Made with Stakes and String

The construction technique was simple. Workers hammered wooden stakes into the desert floor and stretched cord between them for straight lines. For curves, they used the cord as a radius. Teams removed dark surface stones and piled them along the edges, creating contrast with the lighter soil beneath.

Experiments have shown that a dozen people could create even the largest figures in under a week using these basic tools. In 1982, skeptic Joe Nickell and five family members recreated a 130-meter condor in a Kentucky field in about a day, using only stakes, cord, and a scaled-up plotting method.