{"it":{"id":"SAM-002","kind":"site","sub":"South America","name":"Chan Chan","place":"Peru","lat":-8.106,"lon":-79.074,"date":"Chimor, a conquest state, developed from the Chimú culture that established itself…","mat":"adobe;clay","nfacts":5,"tags":["Andes"],"sum":"Chan Chan, the capital of the Chimú state on Peru's coast, covered about 20 km², with a dense core of about 6 km² (UNESCO). It was the largest city built of mud brick in the pre-Columbian Americas, and one of the largest in the world.","src":[295,604],"nsrc":3,"why":"A city of mud brick survives only where rain is rare, which makes Chan Chan both remarkable and fragile.","yt":"The largest earthen city in the ancient Americas is exposed to rare but heavy rain. How much should be spent to hold back the weather?","rel":["SAM-001","SAM-003"],"hook":"Chan Chan's monumental core covers about 6 km² of a city that once spread across 20 km² of earth."},"S":{"295":["Wikipedia: Chan Chan","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Chan"],"604":["UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Chan Chan Archaeological Zone","https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/366"]},"rec":{"id":"SAM-002","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"archeological site in the department of La Libertad","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"5","u":"km","o":"REF0 The city is now an archeological site in the department of La Libertad 5 km west of Trujillo, Peru.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chan_Chan&oldid=1382092046","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1382092046 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2299"},{"f":"The city of Chan Chan spanned","a":"area","v":"20","u":"km2","o":"The city of Chan Chan spanned 20 km2 and had a dense urban center of 6 km2 which contained extravagant ciudadelas.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chan_Chan&oldid=1382092046","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1382092046 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2300"},{"f":"km2 and had a dense urban center of","a":"area","v":"6","u":"km2","o":"The city of Chan Chan spanned 20 km2 and had a dense urban center of 6 km2 which contained extravagant ciudadelas.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chan_Chan&oldid=1382092046","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1382092046 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2301"},{"f":"A typical citadel complex in the city is","a":"height","v":"40","u":"feet","o":"A typical citadel complex in the city is 40 feet tall and built with only one entrance.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chan_Chan&oldid=1382092046","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1382092046 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2302"},{"f":"the city relied on wells that were approximately","a":"depth","v":"15","u":"meters","o":"Originally the city relied on wells that were approximately 15 meters deep.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chan_Chan&oldid=1382092046","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1382092046 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2303"}],"lab":[{"k":"Materials","mat":"site material (as stated in article)","m":"documentary mention (Wikipedia, auto-extracted)","v":"They are trying to create rain coverings over the buildings to protect them from the rain and save the adobe buildings that are deteriorating.","by":"no inline ref in article","b":"S","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chan_Chan&oldid=1382092046"}],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"Chimor, a conquest state, developed from the Chimú culture that established itself along the Peruvian coast around 900 CE.","dm":"[see dating_excerpt; method not extracted]","lab":"NO: inference only (style/context/king list/textual)","weak":"no direct lab result on the structure in our records; date from stylistic, contextual or textual inference","unesco":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/366","dens":"CENSUS"},"co":{"lat":"-8.10583333","lon":"-79.07444444","src":"Wikidata P625 + UNESCO WHC list XML (agree ≤0.05°)","agree":"agree","b":"V","note":"two independent sources agree; max delta 0.0007 deg (~0.08 km)","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/26324339"},"src":[{"id":"S0280","t":"no inline ref in article","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chan_Chan&oldid=1382092046"},{"id":"S0456","t":"Wikipedia: Chan Chan","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Chan"},{"id":"S2605","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Chan Chan Archaeological Zone","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/366"},{"id":"VSAM-002-4","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Chan Chan Archaeological Zone","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/366/"},{"id":null,"t":"Archaeology Magazine: Peru’s Great Urban Experiment (May/June 2023)","u":"https://archaeology.org/issues/may-june-2023/features/peru-chimu-chan-chan/"},{"id":null,"t":"The Art Newspaper: 600-year-old funerary platform discovered in Peru (18 September 2026)","u":"https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/09/18/funerary-platform-discovered-peru-chan-chan-chimu"},{"id":null,"t":"Ministerio de Cultura del Perú: Chan Chan refuerza acciones de conservación preventiva ante lluvias por el Fenómeno El Niño 2026-2027 (30 October 2026)","u":"https://www.gob.pe/institucion/cultura/noticias/1466085-chan-chan-refuerza-acciones-de-conservacion-preventiva-ante-lluvias-por-el-fenomeno-el-nino-2026-2027"}],"sum":"In the sixteenth century, a Spanish list recorded what had been taken from a single tomb at Chan Chan: treasure worth 80,000 pesos of gold. By then the city was already in decline. The Inca had conquered its kingdom some sixty years earlier and dispersed its people; in the 1530s the Spaniards founded the town of Trujillo nearby, and the old capital's riches were looted. Of the nine or so elite funerary platforms found since, every one had been robbed. What the looters could not carry away was the city itself, because it was made of earth.\n\nChan Chan stands at the mouth of the Moche Valley on Peru's north coast, about five kilometres west of Trujillo, in a particularly arid stretch of the northern coastal desert. The valley received less than a tenth of an inch of rain a year. It was the capital of the Chimú kingdom, known as Chimor, which grew from a culture established on this coast around 900 CE and reached its height in the fifteenth century. UNESCO calls it the largest earthen city of the pre-Columbian Americas; Archaeology magazine calls it the largest adobe city in the world, and Wikipedia's account ranks it second. Its monumental zone covers about 6 square kilometres at the centre of a city that once spread across some 20. The protected site covers 14. Estimates of its population run from about 40,000, perhaps 12,000 of them artisans, to as many as 60,000.\n\nAt the city's heart are nine great rectangular compounds, which archaeologists call citadels or palaces, enclosed by high, thick walls of mud brick. Accounts of their height vary from about 30 feet to 12 metres; one compound's walls are five metres thick at the base and a metre at the top, a taper read as a precaution against earthquakes. Each palace had a single entrance. Winding corridors led to a royal residence with kitchens and wells, storerooms for treasure, plazas for feasting, reservoirs, and funerary platforms for the dead. Around the nine stood 32 smaller compounds and four production sectors for weaving, woodwork and metalwork. Ordinary people lived in tight clusters of small, irregular rooms, many of them workshops. To feed all of this, a canal about 80 kilometres long brought water from the Moche and Chicama rivers to fields north, east and west of the city.\n\nThe walls were decorated. Friezes of abstract patterns, people and animals run along them, and at the compound known as Tschudi, the reliefs speak of the sea: waves, fishing nets, pelicans, a creature that mixes sea lion and otter, and rows of fish, some facing north and some south. The fish can be read as the two currents that shape this coast, the cold Humboldt from the south and the warm El Niño from the north.\n\nThe Chimú chose this spot around AD 1000, by one account, or around 850 by another, and built over some 450 years. By the mid-1400s their kingdom stretched about 600 miles along the coast, from the Lambayeque Valley to the Pativilca River. In about 1450, or around 1470 by other reckonings, the Inca ruler Tupac Yupanqui defeated the eleventh and last Chimú king, Minchançaman, and carried him to Cuzco.\n\nThe mainstream reading of Chan Chan has been one of rigid order. UNESCO describes the plan as \"an absolute masterpiece of town planning,\" with each compound an independent unit in a strict political and social hierarchy, and the grand funerary platforms inside the palaces are usually linked to Chimú kings. In September 2026 Peru announced a nearly intact platform in the Utzh An compound, holding 38 people with jewellery, metal weapons and textiles.\n\nThe turn comes from the edges. The city was first mapped as a whole between 1968 and 1974, and since 2006 the state has dug mainly in the palaces. In 2022 Gabriel Prieto of the University of Florida began excavating an ordinary neighbourhood on the south-west side. Two houses facing each other across a street turned out to have very different plans, and he concluded the city grew to suit its residents rather than one master design. Radiocarbon dates put the last levels of both houses after 1450, perhaps as late as 1470, after the city was thought to have been abandoned.\n\nFurther north lies a darker record. Between 2011 and 2022, Prieto and John Verano excavated three sites about six miles from the city and found 451 sacrificed children aged five to 15, 36 sacrificed adults, mostly women, and 620 young llamas. Radiocarbon dates showed repeated ceremonies over some 400 years from about 1050, not a single event. Isotope tests on 30 of the children found that 63% had not been born in the valley's core. The only written mention of Chimú child sacrifice, by the Spanish friar Antonio de la Calancha, says it took place during eclipses of the moon.\n\nThe danger now is the sky. A city of earth survives only where rain is rare, and Chan Chan lies in the path of El Niño, the recurring warming of the Pacific that brings heavy rain to this normally dry coast. UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site on 28 November 1986 and placed it at once on the List of World Heritage in Danger, citing its fragile earthen buildings, extreme weather, illegal farming and a highway that cuts the site in two. Conservators have tried rain covers and new drainage, and a 1998 master plan reinforced key structures with a blend of traditional and modern methods. The site still counts 46 points of critical damage. In October 2026 Peru's Ministry of Culture said teams were carrying out preventive repairs ahead of the rains expected with the El Niño of 2026 and 2027, against runoff, damp and the loss of the walls' protective layers.\n\nOn the Tschudi walls the clay fish still swim in their two directions, one shoal toward the cold current and one toward the warm, carved by a people who watched the sea closely. The warm current they marked in mud is the one whose rain, when it comes, softens the mud they were carved in.","qs":["The largest earthen city in the ancient Americas is exposed to rare but heavy rain. How much should be spent to hold back the weather?","Nine walled compounds sit at Chan Chan's core. What does a city built as separate fortified units say about who ran it?","Chan Chan was the capital of a kingdom, then the Inca took it. Why do we hear so much less about the Chimú?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/Chan_chan_view1.jpg/1280px-Chan_chan_view1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chan_chan_view1.jpg","title":"Chan chan view1.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/","by":"Håkan Svensson","cap":"Chan Chan, the huge adobe town from Chimu time. Trujillo, Peru."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/2026_07_19_Fish_and_Pelican_carvings.jpg/1280px-2026_07_19_Fish_and_Pelican_carvings.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2026_07_19_Fish_and_Pelican_carvings.jpg","title":"2026 07 19 Fish and Pelican carvings.jpg","lic":"CC0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en","by":"IncredibleZander","cap":"Wall carvings of fish and pelican"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/2026_07_19_Otter_wall_carving.jpg/1280px-2026_07_19_Otter_wall_carving.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2026_07_19_Otter_wall_carving.jpg","title":"2026 07 19 Otter wall carving.jpg","lic":"CC0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en","by":"IncredibleZander","cap":"Otter carvings in the main ceremonial plaza of Chan Chan"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Adobe_detail_at_Chan_Chan.JPG/1280px-Adobe_detail_at_Chan_Chan.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adobe_detail_at_Chan_Chan.JPG","title":"Adobe detail at Chan Chan.JPG","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"Kevstan","cap":"Detail of adobe relief motif at the Chan Chan complex built by the Chimor culture near modern Trujillo, Peru"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Chan_Chan_18.jpg/1280px-Chan_Chan_18.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chan_Chan_18.jpg","title":"Chan Chan 18.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0","by":"MacAllen Brothers","cap":"Carved adobe decoration, Chan Chan Archaeological Zone, Peru"}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"20","u":"km²","h":"Largest adobe city in the Americas, second in the world","s":[50]},{"v":"Adobe, clay","h":"Made of","s":[50]}],"hs":{"50":["Wikipedia: Chan Chan (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Chan"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/SAM-002.webp","w":1280,"h":856,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/Chan_chan_view1.jpg/1280px-Chan_chan_view1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}