climbing opportunities beckon.

How to Get There

Drive, take a bus, or charter a plane. By car from Anchorage, take Alas. 1 (Glenn Hwy.) 189 miles (304 kilometers) northeast to Glennallen. Continue northeast 74 miles (119 kilometers) along the Copper River and the park's western boundary to Slana, where an unpaved road branches 42 miles (68 kilometers) into the park, ending at the town of Nabesna.

Or, head toward McCarthy on the Richardson Hwy. from Glennallen 32 miles (51 kilometers) southeast to the Edgerton cutoff (Alas. 10), then turning left and continuing 33 miles (53 kilometers) to Chitina. There the pavement ends but a road follows an old railroad bed about 60 miles (97 kilometers) into the park. Buses run regularly in summer from Anchorage to Valdez with stops in Glennallen.

Air charters into the park operate out of Anchorage, Fairbanks, Yakutat, Cordova, Glennallen, Gulkana, Tok, Chitina, McCarthy, Nabesna, and Northway. Commercial jets service Yakutat and Cordova. In summer, the Alaska State Ferry serves Valdez.

When to Go

Summer. Lodges and guide services operate in the park from mid-May to the end of September. June is best for wildflowers; July has the warmest days; berries ripen in August. Be prepared for cloudy skies, but September can be beautiful with clear skies, autumn colors, no mosquitoes, and a dusting of new snow on the mountain peaks. March and April offer excellent cross-country skiing for those of strong will.

How to Visit

Take one of the two unpaved roads into the park. The McCarthy Road is maintained and usually passable in summer, though a four-wheel drive may be needed in other seasons. Stop at park headquarters in Copper Center for latest road conditions. The Slana-Nabesna Road is also maintained, including some river crossings, but can require four-wheel drive in high water. Both roads end at trailheads for many backcountry hikes.

Or, charter a plane into a remote part of the park and hike or run a river. Several commercial companies offer guided rafting or kayaking trips on the rivers and in the spectacular coastal bays. You can get a full listing of them from the park.

Egypt Priest's Tomb Found Near Pyramids

A painting on the wall of a newfound Egyptian tomb shows the occupant, Rudj-Ka (right), and his wife. Rudj-Ka probably lived during the end of ancient Egypt's 5th dynasty, roughly 4,350 years ago, archaeologists say (ancient Egypt time line).

Artwork and artifacts found in his elaborate tomb, found in and along a cliff near the Great Pyramids at Giza (map), indicate Rudj-Ka was a priest in the mortuary cult of the 4th-dynasty pharaoh Khafra, who ruled from 2558 to 2532 B.C. Khafra is best known as the force behind the second of the three Great Pyramids and of the Great Sphinx.

Egyptian Offerings

Zahi Hawass surveys painted offerings of bread, goose, and beef in a wider view of the portrait of Rudj-Ka and his wife inside the newfound Egyptian tomb.

The ancient tomb, announced Monday, may be part of a larger cemetery complex yet to be unearthed around Giza, Hawass said.

"You have new tombs now for the priests who maintained the cult of Khafra," said Hawass, who is also a National Geographic explorer-in-residence. "This is the first time the cartouche of Khafra was found in this area."

In the Old Kingdom, "after the death of the king, there was a pyramid city," said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). "In this pyramid city lived priests and people who maintained the cult of the king, to make the cult of the king living."

Rudj-Ka appears to have been a priest charged with overseeing purification rituals performed in honor of the dead pharaoh.



Gone Fishing, Ancient Egyptian Style

Another painting in the newfound tomb shows Rudj-Ka fishing in the Nile River, with boaters in the background. Ancient Egyptian burials often depicted such scenes of daily life—activities the tombs' occupants hoped to enjoy in the afterlife.

"In dynasty five and six, the priests were not from high society," Hawass added. "They could be from the regular people. Even workmen could be promoted to be a priest." (Also see "Rare Middle-Class Tomb Found From Ancient Egypt.")

That's not to say Rudj-Ka ever fished for a living—archaeologists caution that none of the tomb paintings indicate exactly what Rudj-Ka did before he became a mortuary priest.



Portal to the Afterlife

The entrance to Rudj-Ka's tomb (pictured) leads to a maze of corridors constructed from limestone blocks. The inner burial complex was cut into a cliff and intended to accommodate the burials of all the priest's family members.

The lavish tomb would have been arduous and expensive to construct, the SCA's Hawass said: "Everything is difficult, but the quest for immortality led them to do this."
In any case, Rudj-Ka could afford it, in all likelihood—priests often became wealthy after receiving their titles. In exchange for their services, priests received a share of the goods given to the temples, part of a system known as "reversion of offerings."



Pyramid Builders' Cemetery


The cemetery of the pyramid workers, shown in 2001, sits to the north of Rudj-Ka's tomb. Discovered about a decade ago, the workers' cemetery helped reveal how construction of the Great Pyramids at Giza mobilized ancient Egyptian society and created an entire city around the monuments.

Rudj-Ka’s tomb might have been separate from the workers' tombs because of his title as priest, Hawass said, adding that he hopes the newfound tomb will turn out to be part of another, as yet unearthed necropolis dedicated to the priests of the royal court.



Discoveries Loom at Pyramids?

Workers brush sand from artifacts at the pyramid builders' cemetery in 2001.

Although Hawass thinks the workers' graves and the newfound tomb might be linked, another possibility is that the tomb of Rudj-Ka could be a western extension of the massive necropolis of Memphis, on the edge of modern-day Cairo, he said.

"The location is surprising," Hawass said. "We never expected to find a big, large tomb like this in the south of the pyramid builders' [cemetery] at all."

How 7-Inch Android Tablets Can Succeed

Seven-inch tablets may have drawn Steve Jobs’ contempt, but they could be a very good thing for consumers.

During Apple’s earnings call yesterday, Apple’s CEO argued forcefully that a 7-inch Android tablet could never compete with Apple’s nearly 10-inch iPad.

“Seven-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad,” Jobs said, in an extended thrashing of Apple’s competitors. “These are among the reasons that the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA — dead on arrival.”

I don’t understand why 7-inch tablets being “tweeners” is necessarily a bad thing for Android or tablet-makers.

If Jobs is right that the smaller tablets won’t be able to beat Apple’s iPad on price, that could indeed be a deal-breaker. But the pricing we have seen on smaller Android tablets suggests that they’ll be at least $100 cheaper than the current entry-level iPad, even without a data plan. If they’re sold with data plans and carrier subsidies like smartphones, they could be even cheaper than that.

Lower cost isn’t the only appeal of going small. Seven-inch tablets are lighter than 10-inch devices. They’re infinitely easier to hold in one hand. They’re easier to type on with two hands (particularly if you have small hands). They fit into smaller bags. And you use them to do different things.

Really, a 7-inch tablet is closer to an e-reader, a personal media player or a handheld gaming device than the iPad is. It’s no coincidence that most e-readers, such as the Kindle and Sony Reader Daily Edition, have 6- or 7-inch screens: That’s about the size of a paperback book.

In turn, the iPad is closer to a mini-notebook than a small tablet is. Neither tablet size is exactly like these other devices, but those are roughly the ecosystems in which they find themselves.

The real mistake in Jobs’s logic is thinking that the 7-inch “tweeners” have to compete with the iPad. They don’t. Mini-tablets could be to the iPad what mini-notebooks are to the MacBook and MacBook Air: smaller, less-expensive form factors that appeal to people looking for different features. Tablets running a full desktop OS like Windows 7 are different still.

In fact, just for these reasons, 7-inch tablets arguably have a better chance of success than 10-inch tablets looking to go head-to-head with the iPad. They can create a distinct sphere where they compete with each other, rather than with the biggest guy in the room.

Ironically, this is actually a classic Apple move: Instead of competing in a space where you can’t win, create a space where you can do something new. Instead of trying to beat (or be) Apple, Android and RIM and all of the other tablet developers need to play to their strengths and be the best version of themselves.

Jobs is right that Apple doesn’t have a compelling reason to make a 7-inch tablet; it would only introduce a third iOS variant for developers and consumers when the iPad and iPhone/iPod touch have already been tremendously successful. But other hardware, mobile-OS and mobile-application companies don’t have to worry about compatibility with Apple’s other form factors. They have to find devices, screen sizes and UIs that work for them.

Jobs is also right that Android will fragment if it tries to support too many screen sizes, form factors and app marketplaces, and this could create confusion among users. But there’s no reason why this fragmentation needs to be either total or deadly.

In fact, Google has already tried to exert some soft control over the Android universe. It’s warned developers and users about using non-tablet software for tablet devices, asking them to wait for official support in Android 3.0. It’s also created hardware standards that devices need to meet to access the official Android Market.

Again, because Android is open source, people can create their own tablets and alternative app stores if they don’t want to play by Google’s rules. That’s fine. It creates a legal alternative that could even be healthier than Apple’s current quasi-underground jailbreak community.

But Google could use access to Android Market to set common standards for hardware makers and software developers. It wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be as strict as Apple’s rules for its App Store, or even Windows Phone 7’s hybrid approach, but it’s closer to the latter than the former. Through the Market, Google can articulate its own expectations for what the smartphone and tablet experience ought to be.

Google could even rally around the 7-inch tablet, trumpeting it as a clear alternative to Apple’s “oversized” iPad, where it’s easier for current Android developers to upscale their smartphone software and offering them a larger canvas to experiment with richer apps.

If Android tablet makers can get their devices into anywhere near as many users’ hands as Apple’s been able to get theirs, that’s a compelling proposition indeed.

One thing is clear: If the makers of Android tablets are going to catch up to Apple’s dominance in tablets, they’ll have to take a page out of Steve Jobs’ own book.

Astronomers Find Weird, Warm Spot on an Exoplanet

Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal a distant planet with a warm spot in the wrong place.
The gas-giant planet, named upsilon Andromedae b, orbits tightly around its star, with one face perpetually boiling under the star's heat. It belongs to a class of planets termed hot Jupiters, so called for their scorching temperatures and large, gaseous constitutions.

One might think the hottest part of these planets would be directly under the sun-facing side, but previous observations have shown that their hot spots may be shifted slightly away from this point. Astronomers thought that fierce winds might be pushing hot, gaseous material around.

But the new finding may throw this theory into question. Using Spitzer, an infrared observatory, astronomers found that upsilon Andromedae b's hot spot is offset by a whopping 80 degrees. Basically, the hot spot is over to the side of the planet instead of directly under the glare of the sun.

"We really didn't expect to find a hot spot with such a large offset," said Ian Crossfield, lead author of a new paper about the discovery appearing in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal. "It's clear that we understand even less about the atmospheric energetics of hot Jupiters than we thought we did."

The results are part of a growing field of exoplanet atmospheric science, pioneered by Spitzer in 2005, when it became the first telescope to directly detect photons from an exoplanet, or a planet orbiting a star other than our sun. Since then, Spitzer, along with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, has studied the atmospheres of several hot Jupiters, finding water, methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.

In the new study, astronomers report observations of upsilon Andromedae b taken across five days in February of 2009. This planet whips around its star every 4.6 days, as measured using the "wobble," or radial velocity technique, with telescopes on the ground. It does not transit, or cross in front of, its star as many other hot Jupiters studied by Spitzer do.

Spitzer measured the total combined light from the star and planet, as the planet orbited around. The telescope can't see the planet directly, but it can detect variations in the total infrared light from the system that arise as the hot side of the planet comes into Earth's field of view. The hottest part of the planet will give off the most infrared light.

One might think the system would appear brightest when the planet was directly behind the star, thus showing its full sun-facing side. Likewise, one might think the system would appear darkest when the planet swings around toward Earth, showing its backside. But the system was the brightest when the planet was to the side of the star, with its side facing Earth. This means that the hottest part of the planet is not under its star. It's sort of like going to the beach at sunset to feel the most heat. The researchers aren't sure how this could be.

They've guessed at some possibilities, including supersonic winds triggering shock waves that heat material up, and star-planet magnetic interactions. But these are just speculation. As more hot Jupiters are examined, astronomers will test new theories.

"This is a very unexpected result," said Michael Werner, the Spitzer project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who was not a part of the study. "Spitzer is showing us that we are a long way from understanding these alien worlds."

The Spitzer observations were made before it ran out of its liquid coolant in May 2009, officially beginning its warm mission.

Other authors of the study are Brad Hansen of UCLA; Joseph Harrington at the University of Central Florida, Orlando; James Y-K. Cho of Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom; Drake Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; Kristen Menou of Columbia University, New York, N.Y.; and Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston.

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

One-Way Martian Colonization Missions: Proposal Would Cut Costs Dramatically, Ensure Long-Term Commitment

For the chance to watch the sun rise over Olympus Mons, or maybe take a stroll across the vast plains of the Vastitas Borealis, would you sign on for a one-way flight to Mars?
It's a question that gives pause to even Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a Washington State University associate professor, who, with colleague Paul Davies, a physicist and cosmologist from Arizona State University, argues for precisely such a one-way manned mission to Mars in an article published this month in the Journal of Cosmology.

In the article, "To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars," the authors write that while technically feasible, a manned mission to Mars and back is unlikely to lift off anytime soon -- largely because it is a hugely expensive proposition, both in terms of financial resources and political will. And because the greatest portion of the expense is tied up in safely returning the crew and spacecraft to earth, they reason that a manned one-way mission would not only cut the costs by several fold, but also mark the beginning of long-term human colonization of the planet.

Mars is by far the most promising for sustained colonization and development, the authors conclude, because it is similar in many respects to Earth and, crucially, possesses a moderate surface gravity, an atmosphere, abundant water and carbon dioxide, together with a range of essential minerals. It is the Earth's second closest planetary neighbor (after Venus) and a trip to Mars takes about six months using the most favorable launch option and current chemical rocket technology.

"We envision that Mars exploration would begin and proceed for a long time on the basis of outbound journeys only," said Schulze-Makuch. "One approach could be to send four astronauts initially, two on each of two space craft, each with a lander and sufficient supplies, to stake a single outpost on Mars. A one-way human mission to Mars would be the first step in establishing a permanent human presence on the planet."

While acknowledging that the mission would necessarily be crewed by volunteers, Schulze-Makuch and Davies stress that they aren't suggesting that astronauts simply be abandoned on the Red Planet for the sake of science. Unlike the Apollo moon missions, they propose a series of missions over time, sufficient to support long-term colonization.

"It would really be little different from the first white settlers of the North American continent, who left Europe with little expectation of return," Davies said of the proposed one-way Martian mission. "Explorers such as Columbus, Frobisher, Scott and Amundsen, while not embarking on their voyages with the intention of staying at their destination, nevertheless took huge personal risks to explore new lands, in the knowledge that there was a significant likelihood that they would perish in the attempt."

The authors propose the astronauts would be re-supplied on a periodic basis from Earth with basic necessities, but otherwise would be expected to become increasingly proficient at harvesting and utilizing resources available on Mars. Eventually they envision that outpost would reach self-sufficiency, and then it could serve as a hub for a greatly expanded colonization program.

The proposed project would begin with the selection of an appropriate site for the colony, preferentially associated with a cave or some other natural shelter, as well as other nearby resources, such as water, minerals and nutrients.

"Mars has natural and quite large lava caves, and some of them are located at a low elevation in close proximity to the former northern ocean, which means that they could harbor ice deposits inside similar to many ice-containing caves on Earth," said Schulze-Makuch."Ice caves would go a long way to solving the needs of a settlement for water and oxygen. Mars has no ozone shield and no magnetospheric shielding, and ice caves would also provide shelter from ionizing and ultraviolet radiation."

The article suggests that, in addition to offering humanity a "lifeboat" in the event of a mega-catastrophe on Earth, a Mars colony would provide a platform for further scientific research. Astrobiologists agree that there is a fair probability that Mars hosts, or once hosted, microbial life, perhaps deep beneath the surface and Davies and Schulze-Makuch suggest a scientific facility on Mars might therefore be a unique opportunity to study an alien life form and a second evolutionary record.

"Mars also conceals a wealth of geological and astronomical data that is almost impossible to access from Earth using robotic probes," the authors write. "A permanent human presence on Mars would open the way to comparative planetology on a scale unimagined by any former generation… A Mars base would offer a springboard for human/robotic exploration of the outer solar system and the asteroid belt. And establishing a permanent multicultural and multinational human presence on another world would have major beneficial political and social implications for Earth, and serve as a strong unifying and uplifting theme for all humanity."

Although they believe the strategy of colonizing Mars with one-way missions brings the goal of colonizing another planet technologically and financially within our reach, Schulze-Makuch and Davies acknowledge that such a project would require not only major international cooperation, but a return to the exploration spirit and risk-taking ethos of the great period of the Earth's exploration.

They write that when they raise the idea of a one-way Mars colonization mission among their scientific colleagues, a number express an interest in making the trip.

"Informal surveys conducted after lectures and conference presentations on our proposal, have repeatedly shown that many people are willing to volunteer for a one-way mission, both for reasons of scientific curiosity and in a spirit of adventure and human destiny," they write.

And yes, Schulze-Makuch offered that he too would be prepared to "boldly go" on a one-way mission to the Red Planet. But he hedges just a bit, holding out the single caveat that he would want the launch to wait until his young children have all grown into adults.

See No Shape, Touch No Shape, Hear a Shape? New Way of 'Seeing' the World

Scientists at The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital -- The Neuro, McGill University have discovered that our brains have the ability to determine the shape of an object simply by processing specially-coded sounds, without any visual or tactile input. Not only does this new research tell us about the plasticity of the brain and how it perceives the world around us, it also provides important new possibilities for aiding those who are blind or with impaired vision.
Shape is an inherent property of objects existing in both vision and touch but not sound. Researchers at The Neuro posed the question 'can shape be represented by sound artificially?' "The fact that a property of sound such as frequency can be used to convey shape information suggests that as long as the spatial relation is coded in a systematic way, shape can be preserved and made accessible -- even if the medium via which space is coded is not spatial in its physical nature," says Jung-Kyong Kim, PhD student in Dr. Robert Zatorre's lab at The Neuro and lead investigator in the study.

In other words, similar to our ocean-dwelling dolphin cousins who use echolocation to explore their surroundings, our brains can be trained to recognize shapes represented by sound and the hope is that those with impaired vision could be trained to use this as a tool. In the study, blindfolded sighted participants were trained to recognize tactile spatial information using sounds mapped from abstract shapes. Following training, the individuals were able to match auditory input to tactually discerned shapes and showed generalization to new auditory-tactile or sound-touch pairings.

"We live in a world where we perceive objects using information available from multiple sensory inputs," says Dr. Zatorre, neuroscientist at The Neuro and co-director of the International Laboratory for Brain Music and Sound Research. "On one hand, this organization leads to unique sense-specific percepts, such as colour in vision or pitch in hearing. On the other hand our perceptual system can integrate information present across different senses and generate a unified representation of an object. We can perceive a multisensory object as a single entity because we can detect equivalent attributes or patterns across different senses." Neuroimaging studies have identified brain areas that integrate information coming from different senses -- combining input from across the senses to create a complete and comprehensive picture.

The results from The Neuro study strengthen the hypothesis that our perception of a coherent object or event ultimately occurs at an abstract level beyond the sensory input modes in which it is presented. This research provides important new insight into how our brains process the world as well as new possibilities for those with impaired senses.

The study was published in the journal Experimental Brain Research. The research was supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Possible Geoglyphs Spotted in Peru

* A researcher used Google maps to spot what she claims are geoglyphs around Titicaca Lake in Peru.
* The area was heavily landscaped by Andean communities to improve agriculture.
* Some argue the shapes are just agricultural projects, not earthworks.

An Italian researcher may have discovered a huge network of earthworks representing birds, snakes and other animals in Peru, according to a study published on the Cornell University physics website arXiv.

Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, assistant professor at the department of physics of Turin's Polytechnic University, used Google satellite maps and AstroFracTool, an astronomical image-processing program which she developed, to investigate over 463 square miles of land around Peru's Titicaca Lake .

She says she has identified shapes that were built by Andean communities centuries ago.

Geoglyphs..or just agriculture? See the photos, judge for yourself.

"This region is covered by terraced walls and raised fields, which are large elevated planting platforms with canals in between. The earthworks represent an almost unimaginable agricultural effort to improve soil, temperature and moisture conditions for the crops," Sparavigna told Discovery News.

According to the researcher, enhanced satellite imagery revealed that some of the land forms are not only the remains of an extensive ancient agricultural system, but also those of formations designed to represent birds, snakes and other animals.

"They seem to be geoglyphs," Sparavigna said.

Geometric lines and images of animals that are best viewed from the air, geoglyphs are well-known in South America. Among the more famous geoglyphs are the Nasca Lines on the south coast of Peru and ring ditch sites in the Bolivian Amazon and Acre, Brazil. They feature impressive circular, oval, rectangular, square and D-shaped patterns.

"Past Andean and Amazonian societies imposed order, structure and aesthetics on nature through intentional design, engineering, and activities of everyday life," anthropologist Clark Erickson of the University of Pennsylvania told Discovery News.

"They created a complex environment of fields, paths, roads, canals, shrines, ceremonial centers, and settlements. One expression of this landscape transformation was the creation of geoglyphs or patterns made in earthworks," Erickson said.

The author of "Landscapes of Movement: The Anthropology of Trails, Paths, and Roads," Erickson conducted extensive research in the 1980s on the raised fields investigated by Sparavigna.

The landforms, "waru waru" or "suka kollus" as the farmers called them, were appropriate for agriculture. The canals in between the cultivated platforms provided a local micro-environment able to reduce frost risks for crops, while water in the canals and in ponds was probably used to cultivate aquatic plants and fish, as well as attract lake birds.

"These earthworks provide evidence for the impressive engineering abilities of the people who lived there in pre-Columbian times," Sparavigna said.

Built by excavating parallel canals and piling the Earth to form long and low mounds, the raised fields featured different forms and sizes. They were about 4 to 10 meters (13 to 32.8 feet) wide, 10 to 100 meters (32.8 to 328 feet) long, and 1 meter (3.2 feet) high.

Sparavigna believes that these elaborate earthworks were planned following the natural slope of the terrain while incorporating symbolic meaning.

According to the researcher, who recently discovered an impact crater in the Bayuda Desert in Sudan using Google Maps, several images seem to depict birds, with ponds representing their eyes.

Others appear to depict snakes, tortoises, fish, armadillos but also "abstract drawings," with patterns of stripes and other objects less easy to identify.

"The patterns are complex and some of this structure certainly reflects Andean concepts of cosmology, deep structure, social organization, measurement systems and art," said Erickson.

But he questioned Sparavigna's interpretation of the earthworks.

"The identifications of particular symbols such as birds, snakes, etc. are not convincing. For example, what appears to be 'a bird wing' in one image, is a modern plowed field with stacks of drying barley or wheat," he said.

According to Sparavigna, Ericskon's observation indicates that superimposed modern cultivations pose a threat to the geoglyphs.

"Modern agriculture can easily destroy them," said Sparavigna.

Gary Francisco Mariscal Herrera, the regional director of the National Cultural Institute of Puno, told the local radio station Onda Azul that the area might be soon declared a cultural heritage site in order to preserve the ancient structures.