{ "id": "AIBD-0019", "title": "AI-guided survey confirms 303 new figurative Nazca geoglyphs in Peru", "summary": "An IBM–Yamagata deep-learning survey guided fieldwork that confirmed 303 new Nazca geoglyphs, published in PNAS (Sep 2024).", "date_observed": "2022-09-01", "date_basis": "unassessed", "date_precision": "unassessed", "benefit_status": null, "source_collection": null, "source_entry": null, "account": "Between September 2022 and February 2023 (sources give only months, so the first day of September is used) archaeologists surveyed the Nazca Pampa in Peru. Masato Sakai of Yamagata University's Institute of Nasca led them. They used candidate locations proposed by a deep-learning model developed with IBM Research. It screened aerial photographs at 10-centimeter resolution over more than 600 square kilometers. Field verification confirmed 303 previously unknown figurative relief-type geoglyphs, almost doubling the known total. 178 were individually suggested by the model and 125 were found during the AI-guided survey without an individual suggestion. The team screened about 36 AI suggestions per promising candidate and reports a sixteen-fold increase in discovery rate. The results appeared in PNAS on 23 September 2024.", "category": "benefit created", "unexpected": false, "purpose": "Built to flag candidate geoglyph locations in aerial imagery so that archaeologists could prioritize ground survey; the discoveries were that purpose.", "system": "Geoglyph classifier developed by IBM and Yamagata University: an ImageNet-pretrained ResNet50 with a two-layer classifier, applied to aerial imagery through IBM PAIRS", "model_version": null, "developer": "IBM Research (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center) with Yamagata University and DLR", "deployer": "Yamagata University (Institute of Nasca field team)", "location": "Nazca, Peru", "domain": "Archaeology", "segment": "Academic research with industry partner", "benefit_type": "Improved Knowledge Discovery", "taxonomy_note": null, "registry_ids": {}, "ratings": [ { "group": "organizational", "depth": 2, "reason": "Yamagata University's Institute of Nasca reports a sixteen-fold increase in discovery rate, achieving in six months what DLR says previously took decades." }, { "group": "societal", "depth": 3, "reason": "The known corpus of figurative geoglyphs at a UNESCO World Heritage site nearly doubled, with 303 confirmed sites added to Peru's archaeological record." } ], "ai_role": { "status": "assessed", "statement": "The model proposed candidate locations that directed fieldwork. 178 of the 303 confirmed geoglyphs were individually suggested by the AI. Of the remaining 125, 66 were found as part of an AI-discovered group. The other 59 were found without any help from AI or in screening outside the AI-suggested boxes. Confirmation was by ground survey, not by the model." }, "evidence": [ { "kind": "peer-reviewed study", "citation": "Sakai, M., Sakurai, A., Lu, S., Olano, J., Albrecht, C. M., Hamann, H. F. and Freitag, M. (2024). AI-accelerated Nazca survey nearly doubles the number of known figurative geoglyphs and sheds light on their purpose. PNAS 121(40), e2407652121 (PMC11459208).", "title": "AI-accelerated Nazca survey nearly doubles the number of known figurative geoglyphs and sheds light on their purpose", "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11459208/", "date": "2024-09-23", "written_by": "makers", "quote": "303 new figurative relief-type geoglyphs, almost doubling the amount of known relief-type geoglyphs." }, { "kind": "press release", "citation": "Yamagata University (2024). AI-accelerated Nazca survey nearly doubles the number of known figurative geoglyphs and sheds light on their purpose. University news.", "title": "AI-accelerated Nazca survey nearly doubles the number of known figurative geoglyphs and sheds light on their purpose", "url": "https://www.yamagata-u.ac.jp/en/information/info/20240924/", "date": "2024-09-24", "written_by": "makers", "quote": "This represents a 16 fold increase in the rate of discovery by using IBM's AI." }, { "kind": "press release", "citation": "German Aerospace Center DLR, Earth Observation Center (2024). Accelerated Discovery of Nasca Geoglyphs Guided by AI.", "title": "Accelerated Discovery of Nasca Geoglyphs Guided by AI", "url": "https://www.dlr.de/en/eoc/latest/news/2024/accelerated-discovery-nasca-geoglyphs-by-ai", "date": "2024-10-09", "written_by": "makers", "quote": "The AI system revealed the distribution of candidate geoglyphs from aerial photographs, drawing the archaeologists' attention to areas where to take a closer look at the ground on site." }, { "kind": "news report", "citation": "Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America (2024). More Than 300 Geoglyphs Discovered in Peru.", "title": "More Than 300 Geoglyphs Discovered in Peru", "url": "https://archaeology.org/news/2024/09/27/more-than-300-geoglyphs-discovered-in-peru/", "date": "2024-09-27", "written_by": "independent", "quote": "The use of AI in research has allowed us to map the distribution of geoglyphs more quickly and accurately." }, { "kind": "news report", "citation": "del Río ML. More than 200 geoglyphs discovered in Nazca Desert with help of AI. The Art Newspaper, 14 August 2025.", "title": "More than 200 geoglyphs discovered in Nazca Desert with help of AI", "url": "https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/08/14/248-nazca-lines-discovered-artificial-intelligence-peru", "date": "2025-08-14", "written_by": "independent", "quote": null } ], "replication": { "produced_by": [ "High-resolution aerial imagery of the whole survey area", "A detector trained with limited labeled examples of relief-type geoglyphs", "Archaeologist screening of candidates followed by ground verification" ], "must_hold": [ "Targets must be visible at the imagery resolution (about 10 cm)", "Each candidate must be confirmed on the ground before being counted" ], "echoes": [] }, "paired_incident": null, "headline": "IBM–Yamagata AI survey confirms 303 new Nazca geoglyphs in Peru", "metric": "303 previously unknown figurative relief-type geoglyphs, almost doubling the known total", "comparator": { "against": "the discovery rate with remotely sensed high-resolution imagery but without AI (2004 to 2020)", "before": "18.7/y from 2004 to 2020", "after": "303 new figurative geoglyphs during the 2022/23 season of field work (a 16-fold acceleration)", "basis": "measured", "quote": "It has accelerated due to the availability of remotely sensed high-resolution imagery to 18.7/y from 2004 to 2020. Our current work represents another 16-fold acceleration (303 new figurative geoglyphs during the 2022/23 season of field work) using big geospatial data technologies and data mining with the aid of AI.", "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11459208/" }, "later": { "status": "scaled", "date": "2025-08-14", "note": "The same Yamagata-IBM team announced 248 further AI-assisted geoglyph finds at Expo 2025 Osaka, bringing the total to 893, of which 781 came from AI and aerial-image analysis.", "quote": "An international team led by Japan's Yamagata University and IBM, in collaboration with Peruvian researchers, has announced the discovery of 248 new geoglyphs among the famous Nazca Lines.", "url": "https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/08/14/248-nazca-lines-discovered-artificial-intelligence-peru" }, "value": null, "developer_country": "United States", "deployer_country": "Japan", "unrated_because": null, "brief_notes": null, "brief": null, "revisions": [ { "date": "2026-10-20", "change": "Record drafted from the cited sources.", "source": null, "editor": "AIBD" }, { "date": "2026-10-20", "change": "Rewrote the statement of the system's part to follow the PNAS breakdown, because the earlier wording credited all 125 non-individually-suggested geoglyphs to AI-prioritized areas when the paper attributes 66 to an AI-discovered group and 59 to finds made without AI help or outside the AI-suggested boxes.", "source": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11459208/", "editor": "AIBD" }, { "date": "2026-10-21", "change": "Added what the benefit is measured against, what happened since from the cited sources.", "source": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11459208/; https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/08/14/248-nazca-lines-discovered-artificial-intelligence-peru", "editor": "AIBD" }, { "date": "2026-10-21", "change": "Country of the developer and the deployer added from the organization's own site or a registry.", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Research; https://www.yamagata-u.ac.jp/en/", "editor": "AIBD" }, { "date": "2026-10-21", "change": "Prose pass: account, the system's part rewritten in shorter sentences with abbreviations expanded; facts, figures and quotations unchanged.", "source": null, "editor": "AIBD" }, { "date": "2026-10-22", "change": "Organization name standardized to Yamagata University.", "source": null, "editor": "AIBD" }, { "date": "2026-10-25", "change": "Identified the AI model, software, configuration, and human controls from the original paper, supplement, or author documentation.", "source": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11459208/", "editor": "AIBD" } ], "confidence": "reported", "shade": "medium", "claim_status": "Independently reported", "claim_basis": "Sources: two independent news reports, the makers' peer-reviewed study and two press releases from the makers. 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Masato Sakai of Yamagata University's Institute of Nasca led them. They used candidate locations proposed by a deep-learning model developed with IBM Research. It screened aerial photographs at 10-centimeter resolution over more than 600 square kilometers. Field verification confirmed 303 previously unknown figurative relief-type geoglyphs, almost doubling the known total. 178 were individually suggested by the model and 125 were found during the AI-guided survey without an individual suggestion. The team screened about 36 AI suggestions per promising candidate and reports a sixteen-fold increase in discovery rate. 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