A minibus carrying tourists swerved off the road and plummeted down a mountainside in Peru, killing two German tourists, state news agency Andina reported Friday.
Twelve others, including 10 Germans, were injured in the accident near the city of Chivay.
The tourists were on their way to Colca Valley, a popular tourist site in the Andean nation.
It was the second deadly accident in the last 24 hours. On Thursday, a bus traveling from Chuquimbamba to Arequipa plunged into a river, killing seven people and injuring 23 others.
In November, four German tourists died in an accident in the Huancavelica region.
Read more: Three European tourists expelled from Machu Picchu over nude photos
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Mysterious geoglyphs discovered in Peru
Giant geoglyphs
To capture the so-called geoglyphs in all their glory, the archeologists used drones. They photographed about 50 geometric drawings depicting humans and animals. 25 of them had never been documented before.
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Mysterious geoglyphs discovered in Peru
Legendary symbols
The pictures in the Peruvian landscape show monkeys and a whale. "Many of the drawings depict warriors. From a certain distance they could be spotted with the bare eye. But many have disappeared with time," Luis Jaime Castillo from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru told magazine "National Geographic."
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Mysterious geoglyphs discovered in Peru
In exposed positions
In contrast to the Nazca Lines, which are edged into the desert, the newly documented drawings are mostly drawn on the side of mountain ridges. That makes the geoglyphs visible from the ground. Inhabitants of local villages have known about them for a long time.
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Mysterious geoglyphs discovered in Peru
Witnesses of an old civilization
The drawings in the soil of Palpa are thousands of years old. Humans created them between 500 BC and 200 AD. They belong to the Paracas culture and the Topara culture.
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Mysterious geoglyphs discovered in Peru
Ritual background
Because of previous research findings on the Nazca Lines it is very likely that geoglyphs are commonly used in fertility rituals. Beyond that, scienctist say that indigenous peoples also created the images when there were periodic climatic fluctuations.
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Mysterious geoglyphs discovered in Peru
On the trail of Peru's indigenous cultures
With the help of the lines in Palpa the researchers hope to get new insights into the cultures of the region. "[...] it is a tradition of over 1000 years that precedes the famous geoglyphs of the Nazca culture, which opens the door to new hypotheses about its function and meaning," says Peruvian Ministry of Culture archaeologist Johny Isla, the Nazca Lines' chief restorer and protector.
Author: Hannah Fuchs (fs/cb)
cw/jm (AP, dpa)
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