Recreating a Lost Culture

by June Molgaard

One of the main challenges to telling the story of ancient Nasca life is the fact that they left very little behind them in the way of material culture. Compared to societies such as the Inca or Maya, the Nasca are not survived by the ruins of great cities, a written language, a splendid array of artifacts, or accounts by western conquerors who encountered them directly. This dearth of reference material has lent itself to the lingering romantic mystery surrounding the Nasca—but also poses something of a conundrum to the television producer: after all, television is as much “show” as “tell.” WHAT would we show and HOW would we show it?

Most of the shooting would take place in the deserts of southern Peru. That is the environment that gave birth to the Nasca culture, the site of the ongoing archaeology, and of course, the famous Nasca Lines themselves. But the absence of a rich material record (and the needs of storytelling) also called for dramatic recreations to give the audience some semblance of what Nasca life might have been like. Likewise absent from Peru are handy conveniences like prop and costume houses, or a host of historically faithful locations. Our Nasca props, costumes, and structures would all have to be made from scratch: a major logistical challenge and many editorial ones.

What the Nasca did leave behind—thankfully—is a vast body of ceramics, as well as some textiles. These ceramics—ceremonial, utilitarian, and ornamental—carry sometimes exquisite and detailed depictions of almost all aspects of Nasca life. Armed with these images, and consulting historical experts, we built an inventory of reference images to use as the basis for our recreations.

But ceramics, in the end, are three-dimensional still-lifes. They will inevitably come up short somewhere. Ancient Peruvians, for example, did not see fit to depict searing afternoon sun, howling desert winds, or the film of perpetual and abrasive dust that coats and injects itself into everything there, from noses to moving camera parts. Omissions aside, the ceramics—with their subtle evolution of style and content—also reminded me that every culture is at all times a living and evolving phenomenon, hard to pin in time.

This was made all too clear to me when I finally set foot in Nasca and realized it might be a lot more difficult than expected to find people—extras—who resembled ancient Nascans. Most modern Peruvians are today a complex blend of native, European, and Asian ancestry, quite unlike their slight pre-Columbian forefathers. It took seven to eight casting sessions, variously held in the squares of small rural hamlets, the back yard of a Quechua weaver, and the cramped dining room of a home doubling as a convenience store, before we had our 100+ candidates. But then we were ready to roll. Unless of course the extras would get lured off to work the ongoing potato harvest...

National Geographic Channel