The landing strip theory has always felt like it was retrofitting modern concepts onto ancient evidence, hasn't it? The lines simply don't have the structural integrity or dimensions you'd need for any aircraft we can meaningfully conceive of - ancient or otherwise.
What genuinely interests me more is the ceremonial procession hypothesis. The idea that the lines were walked as ritual pathways aligns far better with what we know about Nazca cosmology and their relationship with water sources. Anthony Aveni's work on this is worth reading if you haven't already.
That said, I'd push back slightly on completely dismissing the ". Intentionally visible from above". Angle. Not because of extraterrestrials, but because several Andean traditions involved communicating with sky deities. The lines being oriented toward mountain peaks and specific astronomical events feels significant.
A few questions I'd genuinely like this thread to dig into:
Does the scale of the geoglyphs necessarily imply they were meant to be viewed aerially, or is that assumption itself flawed?, How does the Palpa region evidence compare - is it being overlooked in favour of the more famous Nazca figures?, Has the drone/aerial survey work from the last decade meaningfully shifted the academic consensus at all?
The landing strip theory feels pretty dead to me, but I suspect the dismissal of all aerial-viewing hypotheses sometimes throws the baby out with the bathwater. What's everyone's current read on the newer archaeological evidence?