Visit the air museum at Bradley Field in Hartford NH. One whole section devoted to the man right next to the Wright Bros. Montgolfier is an asterix.

And the emphasis is on ballon flight learned from the indians.

And as far as Pacal is concerned. Some sensationalism. Kat Writing a response 30 years AFTER publication.

Woodman was NOT an archaeologist doing a professional dig or research. He had an idea and pursued it. And she forgot the context of the book. He assembled his information from myths and legends. He used the native material at hand. His design was certainly nothing one would find in a modern ballooning magazine. And he SPECIFICALLY stated what he demonstrated was the the NATIVE material COULD have worked if they had the idea. He left it up to the reader as to whether they would think they had the idea.

The edition I have of the book does show the pottery with balloon type objects.
And she forgot one of the most important points. While discussing making the ballon with the fabric testing engineers (they build modern balloons) they warned Woodman of thermal gain. That phenomena when the balloon overheated from the sun would continue to rise. That fufilled the legend of Verochia sailing off into the sun.

The one serious weakness of the book is as kat says the mixing of Inca with the various predecessors. That is not an uncommon occurrence even among professional archaeologists.

The book never claimed that it was proven the Nazcans could fly. Only that the materials from the period and the idea would have worked.

Viewing the legendary Maria Reich (photo) participating in the adventure sealed it for me.

And Kat's comment about the duration was fececious. 2 minutes plus is a lot longer than a couple of brothers having a giant helping of wind at Kittyhawk. And if you saw what they rode up on they had to be half nuts anyway.