Did the Nazca Lines actually work as some kind of landing signal or am I overthinking this

Living in Roswell I probably think about this differently to most people, but honestly the landing signal theory has always seemed a bit too convenient to me. Like yes they're massive and visible from the air, but does that actually mean they were meant to be seen from the air? Could just be a massive coincidence that we're reading backwards.

What I keep coming back to is the photography angle. Has anyone actually done proper analysis of the geometric precision? Because some of those lines are straighter than you'd expect from ground-level construction and I wonder if there's something in that we're missing rather than jumping straight to "aliens landed here."

Also worth asking - what would a landing signal even need to look like? A flat desert with a few lines drawn on it seems like pretty poor guidance for anything capable of interstellar travel. Surely they'd have better navigation tech than that.

What's everyone's actual take on the surveying capabilities of the Nazca people, because I feel like that's the conversation we should be having first before going full ancient astronaut theory.

Living in Roswell probably does skew the perspective a bit @OliviaHolloway, and honestly that's not a bad thing - local context shapes how you look at these things. Welcome to the forum by the way, good to have someone from that part of the world here.

For what its worth I've never bought the landing strip angle either. The lines aren't actually that smooth or flat when you're looking at the detail, and anything capable of interstellar travel probably doesn't need a runway drawn in the dirt. The ritual/astronomical alignment explanations are far more grounded even if they're less exciting.