Peru isn’t just all about the Incas, I’m discovering. I’m looking forward to Machu Picchu further down south, but in the meantime there are some things to explore made by some folks who were around a little earlier, namely the Moche people – 100-800AD. These guys were big on diverting river water into canals for irrigation and well known for using mold technology for their pottery, if you didn’t know.
From Chiclayo you can visit the archaeological sites of Sipan and Tucume that have been excavated for the past twenty-five years or so. You can do a day tour that takes you to both these places, plus a viewpoint or two, but we decided to break it up and go ourselves.
It worked out well this way. When we arrived in Sipan, one of the other passengers in the minivan happened to be a guide and offered to show us around for whatever sum we were prepared to pay. I’ve decided that getting a guide really is the best thing to do when you’re visiting ruins or tombs. Unless a place has been decked out with plaques explaining everything or your guidebook explains a lot, you won’t get much out of it without a guide. It also worked out as a bit of a language swap too!
We learned that there used to be a village on the Sipan site. But much like the Chinese at the last Olympics, they weren’t going to let a few peoples homes get in the way of the ‘bigger picture’!
At Sipan there are three pyramids, one formerly used for burials, one for ceremonies and the other for administrative work – literally bean-counting activities. The burial pyramid consisted of layers and, so far, the lowest layer excavated contained remains dating back 1800 years. All the remains, ceramics and gold have been moved to museums, however they have created detailed reconstructions of what they found for you to see. The Sipan site museum, although not containing the majority of artefacts found, is really impressive and I was excited to find that what they had kept the original 1800 year old remains for us to see – human and llama.
The Moche certainly gave their important folk a good send-off. Found in one of the tombs was a priest clad in gold, with some wives, a llama and a dog thrown in for good measure! A total of eight human remains were found in this tomb, presumably seven of which were sacrifices.. there to keep the priest company in the afterlife.
The following day we visited Tucume. It was a hot day and we arrived at the entrance to pay the admission fee. The woman behind the counter offered us insect repellent for an additional 1.50 Soles. Having not seen any mosquitoes since the border entering Peru we politely declined. Then on cue there suddenly appeared a dozen mosquitoes aggressively trying to extract some of our blood. We quickly changed our mind, purchased the repellent and slapped it on. It was a funny situation and I couldn’t help thinking the woman must have had a tin of trained mosquitoes and opened them with perfect timing!
Having already learnt about the pyramids at Sipan and a bit about the Moche people, we decided to have a wander around Tucume without a guide – not that we were offered one anyway! At the 1000-year-old ruins of the city here, you can climb up one of the pyramids and get a spectacular view of the twenty-five others, the walled citadels, and the ancient cemeteries. Although there is something slightly unnatural about the pyramids, you wouldn’t immediately assume that they’re man-made. Certainly the Spanish didn’t. They left them alone thinking they were just mountains and hills. But from a high position, and no doubt due to the excavation work already done, it is easy to see what the ancient culture created.
The knowledge and perception of these ancient cultures will keep evolving with each new find, and at Tucume they reckon that there is still much more to be discovered there. We were able to see some of the work in progress and it really is a painstaking process.
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