PERU’S ARCHAEOLOGY

While Peru inevitably evokes images of Machu Picchu and the Inca empire, the country is also riddled with archaeological sites which are a legacy of even more ancient times, when great civilizations bequeathed a legacy of their art, customs and rituals, their wisdom and skills.

The Inca empire was a recent arrival during the process of cultural development in the Andes during the pre-Hispanic era, and the history of the Incas barely accounts for a century within the 20,000 years of human occupation of Peruvian territory.

Much earlier than the Incas and while civilizations like the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese (3000 and 2000 B.C.) flourished, the city of Caral, located north of the city of Lima, was built; this was the first American expression of a Pre-Ceramic urban settlement with monumental architecture in an area greater than 10 hectares. Later, in the northern highlands, the Chavin (800 – 200 B.C.) achieved significant advances in architecture, engineering, and agriculture.

The Chavin civilization (1500-400 BC) achieved considerable prowess in architecture, engineering and agriculture in the northern highlands. Along the north coast, the Moche civilization (200 BC-700 AD) is famous for its realistic pottery (portraits carved into pots and gourds) and its pyramid-shaped temples. The same area was later controlled by the Chimu kingdom (900-1450 AD), who built Chan Chan, an immense mud-brick citadel featuring 12-meter-high walls and superb architectural work.

To the south, the Nazca people (200 BC-900 AD) etched an impressive series of figures etched into the desert floor known as the Nazca Lines, while graves belonging to the Paracas culture (800 BC-600 AD) have unearthed superb weavings which point to the magical and religious vision that governed the lives of this ancient civilization.

Centuries later, the Incas (1300-1500 AD) were to make Cuzco the center of their empire, building major constructions such as Sacsayhuaman, Pisac and Koricancha. It is here that myth and history merge, where the Inca roads, the towns, people and traditions are a living example of the Andean spirit, sacred and monumental. Discover why Peru is for many the heart of South America's greatest civilizations.

When one thinks of Peru, the first thing that springs to mind is the wealth of its age-old cultures and the legendary Inca empire.  The tour, however, continues past the Spanish Conquest and into colonial times, into the Peru where two visions of the world, time and of all things sacred came together, the Peru of the wars of independence and a republic built amidst bullets and bloodshed.

More than four hundred years have gone by, four centuries bringing together the pre-Hispanic legends with the Western raison d'etre. That era has left superb art and architecture in monuments which are a synthesis of the spirituality, imagination and creativity of Peruvians.

INITIAL PERIOD 1800/1500 BCE - 900 BCE

Cajamarca culture - Cumbe Mayo is located southwest of the Peruvian city of Cajamarca, at an elevation of approximately 11,000 feetThe location is best known for the ruins of a Pre-Columbian aqueduct stretching approximately five miles in length. The aqueduct collected water from the Atlantic watershed and redirected it on its way to the Pacific Ocean. It is thought to have been constructed around 1500 B.C. and may be the oldest existing man-made structure in South America. The name Cumbe Mayo may be derived from a Quechua phrase, kunpi mayu, meaning “well-made water channel,” or hunpi mayo, meaning “thin river.” There are a number of petroglyphs on the
aqueduct and surrounding caverns.
This remote mountainous region is also the location of a "stone forest"
composed of natural volcanic rocks which have been shaped by erosion. These formations of volcanic rock are also known as Los Frailones, or the Stone Monks.

EARLY HORIZON 900 BCE - 200 CE
The Chavin were an early civilization that existed in present-day Peru. This Early Horizon civilization is believed to have developed around 900 BC and died out around 200 BC. The Chavins laid the cultural foundation for the other Peruvian civilizations to come.

Archaeological artifacts from the Chavin period include textiles, metalwork, pottery and religious items. The most well-known archaeological ruin of the Chavin era is Chavin de Huantar, located in the Andean highlands north of Lima. It is believed to have been built around 900 BC.

The Paracas culture was an important Andean society between approximately 750 BCE and 100 CE that developed in the Paracas Peninsula, located in what today is the Paracas District of the Pisco Province in the Ica Region. Most of our information about the lives of the Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside Paracas necropolis, first investigated by the Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello in the 1920s. The necropolis of Wari Kayan consisted of multitudes of large subterranean burial chambers, with an average capacity of about forty mummies. It is theorized that each large chamber would be owned by a specific family or clan, who would place their dead ancestors in the burial over the course of many generations. Each mummy was bound with cord to hold it in place, and then wrapped in many layers of incredibly intricate, ornate, and finely woven textiles. These textiles are now known as some of the finest ever produced in the history of Pre-Columbian Andean societies, and are the primary works of art by which Paracas is known. They had extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management.

EARLY INTERMEDIATE 200 CE - 600 CE
The Moche civilization (alternately, the Mochica culture, Early Chimu,
Pre-Chimu, Proto-Chimu, etc.) flourished in northern Peru from about 100 CE to 800 CE. Today it is understood that they were not politically the same people as the Chimu or the Lambayeque culture. Scholars have proved that the Moche were not politically organized as monolithic empire or state but rather as a group of autonomous polities that shared a common culture expressed mainly in the iconography. Pre-Columbian years as expansive as 300 BC to 1000 AD are sometimes described as the era of the Moche. They are noted for the elaborate painted ceramics and pottery, gold work, and irrigation systems. Moche history is broadly categorized into five periods based on the increasing complexity of pottery decoration including highly detailed erotic pottery.

The Moche primarily were farmers, who diverted rivers into a network of irrigation canals. Their culture was sophisticated, although they had no written language. Yet, their artifacts document their lives with detailed scenes of hunting, fishing, combat, punishment, sexual encounters and elaborate ceremonies and harmony was a huge part of their celebrations.
The Moche lived in many valleys in the north coast of Peru: Lambayeque, Jequetepeque, Chicama, Moche, Viru, Chao, Santa, Nepena. There are several Moche ruins not far from the city of Trujillo, Peru. The Huaca del Sol, a pyramidal structure on the Rio Moche, had been the largest pre-Columbian structure in Peru but was largely destroyed when Spanish Conquistadors mined its graves for gold. Fortunately the nearby Huaca de la Luna seems to have been more important to the Moche and has remained largely intact. It contains many colorful murals with complex iconography and has been under excavation since the early 90's. Other major Moche sites include Sipan,
Pampa Grande, Dos Cabezas, Pacatnamu, San Jose de Moro, El Brujo complex, Mocollope, Cerro Mayal, Galindo, Huancaco, and Panamarca.

Pottery
Moche pottery is some of the most varied in the world. They used molds in order to mass produce huge quantities of it. But despite this, they had a large variation in shape and theme. Virtually all vegetables and important activities are documented in their pottery, including war, sex, metal work, and weaving. They would apply figures onto pottery before it dried, which is seldom done today because of the risk of explosion in the kiln if air gets into the joints.

They also seemed to be obsessed with individuality. Many of the later of the 143,000,000 bricks in the Huaca del Sol had a maker's mark. Important persons would have vases made to resemble their heads. The portrait vases also show the personality of the subject: some are shown laughing, others in deep thought, others angry, etc. Some Moche art is erotic in nature, showing various acts including oral and anal sex.

The coloration of Moche pottery is not very varied, yellowish cream and Indian red are used almost exclusively on elite pieces, with a white color or black in only a few pieces. Their adobe buildings have mostly been destroyed by looters and the elements over the last 1300 years, but the two huacas that remain show that the coloring of their murals was much more varied, with every color of the rainbow represented. Not much is known about their clothing since most of it has disintegrated; the Moche lived in the north of Peru, which may get flooded in El Nino years.

Moche erotic pottery is fascinating, not only due to the vast number of sexual activities represented, but also because procreative coitus was only depicted in a limited number of circumstances. While anal intercourse, fellatio, masturbation and cunnilingus were commonly depicted on Moche pottery, vaginal intercourse was only depicted when the male involved wore ceremonial garb, the female had two braids which ended in snake's heads, and the copulation occurred under an elaborate roof of a ceremonial building. In these scenes of procreative sex, additional figures are always depicted watching the couple in the building and holding their hands as though in supplication. The precise meaning of this has never been established.

Religion
Moche worship featured a figure called the Decapitator, mostly depicted as a spider, but also depicted as a winged creature or a sea monster all three features symbolizing land, water and air. When the body is included, it is usually shown with one arm holding a knife and another holding a severed head by the hair. It is thought to figure in the ritual human sacrifice of foreign soldiers or tribal citizens. This human sacrifice may also have included the consumption of human blood by the Lord of Sipan, who was a Moche spiritual, military and civil leader. This act is believed to have been done to appease the Decapitator. While some scholars, such as Christopher Donnan and Izumi Shimada, argue that the sacrificial victims were the losers of ritual battles among local elites, others, like John Verano and Richard Sutter, suggest that the sacrificial victims were warriors captured in territorial battles between the Moche and other nearby societies. Burials in plazas near Moche pyramids have found groups of people sacrificed together and skeletons of young men deliberately excarnated, perhaps for temple displays. The sacrifices are believed to have been to ensure the coming of the yearly rains.

Demise
There are several theories as to what caused the demise of the Moche political organization. To understand this process of political collapse, we need to consider it as separate historical events in the different valleys where these Moche polities developed. Studies of ice cores drilled from glaciers in the Andes reveal climatic catastophes between 536 to 594 CE, possibly a super El Nino, that resulted in 30 years of unrelenting rain and flooding followed by 30 years of drought.

These catastrophes would have disrupted the Moche way of life and shattered their faith in their religion, which had promised stable weather through sacrifices. However, these catastrophic events did not cause the final Moche demise. Recent evidence uncovered by diverse archaeologists has shown that the Moche polities survived beyond 650 CE in the Jequetepeque Valley and the Moche Valleys.

For instance, in the Jequetepeque Valley, later settlements are characterized by fortifications and defensive works. In any case, there is no evidence of a foreign invasion, as many scholars have suggested in the past (i.e. a Huari invasion). Evidence of a period of social unrest followed the climatic changes, as the Moche civilization tore itself apart and fought over the remaining resources.

The Nazca culture flourished in the Nazca region between 300 BC and 800 AD.
They created the famous Nazca lines and built an impressive system of
underground aqueducts that still function today. Near the aqueducts open to tourists, there is an overlook point which includes an Inca building added after the Inca conquest of the area. On the pampa, on which the Nazca lines were made, the ceremonial city of Cahuachi (1-500 AD) sits overlooking the lines. Modern knowledge about the culture of the Nazca is built upon studying the city of Cahuachi.

Pottery
The Nazca region is a desert that the Nazca turned into a viable agricultural area using their aqueduct technology. Nazca pottery has been divided into eight phases. Around 200 BC, at the end of the Early Horizon drought, Nazca I began. Pottery from this era contains the mythical content of Paracas art, but added realistic subject matter such as fruits, plants, people, and other animals. Realism increased in importance in the following three phases (II, III, IV) referred to as the Monumental phases. The pottery from these phases includes renditions of their main subject matter against a bold red or white background. In the next phase, Nazca V, the backgrounds are filled in and the subject matter now included bodyless renditions of both demons and humans. Nazca VI, and VII include the earlier motifs but
also add militaristic ones, and portraits of elite members of the society.
Nazca VI and VII also begin to show the influence of the Moche. Finally, Nazca VIII saw the introduction of completely disjointed figures and a rich iconography which has yet to be deciphered. The phases were created before the advent of carbon dating and today have some problems. While the general order did not change there is a great deal of overlap of the phases, and while the Nazca IX phase ends c. 600 AD, some of the pottery in that category was created at least as late as 755 AD.

Since the Nazca were a coastal people, who depended on the sea for their livelihood, archaeologists are fortunate that they portrayed aspects of their everyday lives in and on their pottery. The motifs generally seen on Nazca pots are those of animals and plants used and seen by the ancient people. These include sea birds, hummingbirds, whales, sharks, fish, snakes, seeds, flowers, and cacti. Also, more gruesomely, the Nazca portrayed severed heads, presumed to be trophy heads, on their pottery. This is supported in the archaeological record with the the discovery of caches of actual severed and ritually prepared heads. Over one hundred examples are known to exist. (Silverman)

Textiles.
The Nazca are also known for their textiles. They began using llama and massive quantities of alpaca a thousand years before the north coast cultures began to esteem the camelid wool. The source of the wool is believed to be from the Ayacucho region. The motifs that appeared on the pottery appeared earlier in the textiles. Textiles may have been as important to other cultures in the region as to the Nazca, but the desert has preserved the textiles of both the Nazca and Paracas cultures and comprise most of what we know about early textiles in the region.
The Tiwanaku culture. Spanish spellings: Tiahuanaco and Tiahuanacu, is an important Pre-Columbian archaeological site in Bolivia. Tiwanaku is
recognized by Andean scholars as one of the most important precursors to the Inca Empire, flourishing as the ritual and administrative capital of a major state power for approximately five hundred years. The ruins of the ancient city state are near the south-eastern shore of Lake Titicaca, about 72 km (44 miles) west of La Paz, Bolivia.

Some have hypothesized that Tiwanaku's modern name is related to the Aymara term taypikala, meaning "stone in the center", alluding to the belief that it lay at the center of the world. However, the name by which Tiwanaku was known to its inhabitants has been lost, as the people of Tiwanaku had no written language.

The site of Tiwanaku was founded in approximately 200 BC as a small
agriculturally-based village, with a number of similar neighbors. The high altitude Titicaca Basin required the development of a distinctive farming technique known as "raised-field" agriculture, which are only found in today's South America as experimental, government-funded projects. In antiquity, they comprised a significant percentage of the agriculture in the region, along with irrigated fields, pasture, terraced fields and cocha (small lake) farming. Artificially raised planting mounds (known as "suka kollus" in the local Aymara language) are separated by canals filled with water. The canals supply moisture for growing crops, but they also absorb heat from solar radiation during the day. This heat is gradually emitted during the bitterly cold nights, providing thermal insulation. Over time, the canals also were used to farm edible fish, and the resulting canal sludge was dredged for fertilizer. The use of various agricultural techniques allowed local communities to grow and population to increase.
Though labor-intensive, suka kollus produce impressive yields. While traditional agriculture in the region typically yields 2.4 metric tons of potatoes per hectare, and modern agriculture (with artificial fertilizers and pesticides) yields about 14.5 metric tons per hectare, suka kollu agriculture yields an average of 21 tons per hectare.
Significantly, the experimental fields recreated in the 1980s by Kolata and Rivera suffered only a 10% decrease in production following a 1988 freeze that killed 70-90% of the rest of the region's production. This kind of protection against killing frosts in an agrarian civilization is an invaluable asset. For these reasons, the importance of suka kollus cannot be overstated.

The community grew to urban proportions between AD 600 and AD 800, becoming an important regional power in the southern Andes. According to early estimates, at its maximum extent, the city covered approximately 5.0 square kilometers, and had as many as 40,000 inhabitants. However, satellite imaging was used recently to map the extent of fossilized suka kollus across the three primary valleys of Tiwanaku, arriving at population-carrying capacity estimates of anywhere between 285,000 and 1,482,000 people.
More narrowly, the proposed population range is between 570,000 and 1,111,500. This is based on 1) 19,000 hectares of suka kollus discovered so far; 2) the Bolivian and Peruvian experimental staple tuber production rates of 21 and 10.65 metric tons per hectare respectively; 3) 533kg of tuber consumption per person per year; and 4) assumptions of 75% utilization and double cropping.
Tiwanaku's unique art style is found in vast areas covering modern highland Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. It is difficult to tell, however, whether these areas were part of an empire in the political sense, under cultural and commercial influence, or independent trading partners.
Tiwanaku collapsed around AD 1000, possibly due to environmental reasons, from an invasion of new people from the south, a loss of faith in the Tiwanaku religion, or a combination of all three. The area around Tiwanaku was not abandoned, but the city fell into decay and its characteristic art style vanished.

Architecture and art

Tiwanaku architecture is characterized by large stones, weighing up to 200 tons, with stone cutting, squaring, dressing, and notching exceeding even the Inca in artisanship. The stones are set without mortar, so closely together that a razor blade cannot penetrate the seams. The stones are cut irregularly (unlike Egyptian square stone blocks), with each stone matched uniquely to its neighbors, possibly to resist lateral motion due to regional earthquakes. Supporting this notion is the use of elaborate "double-T" copper clamps to hold stones together in the critical drainage and irrigation tunnels.

The stone used to build Tiwanaku was quarried and then transported (without the aid of the wheel) 40km to the city and includes the largest cut stone block in the world weighing 200 tons. Although many large buildings were still intact when the Spanish first arrived, only three remain today, the Akapana (fortress), the Kalasaya (temple) and the Palace of the Ten Doors.
The Tiwanaku art style is distinctive, and, together with the related Huari style, defines the Middle Horizon of Andean prehistory. Both of these styles seem to have been heavily influenced by that of the earlier Pukara culture in the northern Titicaca Basin.

Religion
The name of the religion of Tiwanaku is unknown because they had no written language.
Their myths have been passed down to the Incas and the Spanish who in turn took that part of South America. They worshipped many gods, and one of the most important gods was Viracocha, the god of action, shaper of many worlds, and destroyer of many worlds. He created people, with two servants, on a great piece of rock. Then he drew sections on the rock and sent his servants to name the tribes in those areas. In Tiwanaku he created the people out of rock and brought life to them through the earth. The Tiwanaku believed that Viracocha created giants to move the massive stones that comprise much of their archeology, but then grew unhappy with the giants and created a flood to destroy them. Viracocha is carved in the Gateway to the Sun, to overlook his people and lands.

Much of the architecture of the site is in a poor state of preservation, having been subjected to looting and amateur excavations attempting to locate valuables since shortly after Tiwanaku's fall. This destruction continued during the Spanish conquest and colonial period, and during 19th century and the early 20th century, and has included quarrying stone for building and railroad construction and target practice by military personnel.

Detailed study of Tiwanaku began on a small scale in the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1860s, Ephraim George Squier visited the ruins and later published maps and sketches completed during his visit. German geologist Alphons Stubel spent nine days in Tiwanaku in 1876, creating a map of the site based on careful measurements. He also made sketches and created paper impressions of carvings and other architectural features. A book containing major photographic documentation was published in 1892 by engineer B. von Grumbkow. With commentary by archaeologist Max Uhle, this was the first in-depth scientific account of the ruins.

In the 1960s, an attempt was made at restoring the site, but by very
uninformed parties. The walls pictured to the right, of the Kalasasaya, are almost all reconstruction. The original stones making up the Kalasasaya would have resembled a more "Stonehenge" like style, spaced evenly apart and standing straight up. Unfortunately, the parties that made the reconstructions decided to make the Kalasasaya be enclosed by a wall that they themselves built. Ironically enough, the reconstruction itself is actually much poorer quality stoneworking than the people of Tiwanaku were capable of. It should also be noted that the Gateway of the Sun, that now stands in the Kalasasaya, is not in its original location, having been moved sometime earlier from its original location, which is unknown.

Modern, academically-sound archaeological excavations were performed from 1978 through the 1990s by University of Chicago anthropologist Alan Kolata and his Bolivian counterpart, Oswaldo Rivera. Among their contributions are the rediscovery of the suka kollus, accurate dating of the civilization's growth and influence, and evidence for a drought-based collapse.

Today Tiwanaku is a UNESCO world heritage site, and is administered by the Bolivian government Recently, the Department of Archaeology of Bolivia (DINAR) has been conducting excavations on the Akapana pyramid. The PAPA project, or Proyecto Arqueologico Pumapunku-Akapana (Pumapunku-Akapana Archaeological Project), run by the University of Pennsylvania, has been excavating in the area surrounding the pyramid for the past few years, and also conducting Ground Penetrating Radar surveys of the area. An archaeological field school, offered every summer through Harvard's Summer School Program, offers archaeology students the chance to learn to excavate in the residential area outside the monumental core. The program directors are Dr. Gary Urton of Harvard, expert in quipu, and Dr. Alexei Vranich of the University of Pennsylvania.

MIDDLE HORIZON 600 CE - 1000 CE

The Wari (Spanish Huari) was a Middle Horizon civilization that flourished in the Andes in the south of modern-day Peru, from about 500 to 1200 A.D. The capital city of the same name is located near the modern city of Ayacucho, Peru. This city was the center of a civilization that covered much of the highlands and coast of modern Peru. Early on, their territory expanded to include the ancient oracle center of Pachacamac, though it seems to have remained largely autonomous. Then later it expanded to include much of the territory of the earlier Moche and later Chimu cultures. The best-preserved remnants of the Huari Culture exist near the town of Quinua at the Wari Ruins. Also well-known are the Wari ruins of Pikillaqta ("Flea Town") a short distance south-east of Cuzco en route to LakeTiticaca, which date from the Wari period before the Incas rose to power in the region.
The Wari are historically important for a number of reasons. They were
contemporaries of the Tiwanaku and shared similar artistic styles. Contact between the two cultures appears to have been limited to a span of 50 years in which there was sporadic fighting over a mine first occupied by the Tiwanaku. The mine straddled the border between the two cultures' spheres of influence and the Wari attempted, but failed, to secure it for themselves.
Not much is known about their government, as they did not leave behind any written records. The Wari state established architecturally distinctive administrative centers in many of its provinces. Some 300 years after the Wari empire collapsed, the Incas became the dominant power in the Andean region. The Wari terraced field technology was adopted by the Incas when they began a major push to improve the agricultural productivity of their lands. The Wari had a major road network set up throughout their sphere of influence, which may have become part of the Inca road system.
The native language of the Wari area in recent times has been Quechua, though the comparative and historical study of the Andean languages suggests that the language of the Wari culture may have been a form of Aymara. The Wari culture is not to be confused with the modern ethnic group and language known as Wari', with which it has no known link.
The Wari had access to many natural resources, including minerals, fish, cotton, and wool. This is perhaps why the Wari civilization was comparatively so successful.The Wari was a great empire and though the Inca Empire is more well-known, the Wari lasted four times as long and it may have been the reason that the Inca Empire had cultural unification. During the time of the Wari Empire, the people put an end to cultural regionalism and began cultural unification.

Tiwanaku (Spanish spellings: Tiahuanaco and Tiahuanacu) is an important Pre-Columbian archaeological site in Bolivia. Tiwanaku is recognized by Andean scholars as one of the most important precursors to the Inca Empire, flourishing as the ritual and administrative capital of a major state power for approximately five hundred years. The ruins of the ancient city state are near the south-eastern shore of Lake Titicaca, about 72 km (44 miles) west of La Paz, Bolivia, centered.

Some have hypothesized that Tiwanaku's modern name is related to the Aymara term taypikala, meaning "stone in the center", alluding to the belief that it lay at the center of the world. However, the name by which Tiwanaku was known to its inhabitants has been lost, as the people of Tiwanaku had no written language.

Late Intermediate 1000 CE - 1476 CE

The Wari (Spanish Huari) was a Middle Horizon civilization that flourished in the Andes in the south of modern-day Peru, from about 500 to 1200 A.D.
The capital city of the same name is located near the modern city of Ayacucho, Peru. This city was the center of a civilization that covered much of the highlands and coast of modern Peru. Early on, their territory expanded to include the ancient oracle center of Pachacamac, though it seems to have remained largely autonomous. Then later it expanded to include much of the territory of the earlier Moche and later Chimu cultures. The best-preserved remnants of the Huari Culture exist near the town of Quinua at the Wari Ruins. Also well-known are the Wari ruins of Pikillaqta ("Flea Town") a short distance south-east of Cuzco en route to Lake Titicaca, which date from the Wari period before the Incas rose to power in the region.
The Wari are historically important for a number of reasons. They were
contemporaries of the Tiwanaku and shared similar artistic styles. Contact between the two cultures appears to have been limited to a span of 50 years in which there was sporadic fighting over a mine first occupied by the Tiwanaku. The mine straddled the border between the two cultures' spheres of influence and the Wari attempted, but failed, to secure it for themselves.
Not much is known about their government, as they did not leave behind any written records. The Wari state established architecturally distinctive administrative centers in many of its provinces. Some 300 years after the Wari empire collapsed, the Incas became the dominant power in the Andean region.

The Wari terraced field technology was adopted by the Incas when they began a major push to improve the agricultural productivity of their lands. The Wari had a major road network set up throughout their sphere of influence, which may have become part of the Inca road system. The native language of the Wari area in recent times has been Quechua, though the comparative and historical study of the Andean languages suggests that the language of the Wari culture may have been a form of Aymara. The Wari culture is not to be confused with the modern ethnic group and language known as Wari', with which it has no known link.
The Wari had access to many natural resources, including minerals, fish, cotton, and wool. This is perhaps why the Wari civilization was comparatively so successful.

The Wari was a great empire and though the Inca Empire is more well-known, the Wari lasted four times as long and it may have been the reason that the Inca Empire had cultural unification. During the time of the Wari Empire, the people put an end to cultural regionalism and began cultural unification.

The Chimu were the residents of Chimor with its capital at the city of Chan Chan, a large adobe city, in the Moche valley of Trujillo, Peru. The Inca ruler Tupac Inca Yupanqui led the campaign which conquered just fifty years before the arrival of the Spanish in the region. Spanish chroniclers were able to record accounts of Chimu culture from individuals who had lived before the Inca conquest. Archaeological evidence suggest that Chimor grew out of the remnants of the Moche culture; early Chimu pottery had some resemblance to Moche pottery. Their ceramics are all black and their metalwork is very detailed and intricate.

The Chimu were also known for worshiping the moon, unlike the Inca who worshiped the sun. The Chimu viewed the sun as a destroyer. This is likely due to the harshness of the sun in the desert environment they lived in. The Chimu are best known for their distinctive monochromatic pottery and fine metal working of copper, gold, silver, bronze, and tumbago (copper and gold). The pottery is often in the shape of a creature, or has a human figure sitting or standing on a cuboid bottle. The shiny black finish of most Chimu pottery is not achieved by using glazes, but instead is achieved by firing the pottery at high temperatures in a closed kiln which prevents oxygen from reacting with the clay.

LATE HORIZON 1476 CE - 1534 CE
Chimor (also Kingdom of Chimor) was the political grouping of the Chimu culture that ruled the northern coast of Peru, beginning around 850 AD and ending around 1470 AD. Chimor was the largest kingdom in the Late Intermediate period, encompassing 1000 km of coastline and including up to 2/3 of the people of the Andes. The greatest surviving ruin of this civilization is the mud city of Chan Chan.

The Chimu grew out of the remnants of the Moche culture. The first valleys seem to have joined forces willingly, but Sican was acquired through conquest. They also were significantly influenced by the Cajamarca culture and the Huari. According to legend the capital Chan Chan was founded by Taycanamo who arrived in the area by sea.

Chimor was the last kingdom that had any chance of stopping the Inca. But the Inca conquest was begun in the 1470s by Tupac Inca, defeating to the local emperor Minchancaman, descendant of Tacaynamo, and was nearly complete when Huayna Capac assumed the throne in 1493 AD. Their ceramics are all black. They are also known for their exquisite and intricate metal-working.