TLDR

More than a decade ago, I found myself standing on the arid soils of Peru, about to board a tiny aircraft that seated just five passengers. My father had signed us up for a “Nazca Lines Air Tour,” a chance to witness the breathtaking ancient geoglyphs etched into the desert sands— at least that was what the tour guides pitched us.

Excited and armed with my trusty V8 recorder (smartphones didn’t exist back then), I eagerly hopped on board.

OK. Lesson #1 of exotic travel: separate the fantasy from the reality.

Fast forward to a bumpy flight, a full vomit bag, and shaky video footage that barely captured fragments of the famed geoglyphs. Years later, I can’t even tell a hummingbird from a spiral in those clips. If you’re curious about the Nazca Lines, save yourself the money (and a potential near-death experience)—a quick Google search might suffice.

That said, the adventure left a mark. It’s why I’m thrilled to explore how technology is now transforming how we discover these enigmatic relics.

From Myth to Modern Discovery

The Nazca Lines are ancient geoglyphs in Peru, etched into the desert by the Nazca culture, depicting animals, plants, and geometric shapes. You may not know the name, but you’ve likely seen photos of these mysterious artworks.

Until recently, archaeologists had identified just 430 geoglyphs over a century—a slow and painstaking process. Why? The Nazca Desert spans 629 square kilometers (243 square miles), making it impractical to search on foot and risky to survey from shaky aircraft.

Our intelligent and spot-on readers may then ask: What about drones?

Enter drones and AI.

Doubling a century’s work in just 3 years

In 2021, archaeologists turned to AI to accelerate discovery, focusing on relief-type geoglyphs—smaller, harder-to-detect designs often obscured by sand. Unlike the larger line-type geoglyphs (43 meters on average), relief-types average just 5 meters and often lack clear outlines.

Breakdown of the magical process

1. Drone Footage: High-resolution videos of the Nazca Desert were captured

2. AI Model Development: Researchers trained an AI model using known geoglyphs as a base, then fine-tuned it to detect relief-types using known relief-type images

3. Heat Maps: The AI created probability maps highlighting areas of interest

4. Manual Filter: Archaeologists filtered through the potential sites and narrowed them down to only high potential ones

5. Human Verification: The team physically confirmed findings at high-probability sites

The results

• 47,000+ potential sites were initially suggested by the AI model

• Out of which 1309 locations were identified as high potential
  ↳ Just 2.7% leads showed promise.

• After human validation, 303 new relief-type geoglyphs were confirmed.
  ↳ That’s 0.64% of all flagged sites—but a major leap forward.

The sky is the limit for AI applications

Technology has breathed new life into uncovering the past. For a site as vast and enigmatic as the Nazca Lines, the fusion of human expertise with AI’s capabilities is a game-changer. Who knows what other hidden treasures await discovery?

Hey There

I have moved the Hey There section below for this edition so that you can enjoy the TLDR first.

First of all, to our friends in the US, hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!

And for the rest of us, enjoy as we count down to the end of 2024.

While the holiday vibes ink in, I want to take the chance to share my appreciation to you all for supporting and encouraging me.

Your subscription means A LOT to me.

The Hungry Strategist is a reflection of me.

My experience. My expertise. My passion.

It’s only been a month, and I can’t tell how much I have learned already from this journey.

From taking almost a day to complete an edition, now with the enhancement of AI tools, I can pump out higher quality contents in a couple of hours.

Of course, none of what you are reading is written by ChatGPT. It’s only AlexGPT here 😜

It’s a good segway to my sharing of a few updates:

• Changing the newsletter cadence from 3 to 1 post per week - My primary reason to initially change from 1 to 3 posts per week was based on some of my readers’ suggestions to roll the creation wheel faster for experience. Overall, it was a good learning, but I also learned that I need to be careful with the balance. To not bombard your inboxes, and to prioritize some early business opportunities I have started conversations for (!), I will change the cadence back to 1 post per week starting from the edition next week Tues PST.

• Adding a podcast of the post - Upfront full disclaimer that the podcasts are AI-generated by NotebookLM. I have been experimenting with it for some time now, and the consistent high quality makes me feel comfortable to include it for each edition going forward. You can find it at the top of the edition, if you haven’t noticed yet.

• Removing “Let me handle it” and “What’s new in town” - Gmail has taught me a valuable lesson of prioritization. Given length limitations by email readers, contents exceeding a threshold will be truncated by the service. After some thoughts, I decided to remove the sections temporarily for now.
  I have heard from some of you that the section is useful, so I promise to bring it back to life again using a more engaging means. Stay tuned!

Every day is Day 0, and every work is WIP.

We will continue to bring you contents from around the globe to stay hungry.

Until next time!

Food of Thought

Why so serious?