When Francisco Pizarro arrived in the Rimac valley, founding the city of Los Reyes (Lima) in January of 1535, he arrived in a place quite different from what might be imagined. Here was an expansive green and fertile land, in the middle of the Peruvian desert coast, home to tens of thousands living under the rule of the Incas. Where Lima is found today was once a land of pre-Inca pyramids and palaces, cities and farms, with complex irrigation canals more than two thousand years old, spanning miles in length bringing water to every home.
It should be noted that though Lima was constructed on the Pacific Coast of Peru, the elevation of Lima can vary enormously in different parts of the city due to its many valleys and mountain slopes. The elevation of Lima can therefore range from as low as sea level down by the Pacific Ocean to as high as 5,090 feet on the slopes further inland. Due to Lima's unique elevation and coastal location, it has a mild desert climate with aspects of a subtropical climate. This results in relatively warm temperatures that do not severely change throughout the year. The city has very dry conditions, with around 18 rainy days per year and just 6 inches of rain falling annually. The hottest month of the year is February, which has average highs of 80°F, while August is the coolest month with average lows of 60°F. Its temperature and lack of rain is one of the reasons why many mud-brick pyramidal-huaca complexes have survived in many cases as old as 3000 years.
If there was one thing pre-Columbian cultures could do well, it was water engineering. The Andean people of the highlands had running water on the peaks of mountains while coastal people had huge irrigation canals running for tens of miles. Thus, between the ancient canals of Huatica and Surco was an area of land as valuable in Pre-Columbian times as it is now—then it was fertile farm land, today it is the upsale San Isidro.
Julio C. Tello, the father of Peruvian archaeology, came to the conclusion that the four known administrative sub-divisions of the area that once comprised Lima must have followed the four easily observed divisions created by the life-giving canals.
These were fed by two irregularly flowing rivers: the Rímac and the Chillón with both rivers bringing fresh water from the Andes Mountains down a winding course all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Indigenous people living in the valley channeled its water to irrigate hundreds of miles of land—creating a hydraulic network that supported agriculture, fruit trees, alder, and willow in an otherwise coastal desert.
Running from the Rimac river to the south were countless numbers of man-made canals, the largest ones being the Maranga, Huatica and Surco. Covering such utterly long distances, the Spanish couldn’t believe they were artificial and decided they must be rivers. According to chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega the Spanish were shocked to see that there were aqueducts watering all the fields and bringing water to all the homes in the area. This feat, the skill of this engineering, should not be understated. As investigator Charles R. Ortloff, University of Chicago, Anthropology and Archaeology consultant, states that the techniques used in Peru’s ancient hydraulic engineering were not discovered in the west until the 20th century. Many of these water channels were destroyed or replaced in the Republican era that replaced the Colonial Period, because they were considered inferior, but some still exist today and are surprisingly still in use with few people knowing their origins—a prime example being the “Río” Surco that runs from the Rimac river and through the district of Santiago de Surco. One of those scores of pyramid complexes was huaca Huallamarca in the Walla Marka territory.
Not far from the Rimac River, these early Peruvians built huge cities with monumental pyramids such as Maranga, which was once 2½ square miles in size and one of the largest urban areas in ancient Peru. In the south was Pachacamac, a religious center that was home to the Andean world’s most important oracles and to thousands of people. Pilgrims came anciently from all across the Peruvian landscape, and much later the Wari empire, and later still the Inca empire, all to pay homage to the god Pachacamac, the creator God, creator of all things. So powerful was the belief in Pachacamac, that the Incas even adapted their religion to encompass this god.
In the heart of lush residential San Isidro, is one of scores of pre-Columbian sites found within the city of Lima—a densely populated area even anciently. The pre-Columbian adobe huaca pyramid is a startling sight, rising among the modern high-rises of Lima’s San Isidro district. Also known as Pan de Azucar (Sugar Loaf) after the rounded farmlands that once covered the ruins, the pyramid served as a burial temple before the arrival of the Spanish for the Lima Culture. The pyramid sits surrounded by huge modern penthouses that are a stark and unusual contrast for such an ancient ruin.
Just like today, Walla Marka was a land of towering constructions—the huaca Huallamarka is a massive 4 or 5 stories high. Constructed by hand and from millions of mud bricks, which was no easy task. Great human effort was required to raise this stepped pyramid.
One of the earlier constructions that gave rise to glorious Pre-Columbine Lima and its great cities of Marange and Pachacamac, not to mention the dozens of other settlement, the huaca Huallamarca was built using the technology of the era—small mud bricks.
The Lima culture built their city of Maranga or the Chavín before them, who archaeologists claim were the main culture of the time in highland Peru, or the Kotosh before that. The point is, who built what is simply unknown—archaeologists determine who did what based mostly on ceramic design, taking the stand that only one type or style of ceramics was in use at a single specific time. When the ceramics changed, they claim it was a new culture without any regard for the fact that a people who designed, engineered and built massive pyramids, public buildings and flowing residential areas, well-engineered and unbelievable irrigation networks of canals and channels so huge they almost defy belief, yet were incapable of coming up with a different design of metallurgy or textiles throughout the course of their existence.
These people built a sprawling city in a fertile land not far from the sea, made fertile by a huge channel that brought water from the rivers Rimac and Lurin and a number of others that flowed down from the glaciers and snows atop the Andes and ran all the way down to the Pacific Ocean.
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