Chimor: the Chimú kingdom and its capital Chan Chan

The Chimú arose in the valleys once ruled by the Moche, and their capital, Chan Chan, stood at the mouth of the Moche Valley, about 5 km west of present-day Trujillo; its construction is believed to have begun around 850. According to Chimú oral tradition, the dynasty began with Taycanamo, who came from the sea on a balsa raft and founded the kingdom; his son Guacricaur took the lower valley and his grandson Ñancenpinco the upper valley and the neighbouring valleys. The city lived on irrigation: canals carried water from the Moche river to the fields, and a catastrophic flood around 1100 destroyed many of the northern canals, which pushed the Chimú to rely more on resources from beyond the valley.

At its height Chan Chan covered some 20 km², with a dense core of about 6 km² dominated by ten walled compounds (ciudadelas) with plazas, storerooms and burial platforms, thought to have been palaces of its rulers, while artisans lived and worked in small crowded rooms; estimates of its population range from 30,000 to 60,000. Its adobe walls were carved with fish, birds, waves and nets. The Chimú worshipped the Moon, prized Spondylus shells brought from the warm waters off Ecuador, made polished black pottery and worked gold, silver, copper and tumbaga.

The great expansion came late: the last Chimú kingdom is thought to have taken shape in the first half of the 14th century, Ñancenpinco is believed to have ruled around 1370, and the Chimú conquered the Lambayeque region of the Sicán culture and extended their rule along some 1,000 km of coast. Chimor was the last Andean kingdom able to challenge the Inca, but in the 1470s Topa Inca Yupanqui defeated its ruler Minchançaman, who was taken to Cuzco. Chan Chan became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986 and was at once placed on the list of sites in danger, its adobe threatened by the rains of El Niño.