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- LIMA (Reuters) - Maria Reiche, a German mathematician who dedicated
half a century to protecting and studying massive ancient drawings in the
Peruvian desert, died Monday from stomach cancer, aged 95, doctors said.
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- Reiche became a legend in Peru for her
almost single-handed battle to preserve the Nasca lines, a set of mysterious
animal figures scratched into the desert floor about 250 miles (400 km)
south of Lima.
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- For years before the lines became a big
tourist attraction, Reiche guarded them so zealously that even after she
was confined to a wheelchair she was known to chase trespassers off the
sand dunes near the lines. ``This is a really painful and sad loss for
Peruvian archeology,'' President Alberto Fujimori told reporters during
a trip to the United States.
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- ``We will remember her as a scientist
who made a mark of transcendental importance for the good of the lines.
Perhaps those 'Nasca lines' should even be renamed after her,'' he said.
Reiche, who became a Peruvian citizen in 1994, died in an Air Force hospital
in Lima surrounded by family members. German and Peruvian flags flew at
half-staff in Nasca and authorities declared a day of mourning in the southern
town, where the white figures, measuring up to 1.2 miles (1.9 km) in length
and etched in shallow ditches, can be fully appreciated only from the air.
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- The scholar's tireless work promoting
the pre-Columbian drawings persuaded UNESCO to declare the 200 square mile
area a world heritage site in 1995.
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- The figures of a hummingbird, a monkey,
a man, a spider and other geometric figures were created by members of
the Nasca culture between 700 B.C. and 900 A.D. Their meaning is a mystery
and has been the object of centuries of speculation. Reiche, who invested
all of her money in a foundation to preserve the lines, earned international
respect for her theories that the Nasca peoples used the drawings' alignment
with the sun as a calendar.
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- But her work was also costly to her health.
Exposure in the bright sun eventually caused her to go blind and she suffered
skin ailments as her white complexion became heavily-wrinkled and turned
a black-berry color. In the last few years, illnesses, including Parkinson's
Disease, kept her away from the lines and she has spent long periods in
hospital for cancer treatment.
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