Chan Chan

Chan Chan is a massive adobe structure near the town of Trujillo in northern Peru. It's the largest adobe city in the world, but because of exposure to rain some parts of it are rapidly deteriorating. Basically, the city consists of 9 palaces where each successive ruler built his own private quarters. But each one of these 9 quarters is huge and takes a lot of time to walk around, so only one is open to the public in order to preserve the other 8. It's been estimated that more than 30,000 people lived in this city made of clay that sits right next to the Pacific Ocean. The beauty of Chan Chan lies in its delicate and very sophisticated carvings. Unlike its ancestors, the Chimu people used very uniform, highly organised carvings as a source of artistic expression. Kevin writes about the Huacas (pyramids) we visited and if you compare the images, the Moche people's art work is much more "modern" looking and very sophisticated.



The Chimu people mostly used forms from marine life, which is quite different to earlier civilizations which preferred to use feline or more ambigious forms. The carvings at Chan Chan depict fish, pelicans, and nets for catching various sea creatures.



Some pelicans created with a graphic, stylised formation.



This image is not from Chan Chan but rather from Huaca Arco Iris which was also built by the Chimu people. In English, Arco Iris means rainbow and from the carving you can see why it's called that. On each side of the rainbow are 2 dragons that are supposed to represent duality, male and female. However, to me lots of the dragons looked quite similar and not actually different genders!



The thing about all these sites in Peru is that much of what the guides tell you is guess work and conjecture. The truth is, there is no written language to fall back on which retells the history of the early Peruvians. However, through the remaining imagery, archeologists have tried to piece together a story of the past that, though not necessarily all factual, tell a compelling story of the ancients in Peru. So in a way, Peru is like the Egypt of the Americas, but at the same time it's a much younger culture and doesn't have the benefit of having a written language like the Egyptians did with their hieroglyphs.