…en Perú - Travel Culture History News

Descended from the older Paracas civilisation, the Nazca are of course most famous for their countless mysterious lines drawn in the rocky desert plains in which they lived. They were also great water engineers, creating a series of complex aqueducts.

When you think of the Nazca, you think of their mysterious geometric shapes and lines in the desert, which were seemingly important enough to dedicate such huge amounts of time and resources to create.

From their capital city of Cahuachi, archaeologists have gleamed far more information about this pre-Incan people. This city was of immense, memorising proportions. Most estimates put the terrain it covered at as much as 24km2, that’s, dare I mention it, bigger than Chan Chan, built centuries later. It stretches along the sandy slopes overlooking the fertile valley, in a line that is, by my estimate, about 12km. Here you’ll find dozens of pyramids, broken pottery scattered across the desert and textiles just beneath the surface.

What was found here told us that the Nazca were descendants of the older Paracas culture, continuing their production of some of the most complex and creative textile patterns in the Andean world, and continuing and improving upon their ceramic production techniques, creating new methods to produce colourful and more realistic decoration.

From their ancient burial ground of Chauchilla, we learn that far from being small, the average Nazcan was 1.7m or 5.57ft tall. They also sported long thing dreadlocks that reach the floor.

Other than the fascinating lines, or the huge ceremonial city of Cahuachi, the Nazca are also famous for their complex underground aqueducts, bringing water to the more arid parts of their world. Wells leading down into them are found at Cantalloc, near the much later Inca ruins of Paredones, eventual rulers of this land.

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The Nazcan city of Cahuachi was a stunning and magnificent place. Stretching along the dusty hills above the Nazca River valley are an as-yet unknown number of pyramids and temples - a good number of those rolling hills are not at all natural features. Some estimates of the area the city covered are as much as 24km2 - bigger than even the famous Chimú city of Chan Chan.

Despite its size, no-one but the civilisation’s elite lived here on a permanent basis. Cahuachi was a religious and ceremonial city first, and the administrative centre of the Nasca’s world second. It is thought that huge gatherings took place here, where huge numbers of pilgrims from across the surrounding valley’s came to take part in rituals. Most of the ceramic pottery found here was high quality, beautifully decorated religious pottery - few simple domestic items have been found.

From the ceremonial city it is only a short distance across the valley and across the hills to the main desert plain on which you’ll find the civilisation’s famous geometric patterns, shapes and lines. Could the rituals carried out at Cahuachi and those carried out at the lines be part of the same event, part of the mass gatherings? It is so far unknown.

Grand Pyramid

The first thing that strikes visitors to this archaeological complex, being worked on by Italian Giuseppe Orefici, is the Gran Piramide, perhaps the best restored monument in the city where dozens more remain buried in the sands. Although it too still has a long way to go, it no longer looks like just a mound of sand.

The pyramid, and the other buildings stretching along 17km of the valley, are roughly between 1500 and 2200 years old. As well as pyramids there are ceremonial buildings, workshops, open spaces and places for pilgrims to stay.

At the foot of the Gran Piramide is the Templo del Escalonado, one of the oldest buildings and the most important during the earlier period of the city’s existence. This building was named as such because its walls were decorated with the top half of chakanas(Andean crosses) the look a little like stairs.

We know that music was important to the Nazca - we find images of musicians on many textiles and ceramics, but only from Cahuachi we find out why. It seems, based on archaeological finds of instruments such as flutes and drums at key ceremonial areas, that music was used during religious rituals and ceremonies.

Cahuachi existed for 8 centuries, from 400B.C. to 450A.D. when the city was abandoned. There was no rush in its abandonment though, huge amounts of resources were applied over time to demolish its outer walls and bury the many pyramids beneath the sands. The pyramids ceased to be artificial monuments and returned to nature as towering sandy hills. The city was no longer the capital of the Nasca, and became a holy place, even a burial place.

It is not known what caused the city’s abandonment, and what made the people move on to other newer urban centres, but it is thanks to their attachment to this place, and their care in burying and preserving their city, that one day we might, through our own application of huge amounts of resources, see it in its original form again, uncovered and restored - the biggest of the ancient urban centres of the southern Peruvian coast.

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At least not this one anyway

Italian scientists announced to the world weeks ago that their “new sensing technology” had allowed them to discover a long lost pyramid, not too far the the ancient Nazca archaeological site of Cahuachi. Their “optimizing” of the images with their “special algorithms” seems to have failed them. There’s nothing there.

I decided to head out across the rolling sands of this Nazca valley, under the intense sun and strong gusts of dry throat-cracking winds to see for myself.

Unfortunately, I found a flat piece of land - a field in a farm - which has conveniently greener grasses where a water channel passes through. From satellite this looks remarkably like a pyramid, not the usual kind you find in Peru, but a pyramid.

No pyramid

Closer look

The flat valley floor has clearly changed little in centuries. The only way a pyramid could be buried at this remote location would be if some ancient peoples dug a very deep hole in the valley floor, placed a pyramid inside and covered it up again. Unlikely.

My hopes have been dashed.

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Nazca pyramid discovered

Updated here.

A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru’s Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome.

Nicola Masini and Rosa Lasaponara of Italy’s National Research Council (CNR) discovered the pyramid by analysing images from the satellite Quickbird, which they used to penetrate the Peruvian soil.

The researchers investigated a test area along the river Nazca. Covered by plants and grass, it was about a mile away from Cahuachi’s archaeological site, which contains the remains of what is believed to be the world’s biggest mud city.

Via Quickbird, Masini and colleagues collected hi-resolution infra-red and multi spectral images. After the researchers optimized the images with special algorithms, the result was a detailed visualization of a pyramid extending over a 9,000-square-mile area.

The discovery doesn’t come as a surprise to archaeologists, since some 40 mounds at Cahuachi are believed to contain the remains of important structures.

“We know that many buildings are still buried under Cahuachi’s sands, but until now, it was almost impossible to exactly locate them and detect their shape from an aerial view,” Masini told Discovery News. “The biggest problem was the very low contrast between adobe, which is sun-dried earth, and the background subsoil.”

Cahuachi is the best-known site of the Nazca civilization, which flourished in Peru between the first century B.C. and the fifth century A.D. and slid into oblivion by the time the Inca Empire rose to dominate the Andes.

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The Sicán abandoned the old center of their civilisation at Batán Grande and relocated to the current site of Túcume. Built entirely of adobe mud bricks between 1000-1100 AD, the site flourished for nearly a milenia under Sicán, Chimú and Inca rule until the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. Spread over more than 220 hectares, there are 26 enormous pyramids standing in ruins.

At the centre of their new city is the mountain of La Raya, from which you can survey the valley below.

The pyramids lay in ruins, destroyed by heavy rains brought by the El Niño phenomenon. These were once perfectly formed stepped-pyramids decorated on the outside. There existed different platforms and pyramids for different religious and administrative purposes.

The site is in a particularly arid part of the Lambayeque valley made green by a canal 43-miles long constructed at the same time as Túcume. The now-fertile agricultural land allowed the Sicán to flourish in their new city.

There are pyramids built off along the valley, but the main complex has its focus around the northern side of La Raya. Archaeological work goes on continuously, mostly on the structure named Huaca Larga. Unfortunately, this, the most interesting structure, is off-limits, so are the best finds in the site. Visitors can see what was found in the site museum, walk around two defined paths and climb La Raya.

Cabello de Balboa, recorded the legends of the the peoples of the Lambayeque region in 1586. He was told be Sicán descendents that the grandson of God-King Naymlap set out to build new settlements in the Túcume area after the culture mysteriously burned down their capital in the Pomac forest at Batán Grande. In the mid 1000s AD Túcume was founded and growing. When the Chimú arrived around 1350 AD they found a great city - and conquered it. While part of the Chimú empire, signs of their rule of the complex can be found in Chimú pottery designs. When the Incas conquered the Chimú, Túcume still remained a power centre. The regional Inca governor was buried there in a lavish grave.

The Huaca Larga is off-limits to visitors but it the largest most interesting off all the huacas. It is formed by a pyramid and a large platform extending before it - the longest discovered in Peru at about 700m in length. How it looked originally, no-one knows. When the Chimú arrived on the scene in 1350 AD it was heavily remodelled. Under Chimú rule all buildings were red, white and black - or covered in Chimú style sea-birds reliefs. The Huaca was effectively remodelled to look like Chan Chan in the south, with its high walls, long corridors and room-partitioning.

In Inca times, numerous burials were conducted in the Huaca Larga. Weaving and textile production was performed there, and 19 high-status female Inca weavers were buried there with their best equiptment. Elsewhere in this construction, the regional Inca Governer was buried with all his Inca regala and insignias.

What is known as Huaca 1, was 30 metres high, a stepped pyramid with a narrow ramped leading to its truncated top, where a series of rooms housed the Sicán elite. Its walls wer remodelled by the Chimú, who prefered sea-bird friezes like those seen in Chan Chan.

The Temple of the Sacred Stone is a U-shaped templed in which stands a large boulder. It is the though to have been the most important temple of the site, and all who entered the city of Túcume had to pass through it due to its central location and a walled roadway that lead from the valley to the Huaca Larga passing through it. What this stone was for, no-one knows, but hundreds of offerings were found here, from Spondylus shells, sacrificed llamas and metal ornaments. Even the Incas considered the site important, leaving silver figurines and feather headdresses.

It is with some irony, the most heavily damaged huaca, by weather and looters, also revealed the most preserved discovery at Túcume. The Huaca Balsa has the best preserved high-relief friezes in the region, the most important being the Frieze of the Rafts, which may depict the moment when mysterious Naymlap arrived in the regions after the collapse of the Moche, rebuilding civilisation. It shows a bird-man arriving on a raft, followed by another more people. Another frieze depicts a priest in a temple holding a staff in one hand and a llama in the other.

Although disappointing in that you are not allowed to see any of these interesting finds at Túcume, the site is amazing when seen from the lookout on La Raya.

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This incredible place is as interesting as it is beautiful. Baked in hot sun, cut in half by a river that floods the area in the rainy season and dotted with ancient pyramids, this dry forest of algarrobo trees on the old grounds of the Batán Grande suger-cane hacienda was the highlight of my time in Lambayeque.

35km north of Chiclayo, in Ferreñafe-Pitipo, is the green valley of the Río Leche. Green because it is covered in almost 6000 hectares of forest. It’s not often you get to see a forest on Peru’s desert coast, less often one with dozens of bird species and coastal foxes.

It’s not only a beautiful place that can be hiked around or driven around, its also a huge archaeological site. It was here that the Sicán developed, flourished and then destroyed everything they created for reasons unknown.

Some way into the grounds of the reserve is a large hill with a lookout point. Only by climbing this can you appreciate where you are. You see another hill poking out of the trees. And another, another and another. You may wonder why they are all pyramid shaped… perhaps its because these are gigantic man-made monuments.

Like all the adobe constructions in northern Peru, rains have all but completely wiped out the splendour of these monuments that now appear as if they have been melted. With a bit of imagination though, all is not lost. Remember, these where perfectly formed and decorated stepped pyramids, flattened a little from the peak so that buildings could be placed on top. Huge wide ramps that used more mud bricks than the pyramids themselves led up to them and in some cases even connected some of them together.

More damage has been caused to these structures that just by rain. The foresthad been part of an old hacienda, one that had existed since colonial times. The owner of the land decided instead of paying the peasants who lived there to grow his sugar cane he would be better off paying them to destroy the pyramids to look for gold. Many now have huge sections dug out of them. Locals tell me, from what they heard, this made the land owner very rich, so lots of gold artefacts must have been found and destroyed. The area has since been turned into a national park and protected.

In 1978, Japanese Izumi Shimada, archaeologist and anthropologist began to study the area. It wasn’t until 1992 though that his team discovered a tomb of an elite member of Sicán society. From this grave, 1.2 tonnes of precious metals in the form of jewellery and religious artefacts were removed, now stored in the National Sicán Museum.

Since, more tombs have been found, two either side of the Huaca Loro. At another pyramid 30m (100ft) long, Shimada’s team found the bones of a woman in her early 20s surrounded by figurines of Sicán gods, ceramics and objects in copper and gold. Another set of bones, clearly from a person of some stature, were found in a seated position accompanied by a metallic crown, shells, and ceramics.

The park entrance is just off the road that continues on to the town of Batangrande, you’ll see a big sign on the left. There you will find a building used by archaeologists, and official guides of the project - trained locals. Very few tourists make it here, despite it being the best attraction Lambayeque has in my opinion.

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Not to be confused with the similarly named archaeological site of Sipán, the Sicán were an ancient civilisation that developed in northern Peru between 800 and 1300 AD. Also known as the Lambayeque culture, they were a people of metal workers and pyramid builders descended from the Moche, with trade connections and influence from peoples in the nearby mountains, rainforest and regions such as modern day Ecuador. Their trade system also gave them access to feathers from the Amazon to the east and lapis lazuli from Chile, far to the south.

The Sicán constructed a gigantic city in the forests of Batán Grande in the Leche Valley, known as Poma, this city consisted of huge pyramids that rose above the trees. For reasons unknown to us, the Sicán burned this city to the ground, moving their entire civilisation some distance to Túcume which was conquered by the Chimú in 1350 AD.

Like their Moche ancestors, the people of Sicán used their pyramids for religious rituals and funerals of kings. There exist 34 pyramids in this valley.
They also built a complex irrigation system allowing the desert to be turned into an oasis. The Sicán rulers were buried in deep tombs next to the pyramids. In 1995 Japanese archaeologists Izumi Shimada excavated the Bosque de Pomac ruins discovering two of the richest tombs ever found in the Americas. They contained more than a ton of precious metal in the form of jewellery and ritual artifacts.

It was from the Sicán that the largest ever tumi ceremonial knife was discovered. Taken to Lima, it was stolen from a museum and almost certainly melted down.

The remains of the two large Sicán cities can be found at Túcume and in the Bosque de Pomac at Batán Grande.

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One of the most interesting and often-visited Chimú constructions other than the city of Chan Chan is the Huaca Arco Iris, the rainbow pyramid, otherwise known and the dragon pyramid. This Chimú temple gets these names from the decoration the covers all of it walls. The wall designs depict what looks like a rainbow with what they saw as its 4 distinct colours, with a head that looks like it could be of a dragon. Other mythological characters from the region also appear to be dragon-like and are depicted on pottery.

This religious complex consists of an outer wall with a pyramid inside. A ramp leads to the top, where an extra step of the pyramid, since destroyed by rain, used to be. On top of this step was a roofed temple. To the side of the pyramid are a series of pits in which offerings were put.
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In the aftermath of the collapse of the the Moche civilisation in the late 700s A.D. a new civilisation was born. In the late 800s until the early 1000s the Chimú culture began to establish itself, reaching it’s peak in the 1200s and lasting until the 1490s when they were conquered by the Incas.

The Chimú set up an empire that stretched from Peru’s border with Ecuador to the region of Lima. In the centre of this 1000km stretch of coast the Chimú built their capital city Chan Chan, which is a corruption of the Mochic words Sian-Sian or Sun Sun. At roughly 18km2 it is the biggest adobe city in the world, and was at the time one of the largest cities in the world.

Like the Moche, the Chimú too built stepped pyramids. These hosted temples on their truncated peaks with a large ramp leading up. These constructions were somewhat more simple than those of the Moche and did not contain anything inside - they were solid formations of hundreds of thousands of mud bricks.

Another thing that differentiates the Chimú from their Moche ancestors is their affinity with the sea. This may be due to one of the myths of the origin of their civilisation or simply due to the fact that they relied heavily on a sea food diet, fishing using their caballitos de totora. Whatever their reason, their constructions and monochrome pottery are covered with decorations showing fish, waves, sea birds and fishing nets. Most of their capital city, Chan Chan is less than a few hundred metres from the ocean and can be heard throughout the city.

After the Chincha culture, the Chimú were the next and final strong nation state the Incas had to conquer to form their massive empire. Also an agricultural-based civilisation, this was the major Chimú weakness when the Incas attacked. On entering the Chimor empire and approaching the city of Chan Chan, the Incas made sure to destroy all the irrigation systems that gave life to the sun-baked arid area. The Inca attack began in 1470 and lasted until 1493 with the defeat of the Chimú, who made sure to heavily destroy their capital city and loot its gold before the Incas did.

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In the heart of their world, the Moche constructed two truncated pyramids, the gigantic pyramid of the Sun (sol) and the smaller pyramid of the Moon (luna). These pyramids, and the city that spanned between them functioned as their capital.

The Huaca del Sol is by far the largest of the two and is one of two pyramids in Peru thought to possibly be the largest adobe mud-brick construction in the Americas. It functioned as a political-administrative centre. It is thought to have once been 43 metres high with a base that was 228×136 metres in size. Unfortunately this pyramid has been heavily damaged. Rather that looting the pyramid by hand, digging through the 130,000,000 mud bricks it took to construct, in order to find gold, the Spanish decided they’d divert the nearby river to wash the pyramid away and catch any gold being washed out. The Huaca del Sol now sits mostly destroyed, waiting for funds to begin restoration, excavation and investigation.

The Huaca de la Luna is the smaller of the two, but work has been carried out on it that has uncovered some amazing things. For me, this pyramid that functioned as the religious, ceremonial and sacrificial centre of the Moche, was probably the most interesting archaeological site I have seen in Peru. I couldn’t possibly have imagined that any mud construction could be so breath-taking.

Temples in the Huaca de la Luna were superimposed over each other over different periods of Moche civilisation, in this way the pyramid continued to grow. The base is 87m² and 21m high.

	Sacrifice was an important part of the Moche culture (described here), and lots of sacrifice took place here. Backed onto a nearby rocky-peak (Cerro Blanco or White Hill), the pyramid has a rocky outcrop of rock that pokes out of the sand. It was here that the Moche killed their prisoners as a sacrifice to the mountains to continue bringing rain to the valley from the Andes. Archaeologists discovered here the remains of as many as 40 male corpses here, presumably killed by being thrown down onto the rock.
	Ai-Apaec was the primary god of the Moche, sometimes referred to a the Great Decapitator. Inside the pyramid, with the newer outer layers of the pyramid pealed back, with see dozens of these beautiful images. Some depict different emotions - happiness, sadness or anger.
	The Moche plastered the walls of their pyramids with their distinctive art. In this image try to make out the animals it depicts. Entire lengths of walls were decorated:
	The main ceremonial area of the temple was beautifully decorated. There are several layers of images on these walls, each distinctive of specific periods of time. Priests would stand hear giving sermons to the groups the gathered at the base of the pyramid. This pulpit is on the top of the pyramid.
	This stepped-pyramid is huge, each step higher than a person. When I exited through this tear created by the Spanish I was awestruck. This entire face of the pyramid is preserved and it takes no great amount of imagination to see how spectacular the whole thing would have looked in Moche times. Inside the tear you can see the layer of the temple that came before.

I strongly urge you to see the large versions of these photos, bellow.
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