Chimu Kingdom and Chan Chan: Adobe Capital of Peru

The Chimu kingdom, also called Chimor, dominated the northern coast of Peru from about 900 until it fell to the Inca around 1470. Its capital, Chan Chan, near the modern city of Trujillo, was the largest city in pre-Columbian South America and is often called the largest adobe city in the world. The Chimu are remembered for their monumental palaces, their great irrigation canals and their fine metalwork and textiles.

Background: the north coast of Peru

The Peruvian coast is one of the driest deserts on Earth, crossed by short rivers that run down from the Andes to the Pacific. Every society that flourished there depended on irrigation canals to turn these river valleys into farmland. The Moche Valley had already been the heart of the Moche civilization in the first millennium AD.

After the Moche declined, new powers emerged along the coast. In the Lambayeque region to the north, the Sicán culture built large ceremonial centres. In the Moche Valley, the people later known as the Chimu began to build Chan Chan around 850–900, and the city grew over the following centuries into the capital of an expanding state.

Origins and expansion

What is known of Chimu political history comes partly from archaeology and partly from traditions recorded by Spanish writers after the conquest. According to one account, a founder named Tacaynamo arrived by sea on a raft of logs, settled in the Moche Valley and founded the ruling dynasty. Around ten rulers are said to have followed him, though their names and dates cannot be confirmed independently.

From the fourteenth century the Chimu expanded beyond the Moche Valley. Around 1375 they took over the Lambayeque region, and at their height they controlled roughly 1,000 km of coast, from near the modern border with Ecuador to the Chillón Valley close to present-day Lima. Provincial centres such as Farfán in the Jequetepeque Valley administered conquered territory on behalf of the capital.

Chan Chan: the adobe capital

Chan Chan covered about 20 square kilometres, with a dense core of about 6 square kilometres. It was built almost entirely of adobe, or sun-dried mud brick, plastered and decorated. Population estimates vary, but commonly range from about 30,000 to 60,000 people.

At the heart of the city stand around ten enormous walled compounds, known by the Spanish name ciudadelas. Their walls rose up to about 9 metres high and enclosed courtyards, storerooms, audience chambers and burial platforms. Most archaeologists think that each ciudadela was built by a king as his palace and administrative centre, and became his tomb and the seat of his cult after death. The best restored, now called Tschudi or Nik An, is the one most visitors see.

The walls were covered with moulded friezes of fish, seabirds, waves, crustaceans and lattice patterns, reflecting the importance of the sea to the Chimu. Around the royal compounds lay residences for lesser nobles and large districts of crowded houses and workshops for artisans. Sunken gardens called wachaques, dug down to the water table, supplied reeds and crops.

Economy, irrigation and crafts

Chimu power rested on farming and fishing. The state extended canal systems across the coastal valleys, and its most ambitious project, the La Cumbre canal, was planned to carry water some 70–80 km from the Chicama Valley to fields near Chan Chan. Archaeologists still debate whether it ever worked fully.

Chimu craftsmen were renowned. Their metalworkers produced gold and silver vessels, ear ornaments, masks and ceremonial knives, and their potters made the polished black pottery typical of the culture. Weavers produced fine cotton and camelid-fibre textiles, sometimes decorated with feathers. Much of this production was organised in workshops controlled by the elite.

The Chimu also practised sacrifice. At Huanchaquito–Las Llamas, near Chan Chan, archaeologists found the remains of more than 130 children and over 200 young llamas, sacrificed around 1450. The find, published in 2019, is the largest known mass child sacrifice in the Americas and may have been linked to severe El Niño rains.

Society and belief

Chimu society was sharply divided. At the top stood the king and the royal lineage, who lived in the ciudadelas and claimed a different origin from commoners. Below them were nobles, administrators and priests, then specialised craftspeople, and finally farmers and fishermen, who made up the great majority. Access to the royal compounds was tightly controlled through narrow, winding passages and U-shaped audience rooms called audiencias, which seem to have been checkpoints for officials who managed stored goods.

Spanish writers of the colonial period recorded that the people of the north coast honoured the Moon, called Si in the local Mochica language, as a powerful deity, together with the sea and other forces of nature. Two main languages were spoken in the Chimu realm: Quingnam around Chan Chan and further south, and Mochica in the Lambayeque area. Both later died out, Mochica in the twentieth century.

Burial customs reflected rank. Royal burial platforms inside the ciudadelas held the king together with rich offerings and, in some cases, the remains of many young women who appear to have been sacrificed to accompany him. Ordinary people were buried in simpler cemeteries outside the palaces.

Conquest by the Inca

In the fifteenth century the Chimu came into conflict with the rapidly expanding Inca state. Around 1470, Inca armies led by Topa Inca Yupanqui, son of Pachacuti, conquered Chimor, reportedly in part by threatening its water supply. The last independent ruler, Minchançaman, was taken to Cusco. The full story is told in the Inca conquest of Chimor.

The Inca moved many Chimu metalworkers to Cusco, and Chimu styles influenced Inca art. Chan Chan lost its role as a capital and declined. After the Spanish conquest in the 1530s, treasure hunters dug into its burial platforms for gold, and some colonial companies were even formed to exploit the ruins.

Timeline

• c. 850–900: Building begins at Chan Chan in the Moche Valley.
• c. 900–1300: The Chimu state consolidates control of the Moche Valley and neighbours.
• c. 1375: The Chimu take over the Lambayeque region to the north.
• c. 1450: Mass sacrifice of children and llamas at Huanchaquito–Las Llamas.
• c. 1470: Inca armies under Topa Inca Yupanqui conquer Chimor.
• 1530s: Spanish conquest; looting of Chan Chan’s burial platforms begins.
• 1986: Chan Chan is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and placed on the List in Danger.

Legacy

Chan Chan was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986 and placed at once on the List of World Heritage in Danger, because its mud-brick walls are vulnerable to erosion by rain, wind and salt. Strong El Niño events, which bring heavy rain to the normally dry coast, are a particular threat, and conservation work continues.

The Chimu were the last great coastal state of ancient Peru. Their administrative systems, roads and craft traditions were absorbed by the Inca, and their city remains one of the most striking urban landscapes of the ancient Americas.

Why it matters

The Chimu kingdom shows how a desert society, through irrigation and strong central organisation, built the largest Andean state before the Inca. Chan Chan, with its royal compounds and sea-themed friezes, is a unique record of that achievement and one of the world’s great earthen cities.