Photos

Here's the reconstitution of the Senior de Sipan's burial, on Sipan excavation site nearby Chiclayo.

Around a thousand years before the Incas, between the first and seventh centuries A.D., the Moches occupied a 600-kilometre wide band of desert off the northern coast of Peru, sandwiched by the Pacific Ocean and the Andes. Only a civilization with highly developed technical resources could have survived in one of the world’s most arid regions. The Moches achieved this feat by developing a complex network of irrigation canals supplying water to double the amount of land now cultivated in the same valleys. Divided into small dominions ruled by autocratic lords, the Moches built giant adobe buildings in the shape of truncated pyramids, the most outstanding example of which is the 35-metre high Huaca del Sol. They also engaged in pioneering metal production, particularly with copper, and established sophisticated textile workshops.The discovery in 1987 of the tomb close to the town of Sipán belonging to a dignitary in one of the Moches’ royal families has enabled researchers to learn much more about a hitherto largely unknown civilization.

Source: UNESCO