Fortress of Paramonga and the Moche

Continuing from the last post on the fortress of Paramonga and the Moche culture, including those how built it and those who later occupied it:

As was reported in the previous post, the massive adobe fortress, which may have had religious functions as well as being a military fortress, is composed of seven defensive walls constructed on a hill overlooking a large valley. It is still possible to see remnants of the murals admired by Pizarro when he passed by the fortress in 1533, less than half a century after an invading Inca army overran the fort in its conquest of the Chimú empire.

The main portion of Paramonga consists of a high-walled temple atop a hill surrounded by a large series of defensive walls, and offers a panoramic view of the surrounding sugarcane fields

Many of the early civilizations of Peru had their administrative and religious centers close to the Peruvian coast in or near the fertile river valleys.  Since the land between the coast and the Cordillera is part of one of the Earth's most extreme deserts, it was only from these river valleys that water could be obtained.  Fortaleza de Paramonga, about 125 miles north of Lima, is on the Pan-American Highway close to the coast and only a stone's throw from the Río Paramonga. Very little appears to be known about this spectacular assemblage of adobe bricks.  Authors attribute its construction to the Chimu peoples who dominated much of coastal Peru, but the site is much older than that.

The four-level pyramid citadel is located on the Fortaleza river and resembles a European Fortress because of its powerful walls which were painted red many centuries ago. It was the scene of a battle between the Inka Army and Chimu warriors in the 15^th century, nearly 2000 years after it was first built. Because of its formidable construction, it took the size and might of the Inca army to accomplish this task.

Upper Left: Entrance into the upper fortress is through a narrow, uphill switchback; Upper Right: Doorways are double reinforced for barricading against attack; Lower: One of the many defensive walls surrounding the hilltop fortress stands some twenty feet in height and would have been impossible to scale

The inner sanctuary of the temple consists of two small buildings, side by side, oriented so that the sun shone between them only once a year, on the winter solstice. The wall, in turn, is punctuated with a large, impressive and probably impenetrable gatehouse. Small storehouses and residential buildings top the hills surrounding Paramonga's center, but modern agricultural sugarcane fields bury any other remains of what was once an important city.

Unfortunately, Paramonga has been badly damaged by vandals over the last 20 years. It appears to be a local right of passage for kids to etch their names into the walls of this adobe monument. There is only one spot left where you can see remains of the elaborate moldings that once adorned its walls, and almost all traces of the red and yellow paint that covered the complex as recently as 1985 are now gone.

Some of the deteriorated walls atop the hill that surround the site. In the distance is a view of some sugarcane fields. Note the great distance view that the hilltop fortress provides

The massive structure appeared to be entirely of human construction.  It rises from the river flood plane in 5 to 7 tiers (depends on how and where you count them). The outer facing of the vertical walls of each tier are made entirely of uniformly sized adobe bricks.  The ones on the top that are most exposed to the elements tend to crumble to dust when you rub them.  If you brush away the finely pulverized sand, which must be from the crumbling bricks, there is evidence in many places that the wall were at one time coated with a smooth plaster and painted in bright colors

Left: Looking through one of the surrounding walls (now fallen in places) up the hillside to the citadel at the top. Note the uphill climb for any attacking force

When archaeologists tell us that the Moche culture joined with the Sican culture, and was heavily influenced by both the Cajamarca culture and the Huari, we might suggest in turn that these were all the same culture, made up of the remnants of the different tribes within the Lamanite survivors of the Nephite Wars and later of their own Civil Wars that lasted many years (Mormon 8:8). There was never any indication that the Lamanites ever built anything of any significance, having occupied the structures vacated by the Nephites (Mosiah 7:21), rather than build anew.

With construction starting around 500 B.C., according to recent dating, the fortress would have been about 1000 years old by the time the Moche occupied it, and would have been beyond the Lamanite ability as shown in the scriptural record. The buildings, forts, fortresses, temples, etc., found in the Land of Promise were built by the Nephites, over their thousand year history. Obviously, Nephi received his building tutelage directly from the Lord (1 Nephi 17:8; 18:1), and he, in turn, taught his people how to build (2 Nephi 5:15).

There can be no doubt that this, and the other magnificent structures found in the Andean area, was a Nephite fortress, with its people described as agriculturally based, with significant accomplishment in constructing a network of irrigation canals for the diversion of river water to supply their crops. Their culture was sophisticated; and their artifacts express their lives, with detailed scenes of hunting, fishing, fighting, sacrifice, and elaborate ceremonies.

According to archaeologists, there were eighty-one different cultures in the Andean area from the beginning of the B.C. period up until the Inca. It is more likely that those l81 different cultures were merely different stages of development of a very small amount of people: Jaredites, Nephites, Mulekites, and Lamanites, with the latter breaking up into various tribes and settling away from one another after their civil wars, and for the most part, occupying the vast complex of cities, buildings, temples, and sites that are today seen by various ruins throughout the Andean area. Unfortunately, this is a view the scholars would never consider, since it flies in the face of their ages-old beliefs in infusion, separate culturism, and pre-determined developmental stages. Even when architectural styles are similar or the same, their tendency is to claim workers from one of the cultures were pressed into service in building for the other culture, etc., when the location of the separate structures are not within the pre-conceived domain of one or the other culture.