Huacas Moches

The Temples of the Sun and the Moon are more than 700 years older than Chan Chan and are attributed to the Moche period. Huaca del Sol is the largest single pre-Columbian structure in Peru. The structure was built with an estimated 140 million adobe bricks, many of them marked with symbols representing the workers who made them. At one time the pyramid consisted of several different levels connected by steep flights of stairs, huge ramps and walls sloping at 77 degrees. The smaller but more interesting Huaca de la Luna is about 500m away across the open desert. This structure is riddled with rooms that contain ceramics, precious metals and some of the beautiful polychrome friezes for which the Moche were famous. The huaca (tomb or grave) was built over six centuries to AD 600, with six succeeding generations expanding on it and completely covering the previous structure.