Delicate wooden sculptures discovered in Chan Chan
Posted On: Nov 9th, 2018 at 14:58
Peru
Twenty wooden sculptures have been found in a corridor in Chan Chan that had been buried for many centuries. Despite one of the sculptures disintegrating, nineteen remain intact. Estimated to be around 750 years old, the dry climate and burial of the sculptures meant they had remained undisturbed for a considerable time.
I visited Chan Chan, located outside the modern city of Trujillo, back in 2004 and it was the largest civilisation ever to have existed in Peru, prior to the rise of the Inca empire. In fact the Inca had a hard time pacifying the natives. The Inca spread so fast in western south America that no other civilisation could halt their rapid ascent, but the city of Chan Chan was so huge the Inca decided not to attack the city, and instead used a tactic which would become synonymous with the Roman empire – slow pacification and unification through steady cultural dissolution. If my memory serves me correctly, the process took around ten years, which is strangely similar to the story of the Greeks and the city of Troy.
