Chan Chan (Spanish pronunciation: [tʃaɲ.ˈtʃaŋ]), sometimes called Chimor, was the capital city of the Chimor kingdom, a pre-Columbian era culture in South America. The city is now an archeological site in the department of La Libertad five kilometers (3.1 mi) west of Trujillo, Peru.
Chan Chan is located in the mouth of the Moche Valley and was the capital of the historical empire of the Chimor from 900 to 1470, when they were defeated and incorporated into the Inca Empire. Chimor, a conquest state, developed from the Chimú culture that established itself along the Peruvian coast around 900 CE.
Chan Chan is in a particularly arid section of the coastal desert of northern Peru. Due to the lack of rain in this area, the major source of nonsalted water for Chan Chan is in the form of rivers carrying surface runoff from the Andes. This runoff allows for control of land and water through irrigation systems.
The city of Chan Chan spanned 20 square kilometers (7.7 mi2; 4,900 acres) and had a dense urban center of six square kilometers (2.3 mi2; 1,500 acres) which contained extravagant ciudadelas. Ciudadelas were large architectural masterpieces which housed plazas, storerooms, and burial platforms for the royals. The splendor of these ciudadelas suggests their association with the royal class. Housing for the lower classes of Chan Chan's hierarchical society are known as small, irregular agglutinated rooms (SIARs). Because the lower classes were often artisans whose role in the empire was to produce crafts, many of these SIARs were used as workshops.
Etymology
The original meaning and the language of origin of the place name Chan Chan remain unresolved issues among specialists. Among others, scholars such as Ernst Middendorf, Jorge Zevallos Quiñones, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino and Matthias Urban have dealt with the question. The puzzle is made difficult by the erratic nature of its written record in colonial documents and by the linguistic situation of the pre-Hispanic North Peruvian coast. As is known, the Trujillo region presented the Mochica, Quingnam, Culli and Quechua languages, among others, of which only Mochica and Quechua are sufficiently documented.
Currently, there are two linguists (Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino and Matthias Urban) who have done an etymological analysis, one more than the other, but both rule out a Mochica origin.
Etymological analysis by Matthias Urban
Regarding the variation in its written record, the toponym appears for the first time in documentation written as 'Cauchan' in the foundation act of the Trujillo town council of 1536. It has also been proposed that the name 'Canda' offered by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo to refer to Trujillo is another written variant of the modern Chan Chan. The form 'Chanchan' only appears in documentation in a stable manner from the mid-17th century onwards.
According to the review of antecedents offered by Urban, there have been three previous etymological proposals for the toponym, two of which can be considered completely fanciful and unmotivated. The etymologies of H. Bauman as 'city of snakes', who unmotivatedly appeals to Mesoamerican languages, and that of J. Kimmich as 'city of the moon', who unmotivatedly appeals to a Cariban word for 'moon', deserve the latter qualification. The third etymological hypothesis was postulated by German scholar Ernst Middendorf, who offers the Mochica noun xllang 'sun' as etymology and finds in the toponym a reduplication of that root. Without being convinced by any of these previous proposals, Urban is inclined to the tentative attribution of the toponym to the extinct Quingnam language already proposed by Zevallos Quiñones in the XXth century. According to these authors, although it is not possible to offer an etym nor a primary meaning for the place name, the Quingnam attribution is justified by the fact that this was the language of the kingdom of Chimor and by the similarity in its apparent structure with other regional toponyms and anthroponyms also apparently constituted by the reduplication of two monosyllabic roots. Urban concludes that
[...] for the moment there is no other solution than to conclude with Zevallos Quiñones ([1995] 2010, p. 11): "As long as there are no grammatical findings about Chimo's own language, Quingnam, in any American or European archive containing sermons, vocabularies, etc., we will remain without knowing the term Chan Chan, since there is no possible scientific help".
— Urban (2017, p. 135)
Etymological analysis by Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino
More recently, linguist Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino suggests a Quechumaran etymology for the toponym. According to his hypothesis, both the form 'Chanchan' and the variants 'Cauchan' and 'Canda' may well be explained by a Quechua etym *kanĉa 'corral, fence, fenced place', and the Quechumaran toponymic morpheme *-n (of probable Aymara etymology). Thus, the current pronunciation would be the product of an "orthographic trap", since originally the ⟨ch⟩ would have been used to represent the sound of a voiceless velar stop [k] at the beginning of the word. Originally, the toponym would have been *kanĉa-n(i) '(place) where fences/corrals abound', whose Quechualization results in phonetic /kantʃáŋ/ in ⟨Chanchán⟩. According to this proposal, the toponym would be neither Mochica nor Quingnam, nor would it be so ancient in time. However, Urban has rejected Cerrón-Palomino's hypothesis as implausible and ratified his previous conclusions. In response to this, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino dismisses Urban's observations and reaffirms his proposed etymology, concluding that it is definitely Quechumaran.
History
Chan Chan is believed to have been constructed around 850 AD by the Chimú. It was the Chimor empire capital city with an estimated population of 40,000–60,000 people.
After the Inca conquered the Chimú around 1470 AD, Chan Chan fell into decline. The Incas used a system called the "Mitma system of ethnic dispersion" which separated the Chimú civilians into places already recently conquered by the Inca. A little over 60 years later in 1535 AD, Francisco Pizarro founded the Spanish city of Trujillo which pushed Chan Chan further into the shadows. While no longer a teeming capital city, Chan Chan was still well known for its great riches and was consequently looted by the Spaniards. An indication of the great Chimú wealth is seen in a sixteenth-century list of items looted from a burial tomb in Chan Chan; a treasure equivalent to 80,000 pesos of gold was recovered (nearly $5,000,000 US dollars in gold).
In 1969, Michael Moseley and Carol J. Mackey began excavations of Chan Chan; today these excavations continue under the Peruvian Instituto Nacional de Cultura.
UNESCO World Heritage Site
On 28 November 1986, UNESCO designated Chan Chan as a World Heritage Site, and placed it on the List of World Heritage in Danger. The World Heritage Committee's initial recommendations included taking the appropriate measures for conservation, restoration, and management; halting any excavation that did not have accompanying conservation measures; and mitigation of plundering. A Pan-American Course on the Conservation and Management of Earthen Architectural and Archaeological Heritage was funded by many institutes coming together, including ICCROM, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Government of Peru. Archeologists have been trying to protect this city in many ways. They are trying to create rain coverings over the buildings to protect them from the rain and save the adobe buildings that are deteriorating. They have also been trying to build new drainage systems to drain the rainwater faster. Chan Chan has been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 1986. Since 2000 they have implemented safety measures that include documentation of everything, public management, and an emergency and disaster plan.
Conservation plan
In 1998, The "Master Plan for Conservation and Management of the Chan Chan Archeological Complex" was drawn up by the Freedom National Culture Institute of Peru with contributions from the World Heritage Foundation – WHR, ICCROM, and GCI. The plan was approved by the Peruvian Government. Methods of conservation include reinforcement and stabilization of structures of main buildings and around the Tschudi Palace, using a blend of traditional and modern engineering techniques. Chan Chan currently has 46 points of critical damage, though the site's total damage far exceeds these points. The regional government of La Libertad is funding conservation efforts at these points.
Archeological site
The archaeological site covers an area of approximately 20 km2 (7.7 sq mi), being considered the largest adobe city in the Americas and the second in the world.
The walled compounds (palaces) that make up the metropolis are those in the following table. Recently, archaeologists have given Mochica names to such compounds, despite Chimor having spoken Quingnam, a language very different from and completely unrelated to Mochica. This has been criticized as a denial of local history.
Walled compound Tschudi
The walled complex "Tschudi" is the greatest in illustration of the importance of water, particularly of the sea, and of the cult that surrounded it in the Chimu culture. The high reliefs of the walls represent fish, directed towards the north and the south (what can be interpreted as representation of the two currents that mark the Peruvian coast: that of Humboldt, cold, that comes from the south and the one of El Niño, hot, that comes from the north), waves, rombito (fishing nets), as well as pelicans and anzumitos (mixture of sea lion and otter).
This coastal society was governed by the powerful Chimucapac and was united by the force of a social control originated in the necessity of a strict management of the water, as well as by the external threats. The "Tschudi" complex had a single entrance and high walls up to twelve meters for a better defense, and was wider at its bases (five meters) than at its summits (one meter), in anticipation of possible earthquakes on the seismic coast.
Mausoleum
In 2026, archaeologists uncovered a Chimú mausoleum in the Utzh An complex. It contained the remains of more than 30 individuals.
Buildings
Chan Chan has many different types of buildings many of which have been destroyed. The buildings included temples, houses, reservoirs, and even funeral platforms, often decorated with ocean-like designs such as fish, birds, otters, waves, and more. The Chimú built buildings mostly in a rectangular or square shape through tight spaces.
The city consisted of ten citadels, of which only four have been recovered. This organization suggest that the city of Chan Chan had ten rulers. The population of the culture lived in a highly-stratified society where the rulers and deities were on top and the stratification descended down to servants on the lowest level. A typical citadel complex in the city is 40 feet tall and built with only one entrance. Each was a palace type structure with beautiful decorations and was built for a ruler or a deity.
Workers and people
Chan Chan held many different types of workers and people. The people lived in a socially-stratified society, deities and rulers ranking highest and servants lowest. The city consisted of nobles, farmers, fishers, traders, servants, and those of many more occupations. They had many craftsmen in the city who designed beautiful fabrics, pots, and ceramics.
The Chimú expressed a belief that the sun created three eggs, gold for the ruler and the elite, silver for the spouses of the rulers, and copper for anyone not among those two categories. The elite lived in the citadels. The rest of the civilians lived in small homes that doubled as their workshops.
Although this was an agriculture city, the Chimú people were famous for their pottery and textiles. They designed many beautiful pieces of artwork, examples of which still exist.
Religion and culture
The Chimu contains ten citadels, but the Tschudi is the only one that tourists are allowed into. It is believed that Tschudi was built in honor of the Chimú sea deity whose quingnam name is unknown. This interpretation is based upon the presence of the many ocean-related figures in the building decorations. There was a pond in the middle of the building that likely was used for religious ceremonies, fertility, and even worshiping water. The Chimu culture worshiped the adjacent Pacific Ocean, from which most of their food was derived and they relied heavily on the irrigation system they developed for crops.
The Chan Chan civilians supposedly spoke the language "quingnam". After the Inca conquest their language was completely wiped out and now is considered an extinct language. There is very little documentation of the quingnam language. Unfortunately, there is no way for us to confirm how this language could have sounded. No evidence exists for either a written system for their language, nor for creation of blueprints or recording measurements, nonetheless, a photograph of Chan Chan demonstrates that all of the buildings are built in a distinct order and spacing. Although no artifacts have survived to confirm it, anthropologists theorize that they created and kept records called "Khipus" using a system similar to those of the Inca. Khipus are detailed records that consist of systematically-knotted cords. Khipus were used in situations to communicate several types of information.