Strange Google Earth Anomaly Spotted Near Sacred Palpa Lines

From 'street view' to 'historical imagery,' Google Earth is a remarkably powerful, wonderfully accessible technology, that has enriched our lives immensely.  As an archaeologist, I also can readily attest to its usefulness.  When compiling the required forms, reports, and presentations, before, during, and after any professional archaeological investigation, Google Earth is an essential tool in my arsenal.  The big bonus: It's also extremely fun to play with!!

One of my favorite ways to use Google Earth, is visiting world famous archaeological sites that I would like to 'see' in person. Virtual tours of the Great Pyramids, Stonehenge, Baalbek, and Gobekli Tepe, etc., are endlessly fascinating.  Google Earth also provides a means to observe the horrible extent of the damage, which has been done to the archaeological record, in different areas of the world, by looters and their illicit activities.  Eventually, this normally turns into searching for possible, previously undiscovered, archaeological sites, another fun use of Google Earth.

Bearing all this in mind, a couple nights ago I was specifically looking at the ancient, enormous, zoomorphic, phytomorphic, and geometric drawings known collectively as the Palpa Lines.  Like their more famous (but less abundant) cousins the Nazca Lines, the Palpa Lines are located in  Peru, and many are approximately 3,000 years old.

The Palpa Lines display a greater profusion of human forms than the Nazca Lines, including the Familia Real de Paracas (Royal Family of Paracas, shown above), a group of eight figures on a hillside.  Created by the ancient Paracas people, it is estimated that there are 1,600 or more of these carvings.  According to an (less than scholarly) article I recently read, archaeologists have not yet mapped them all.  That information got me curious, and soon I was hovering over Peru with my mouse, finding all kinds of neat stuff (The Solar Clock, shown below).

The Paracas culture was an Andean society between approximately 800 BCE and 100 BCE, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management and significant contributions in the textile arts. It was located in what today is the Ica Region of Peru. Most information about the lives of the Paracas people comes from excavations by the Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello in the 1920s.  The ancient Paracas people have gained contemporary fame due in large part to the popular television show Ancient Aliens, which has often featured recovered Paracan elongated skulls, as "evidence of alien/human contact in the remote past."

**Author's Note:  Due in some part to this adoption of elongated skulls as an 'alien motif' by ufologists, pseudo-archaeologists, and other amateurs. actual scientists are reluctant to take up the study of the subject of prehistoric cranial deformation.  This is unfortunate, because its global occurrence among prehistoric populations remains a legitimate archaeological/scientific mystery. Remains displaying cranial deformation of various shapes and sizes have been found all over the world, from Peru and Mexico and the Pacific Northwest to ancient Egypt and China and beyond, even on remote islands, but they are not particularly common in museums around the world. At the local museums along the southern desert coast of Peru, particularly the anthropological museum in Ica, elongated skulls and even complete mummies of these people are displayed. Similarly, statues with elongated skulls of the Atonists can be seen at the Cairo Archaeological Museum. Other museums, in Malta, Turkey, Iraq, Korea, Bolivia, Mexico, and elsewhere, have skulls with some sort of cranial deformation on exhibit. Many of the existing specimens, however, are not on display, often due to obvious reasons, e.g. legal, cultural sensitivity.**

While using Google Earth to search the mountains near Palpa for possible undiscovered geometric drawings, I inadvertently came across a strange anomaly, in the form of an approximately 100 ft. x 50 ft., green, glowing, oval...something???  I'll walk you through it simply, and you can go see for yourselves.

First, start Google Earth.  When loaded, type "Palpa, Ica, Peru" into the search bar in the upper left corner of your screen.  Next, click the little magnifying glass at the end of the search bar to "Begin search," and Google Earth will zoom you to a point where your screen looks exactly like the photo above.  Next, you want to travel directly 'east' just a bit (multiple methods, user friendly), until your screen looks like the photo below.  The circled area is the interesting part.

If you double-click anywhere within the area I have circled, Google Earth will zoom in further, and the anomaly will appear.  You can also zoom in and out using the scrolling wheel on your mouse, or keep double clicking until it is the size you want to view.

So there it is, but what is it?  Is it a camera glitch, solid object, gaseous cloud, in the air, or on the ground?  Why is it green and glowing, appearing to diffuse at the edges?  I have no clue.  I leave it to you at this point.  Have fun!  I'm off looking for lost cities in Saudi Arabia 😃.

RM