Chan Chan, sometimes called Chimor, was the capital city of the Chimor kingdom, a pre-Columbian era culture in South America. The city is now an archeological site in the department of La Libertad five kilometers (3.1 mi) west of Trujillo, Peru. Chan Chan is located in the mouth of the Moche Valley and was the capital of the historical empire of the Chimor from 900 to 1470, when they were defeated and incorporated into the Inca Empire.
A capital of the Chimú kingdom
Chan Chan is believed to have been constructed around 850 AD by the Chimú. It was the Chimor empire capital city with an estimated population of 40,000–60,000 people. After the Inca conquered the Chimú around 1470 AD, Chan Chan fell into decline. The Incas used a system called the "Mitma system of ethnic dispersion" which separated the Chimú civilians into places already recently conquered by the Inca. A little over 60 years later in 1535 AD, Francisco Pizarro founded the Spanish city of Trujillo which pushed Chan Chan further into the shadows.
While no longer a teeming capital city, Chan Chan was still well known for its great riches and was consequently looted by the Spaniards. An indication of the great Chimú wealth is seen in a sixteenth-century list of items looted from a burial tomb in Chan Chan; a treasure equivalent to 80,000 pesos of gold was recovered. In 1969, Michael Moseley and Carol J. Mackey began excavations of Chan Chan.
Royal compounds and city life
The archaeological site covers an area of approximately 20 square kilometres (7.7 square miles), being considered the largest adobe city in the Americas and the second in the world. The walled complex "Tschudi" is the greatest in illustration of the importance of water, particularly of the sea, and of the cult that surrounded it in the Chimu culture. The high reliefs of the walls represent fish, directed towards the north and the south (what can be interpreted as representation of the two currents that mark the Peruvian coast: that of Humboldt, cold, that comes from the south and the one of El Niño, hot, that comes from the north), waves, rombito (fishing nets), as well as pelicans and anzumitos (mixture of sea lion and otter).
Chan Chan has many different types of buildings many of which have been destroyed. The buildings included temples, houses, reservoirs, and even funeral platforms, often decorated with ocean-like designs such as fish, birds, otters, waves, and more. The Chimú built buildings mostly in a rectangular or square shape through tight spaces. The city consisted of ten citadels, of which only four have been recovered. Chan Chan held many different types of workers and people. The people lived in a socially-stratified society, deities and rulers ranking highest and servants lowest. The city consisted of nobles, farmers, fishers, traders, servants, and those of many more occupations.
Chan Chan had many craftsmen in the city who designed beautiful fabrics, pots, and ceramics. The Chimú expressed a belief that the sun created three eggs, gold for the ruler and the elite, silver for the spouses of the rulers, and copper for anyone not among those two categories.
Adobe architecture and water
The city has ten walled ciudadelas that housed ceremonial rooms, burial chambers, temples, reservoirs, and residences for the Chimú rulers. In addition to the ciudadelas, other compounds present in Chan Chan include courts, or audiencias, small, irregular agglutinated rooms (SIARs) and mounds called huacas. Evidence for the significance of these structures is seen in many funerary ceramics recovered from Chan Chan. Many images seemingly depict structures very similar to audiencias which indicates the cultural importance of architecture to the Chimú people of Chan Chan.
Additionally, the construction of these massive architectural feats indicates that there was a large labor force available at Chan Chan. This further supports evidence for a hierarchical structure of society in Chan Chan as it was likely that the construction of this architecture was the skilled work of members of the culture. Originally the city relied on wells that were approximately 15 meters deep. To increase the farmland surrounding the city, a vast network of canals diverting water from the Moche river were created.
Once these canals were in place, the city had the potential to grow substantially. Many canals to the north were destroyed by a catastrophic flood around 1100 AD, which was the key motivation for the Chimú to refocus their economy to one rooted in foreign resources rather than in subsistence farming. Chan Chan's irrigations systems were one of the main reasons they ended up being conquered by the Incas.