Peru's Great Urban Experiment (2023)

An aerial view of Peru’s Moche Valley shows Chan Chan, a massive city constructed beginning in the early eleventh century A.D. by the rulers of the Kingdom of Chimor, leaders of a people known as the Chimú. Chan Chan sprawled across more than seven square miles and had a population of as many as 40,000. Its dense urban core contained nine separate walled palace enclosures, two of which are seen here. (OverFlight Stock) The Moche River Valley in northern Peru was an unlikely place to build a city. Though barely 1,000 feet from the Pacific Ocean, the valley received less than a tenth of an inch of rain per year. Nevertheless, in about A.D. 1000, a people known as the Chimú selected a location in the valley some four miles north of the river and set about making it habitable. Called Chimor in colonial accounts, and now commonly known as Chan Chan, it became the largest urban center in the Americas. What enabled the Chimú to build a city in this unpopulated coastal desert was their treme ... Read full article.