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Chan
Chan, Peru: Ancient City of Mud
When most people
think of mud, they think of rainy weather, or mud wrestling; they
may even think of a mud bath. But it is not often that many people
associate mud with a great city.
The vast, desert city of Chan Chan on the northern seacoast of
Peru in South America is the largest adobe, or mud, city in the
world. Adobe is a heavy mixture of clay, sand, and
silt
used to make sun-dried bricks. Adobe was used as a building material
in the
arid
desert city of Chan Chan for three main reasons:
mud and clay were abundant in the desert; adobe was flexible and
easy to mold; and adobe
insulated
from both the heat and
the cold. Wood also was an important building material, used extensively
for the posts and roofs of adobe buildings.
Although adobe is a plain, earth-toned material, its flexibility
allows for elaborate decoration. Chan Chan's exterior and interior
adobe walls were decorated with friezes, designs molded
into the walls, representing all forms of sea life, as well as
human beings, land and forest animals, layered symbols, geometric
shapes, and many other creative designs. The most important areas
were layered with precious metals demonstrating the wealth and
importance of the city and its most powerful inhabitants. |
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Covering nine
square miles, Chan Chan was the largest city in South America
before the Spanish arrived. Built between the 9th and the 15th
centuries, the city was the seat of power of the Chimor Kingdom,
which made remarkable technological and artistic achievements
and eventually stretched some 600 miles along the Pacific coast.
At the height of its power, the Chimor Empire encompassed over
two-thirds of the coast and controlled a complex
irrigation
system.
Chan Chan was the center of the kingdom's craft production, and
thus produced, stored and displayed great wealth. In the late
fifteenth century, highland
Inca
conquered the valuable
city and transferred much of its wealth and many of its skilled
craftsmen to their own capital, Cuzco.
When
conquistador Francisco Pizarro
reached Chan Chan in
around 1470, some sixty years after the Incan conquest, Spaniards
mined the city for gold and other valuables. Five centuries after
the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, grave robbers, known
as huaqueros, continue to dig for treasure. |
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Little gold
or silver remains in Chan Chan today. Nevertheless, the ravaged
city still stands as an immense adobe monument to the accomplishments
of the
Chimu,
bearing unique testimony to their disappeared
kingdom and culture.
Even though the people that lived in Chan Chan left no written
language, the architecture and artifacts left behind speak volumes
to modern archaeologists. Extensive excavations of the center
of Chan Chan have revealed that this city of mud was also a city
of kings.
Archaeologists have uncovered nine
monumental
rectangular
palace complexes, known as ciudadelas, (each large enough
to accommodate nine football fields with room to spare!) which
served
successive
Chimor kings as palaces and
treasuries
in life, and as
shrines
in death. The royal palaces each
contained temples, cemeteries, reservoirs and symmetrically arranged
rooms. These palaces, it is believed, were the living quarters,
warehouses and burial places of the Chimor king, his family and
other important members of the
nobility.
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From the strict
organization of the city, archaeologists have also learned about
the social divisions within the Chimor Empire. The basic organization
of Chan Chan reflects a
hierarchical
society and shows
clearly the ways in which the nobility and the laborers were divided
within Chimu society.
The bulk of the city's population lived outside of the palaces,
in much more modest quarters called barrios. These barrios
were dwellings and workshops where
artisans
worked hard
producing items of various kinds for use by the
elite
and for exchange with other Andean nations and territories.
Because the Chimu people left behind no written records, the ruins
of their vast capital and the artifacts that remain there provide
invaluable insight into their culture. To protect this important
site from decay, as well as from plundering and development pressure,
Chan Chan was placed on the World Heritage List in 1986. That
same year, the site was also placed on the World Heritage List
in Danger to guarantee immediate, emergency action against the
serious conditions that threatened it. |
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Located in one of the world's driest climates, the adobe walls
of Chan Chan are melting and crumbling away. The torrential rains from
El Niño,
however, have caused the greatest deterioration
of Chan Chan, causing entire structures to collapse. As a result,
UNESCO is working hard to guarantee the protection of this extraordinary
relic
of the vanished Chimu civilization.
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