A 2,000-year-old United Nations World Heritage Site in Peru was damaged this week when a trucker intentionally drove his tractor-trailer off a roadway that runs through the protected historic area, the authorities said.

The site, the famed Nazca Lines, is a sprawling series of images scratched into the surface of a coastal plain about 225 miles south of Lima, the capital. The site was created between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500, and is the world’s best-known example of geoglyphs — large designs created by arranging rocks or altering the landscape — that depict animals, plants and other figures.

The truck driver, Jainer Jesús Flores Vigo, was arrested and is expected to be charged with an “attack against cultural heritage,” according to the government-owned news outlet Andina.