Riddles are writ large on the ancient earth of the Americas. They take the form of mysterious patterns, geometric designs and effigies, and ritual roads. The best-known of such pre-Columbian features are the Nazca lines in Peru, but in fact they are also to be found elsewhere in the Americas in discrete locations stretching from Manitoba in the north, through the California sierras, down through Mexico, Central America, and even the Amazon Basin. This book will show many examples of these ground markings, tell their story, and offer solutions to the puzzles they present. These features have long remained unexplained, and many of them are unknown to the general public. Consequently, no book has ever dealt with them as a whole before, and their neglect has left the few popularly-known examples of them subject to uninformed and sensationalist speculation of the ancient astronaut variety. Spirit Lands puts that right, presenting new information about the enigmatic markings, revealing what they were really about. It will show that they represented different kinds of magical landscapes, linked variously to totemism, to shamanism, and to sorcery.

They are the remnants of spiritual geographies or mindscapes belonging to prehistoric American Indians that will be brought back into focus by this singular, richly illustrated work.