Visiting the Moche Ruins 100-800 AD

Outside of the city of Trujillo, along the northern coast of Peru in the 1980's, a farm woman's chickens were pecking at the barren ground and dug up what looked like a nugget of gold. This captured the interest of the woman and her son and after some investigation they realized they had begun to uncover an ancient civilization that flourished briefly about two thousand years ago between 100 and 800 AD, a mere blip in the sands of time.  Known as the Moche people, they had no written language but they recorded their history through pictographs and paintings on the walls of their sacred sites, or "huacas" and on countless pots and other vessels as well as through carvings on jewelry, helmets and other artifacts. A bellicose society, they fought amongst themselves since there were no natural human enemies in the area and the victors would use the vanquished as human sacrifices, chaining them together naked before throwing them off the mountain and drinking their collected blood from golden cups. And that was one of their more merciful ways of death. The Moche were eventually wiped out by a thirty year El Nino followed by a thirty year drought which destroyed their crops and other means of survival.  

The Temple of the Moon is made up of millions of individually made adobe bricks each signed by its maker.  Before excavation, this pyramid was covered in sand and assumed to be a mountain. There is a corresponding Temple of the Sun opposite.  Twenty-five thousand Moche lived in the city between the two temples. Trujillo lies in the background.

Some decorative paintings on the interior walls of the Temple of the Moon.

This mural intricately illustrates the Moche way of life--the king, the warriors, the methods of torture and sacrifice used on the victims, the sexual perversions, the animal gods and so forth.  Only an archaeologist could interpret these meanings however. They certainly weren't clear to me.

I think this is the tugboat that escorted us out of the port of Salaverry, near Trujillo and the Moche excavations.

It took about 40 minutes to drive from the port to the area of the Moche ruins.  At face value, it is a bleak, poor part of the country with adobe huts and cardboard shacks along the road, small packs of wild dogs, and miles of arid, brown, sandy soil.  There are crops being grown--asparagus, corn, mangoes, avocados, and the guide told us the area is a large exporter of leather goods--but the pockets of development are few and mostly the people seem to be living hand-to-mouth.  There is precious little rain and how they irrigate the crops is beyond me.   The Moche ruins have not been worked on for more than a year because private funds as well as government allotments have dried up, and international organizations have not stepped up to the plate sufficiently. They are trying to become a World Heritage site but the competition for available funds becomes greater and greater as technology for excavations improves. 

After touring the site, we went to an outdoor restaurant that served pisco sours, sparkling wine, delicious and varied hors d'oeuvres, and we watched a demonstration of Peruvian Paso horses, especially bred for their grace and beauty, and some "Marinero" dancers typical to this area of Peruvian culture--all fun and nicely done. The local people are definitely trying to promote tourism around the Moche attraction and this could be their ticket out of their long cycle of poverty.  Send money.

Now it is Friday, Nov. 5 and we are off on another adventure.   Later, I must tell you about the fabulous food we have eaten aboard the Explorer thus far!