“Symbols of such a size that their imagery can be recognized only when seen from far above were created in . . . widely separated parts of America. In the north, between about 500 BC and AD 500, earthworks called “effigy mounds” were raised in the form of snakes and birds, presumably as ceremonial centres for the wandering tribes who lived by hunting and gathering on the great plains. . . . In southern Peru . . . the barren plateau between the Palpa and Ingenio rivers was used as a field for a gigantic network of inflexibly straight lines many miles long, zigzags and “drawings” of animals made by removing surface stones to expose the yellow soil—the largest work of art in the world. The lines . . . [transform] an area of several hundred square miles into a temple without walls, an architecture of two-dimensional space, of diagram and relation rather than mass.”

—Hugh Honour & John Fleming, from The Visual Arts: A History, 1982.