The Walls of Peru – Part IV The Great Wall of Peru or La Muralla Chimú (Cont)

Continued from the previous post regarding the Nephite Walls, including a continuation of the Great Wall and other Peruvian walls and their purposes.
    The reality of this Great Wall, which ran through these areas and across the times of these cultures from the latter part of the last century BC onward is seen in reports and photographs dating back to 1931, when first discovered.

The Great Wall is said to have originally been between 12 and 15 feet wide at its base, straight on the south side and tapering on the north side and s to about six feet wide at the top

The Great Wall, or La Muralla Chimú, is an architectural work of 5 ½ linear (straight) miles that physically links Cerro Compana with Cerro Cabras, in the La Cumbre hills. It was made chiefly of field stone, boulders, and adobe—most of which was, at one time, plastered. Recently 66 feet of the wall were destroyed when a Carriageway (road) was built to access a quarry in Trujillo. When the railroad was built much earlier, it also destroyed part of the wall in the valleys of Moche and Chicama, as well as both the earlier construction of the Trujillo-Huanchaco highway, and the Pan-American Highway.
    Michael Edward Moseley, an American anthropologist, Curator of South American Archaeology, and Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the University of Florida, has done much work in Peru, especially at Chan Chan, studying the Chimor culture and their larger than modern irrigation systems and ancient canals, the latter built after they had dug and used 50-foot deep wells. The advanced irrigation in a desert land, allowed the city to grow in size, reaching at least 60,000 people.

Archaeologists believe that the Great Wall was a defense from enemy from the south reaching Chan Chan, a major and heavily populated complex

 

In regard to the Great Wall near Chan Chan, Moseley stated unequivocally that it was built for defense and to guard the city of Chan Chan (Moseley and Kant C. Day, “Chan Chan: Andean Desert City, School of American Research,” University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico).
    Today the Wall is being damaged almost beyond recognition by carriage trails or roads built to gain access to the seven or more quarries and mineral deposits of the area. Mule trains and pig breeders who use the wall for a containment barrier, and a garbage dump that has resulted in the El Milagro Dump, a monumental mountain of solid waste of the Province are systematically destroying the Great Wall.

Sheer cliffs along the Santa resulted in numerous tunnels for a road through the Canyon Plato

Running along the Santa River, the wall began at the mouth, where it emptied into the Pacific Ocean. Fed by the glaciers and snowfields of the Cordillera Blanca, the Santa River has the most regular flow of all Peruvian coastal rivers, and the volume of its discharge is second only to that of the Chira River, which began in the snowcapped Nevado de Tuco in the Andean Cordillera Blanca. From there it flowed into Aguash and Conococha lakes, emerging as the Santa River and flowing northwest, descending from 14,000 to 7,000 feet above sea level between the Cordillera Blanca and the Cordillera Negra, to form the deep, narrow Callejón de Huaylas or Huaylas Corridor, through rocky walls too steep and arid for cultivation. From there the river flowed through the Huaylas Valley along the upper Santa in Ancash, today a densely populated agricultural region that cultivates potatoes and barley at higher elevations and corn (maize) and alfalfa at lower altitudes—the overall valley bore the brunt of a devastating earthquake and resulting landslides in 1970. Many towns were destroyed, and tens of thousands of people perished. Below Huallanca the river veers westward and plunges through a spectacular gorge, the Cañon del Pato (Duck Canyon)—where the Cordillera Blanca and the Cordillera Negra come very close, to within 50 feet of each other while plummeting to vertigo-inducing depths over 3200 feet. Today, a harrowing road snakes along as path hewn out of sheer rock, over a precipitous gorge and passing through 54 tunnels.

The Santa enters the Pacific Ocean, after a run of 200 miles, descending 1400 feet in one six-mile stretch. At this mouth of the river, once stood an ancient “fortress,” which was investigated by the Peruvian archaeologist Julio C. Tello, along with undergraduate students at Yale, Richard James Cross, and his friend from Harvard, Cornelius Van Schaak

Roosevelt (grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt), who, in 1934, were in Peru because of Shippee and Johnson’s overflight and photos of the Great Wall of Peru in 1931.
    Cross and Roosevelt left Lima and went north, up the coast, stopping first in the Casma Valley where they visited the ruins of Chanquillo (an ancient monumental complex in the costal desert in the Casma-Sechin basin built in 300 BC, and likely the earliest and oldest known astronomical and solar observatory in the Americas, and included a temple, plaza, and thirteen tower constructed from cut stone, and abandoned in the first century AD.
    Situated between two observation platforms, Chankillo is unique among ancient observatory sites because of its multiple observation points; similar sites around the world contain only one point of astronomical alignment, which does not provide the measurements needed to track the passage of time over a full year.
    The thirteen towers of Chankillo span the entire annual rising and setting arc of the sun, both sunrises and sunsets, which gradually shifts along the horizon over the course of a year, allowing them to determine the date with an accuracy of two to three days by watching the sunrise or sunset from the correct observation platform. Using the site as an observatory would have allowed the inhabitants to regulate the occurrence of seasonal events, including planting and harvest times, as well as religious festivals. The complex had a fortress and two circular fortified towers behind three concentric walls on the top of a hill form which the entire valley could be controlled. It was protected by massive walls and barricades and maze-like corridors.

The Great Wall followed the Santa River inland toward Corongo

The Great Wall of Peru’s terminus was the Corongo about 90 miles from the coast. Overlooking the wall, there were 14 fortresses located along the hills. The first section of the wall, running inland from the coast, was composed of two parallel walls that converged some distance up the valley. The wall was constructed of broken rocks set in a mud morter. In some places it rose to a height of 20 to 30 feet, but the average elevation was about 7 feet. The wall was built in stages, some as late as 1460 AD, and as early as 400 BC, the fortresses were dated 900 BC to 100AD.
    Cross and Roosevelt, after meeting Tello, drove up the coast in a Hudson touring car with balloon tires, to Chimbote on a road that was only a track thorugh the desert sand heading for Paramonga, but had to stop at Huacho in the Huaura Valley. The next day they photographed a wall that was 12 feet high with a parapet height of 6 to 7 feet, and the locals claimed it stretched from the sea to the mountains. They stopped at “the fortress” (Paramanga ruins). The next day they drove north and visited Chankillo—a remarkable site with maze-like entrances that ran for some distance through corridors that often turned at right angles, and allowed only single file movement. They discovered additional walls in both the Huacho and Nepeña valleys, and reached Chimbolte that night. 
    The next day they drove to the Santa Clara, and the following day reached the Santa Valley. They encountered other walls, and on they followed it back to the hills before discovering it was not the Great Wall they sought. The following day they found the Great Wall, which height increased as it was followed toward the ocean. They discovered a secondary wall running parallel to the main wall for about a quarter of a mile. The area in between the walls measured about ¾ by ½ mile. At th3e western end was a stepped pyramid, and from the summit of the temple could be seen the Hda Santa Clara. The wall had turned right toward the sea through a steep pass in the hills and continued toward the sea where it stopped at a salt marsh. They took a train inland to Huallanca, and from their they drove to Caraz. They visited the ruins of Keka Mara the next day.
    The point is, the Great Wall of Peru is a highly defenable stone wall, built strictly for defense, and matches, along with so many others in Peru, the building of such walls during Moroni’s time (Mormon 48:8), and that of his son, Moronihah (Helaman 4:7), and used by Mormon during the final battles with the Lamanites (Mormon 5:5-7) as they retreated form the Land of Zarahemla northward, and finally into the Land Northward around the middle of the 4^th century AD.