Pyramids of Giza, Wikimedia

Ancient Optics

Nazca Lines - Spider

Nazca Lines – Spider (Photo credit: CB Photography)

One of the very cool things I’ve learned in the past year or so is just how small of things that the ancients could see.  The first time I heard about this ability was when I learned about the Nazca Lines of Peru.  These are actually huge, shallow ditches carved out of the desert plain.  The pictures we can still see are of a sorts of things including a monkey, condor and this spider.It’s impossible to see on the picture I found for my post, but if you click on the spider picture I got from the the Wikipedia page, you will see that one leg has a long bend that extends far beyond the carefully carved legs on the rest of the drawing.  (more…)