All language subtitles for BBC.Lost.Kingdoms.of.South.America.4of4.Kingdom.of.the.Desert.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

On the north coast of Peru,

between the Pacific Ocean
and the Andes,

is a vast desert.

For over 450 years,

this was home to a kingdom
whose rise and fall

is one of the greatest untold
stories of the Americas.

At its heart was a city.

Chan Chan is that rare and precious
thing -

a pre-industrial city,
a lost city of types,

because it was built and functioned
in a completely different way

to the cities that we know today.

I'm Jago Cooper

and as an archaeologist who
specialises in South America,

I've always been fascinated by the
secrets and mysteries buried deep

in these awe-inspiring and
forbidding landscapes.

The history of this continent
has been dominated by

the stories of the Inca
and the Spanish conquistadors.

But in this series, I'll be
exploring an older, forgotten past,

travelling from the coast
to the clouds

in search of ancient
civilisations

as significant and impressive
as anywhere else on Earth.

The Kingdom of Chimor dominated
the northern coast of Peru

for five centuries.
In the face of some of

the most extreme climate conditions
in the world,

its people transformed the desert..

..built an oasis in the sand...

..and created gold and silver
treasures.

And they believed so strongly

in the power of their monarchs
and their gods

that they were prepared to sacrifice
their own children.

Wow.

From 900 to 400 AD,

these loyal subjects built
an empire,

an empire that raises so many
interesting questions.

What motivated them to invade
their neighbours?

How did they build one of
the largest pre-Columbian cities

in South America?

And why did this, the first empire
of South America,

disappear back into the desert
that it conquered?

I love coming to South America.

There's so much rich, unstudied
archaeology here.

Everybody's heard of the Inca,

but they're just a few hundred years

of 12,000 years of history
of this great continent.

There's so much more to study.

And by looking at these
lost cultures,

we can help them take their
rightful place

in the history of South America.

Long before the Inca were the Chimu,

and the Chimu once were kings.

And with their loyal subjects,
they built the Kingdom of Chimor.

By its height, in the 15th century,

their kingdom had become an empire,

the first in South America.

Stretching along 600 miles of
coastal desert in what is now Peru,

it was lapped by the Pacific
on the west

and frowned upon by the Andes
in the east.

In this unforgiving terrain,
the Chimu left us

one of South America's greatest
archaeological stories.

Neglected for centuries and exposed
to harsh desert storms

stand the remains of a true
lost city.

One can only imagine what the first
Europeans must have thought

when, parched and dazzled
by the desert,

they came over the hill
and saw this.

This is Chan Chan,

one of the largest adobe settlements
in the world,

a monument to the 35,000 people
who once lived here.

They began building the city
in the 10th century

and continued to expand it
for over 500 years.

Chan Chan is as intriguing
as the people who built it.

In eight dusty square miles,
there's no single centre

or any roads.

Walls, some as high as ten metres,
tower over you.

Inside them are the remains of ten
sumptuous royal palaces.

Outside, hundreds of smaller
dwellings

are marked now by the alignments
of stone.

Chan Chan is a puzzling
architectural jigsaw

that reflects Chimu society.

But when the Spanish arrived
at Chan Chan in the 1530s,

they were only interested
in taking Chimu gold

and imposing their Christian God.

People here were
sceptical about Adam and Eve,

because they had their own
origin myth -

that the common people of the Chimu
came from a copper egg

and that the royal family of women
from a silver egg...

and men from a golden egg.

For the Chimu, hierarchy
was seen as preordained -

everyone accepted
their place in it -

and at the top was
an all-powerful monarch.

Chan Chan was the seat of power
for the Chimu royal family

and thus, the very heart of
the empire.

This city in the desert

is where all of the important
decisions were made.

In their palaces,
surrounded by riches,

the Chimu royal family
hosted feasts and sacrifices

and worshipped powerful gods.

But how did such a vast, complex
and wealthy city

come to be built in a desert?

People have been drawn to this coast
for thousands of years,

but the exact origin of these
coastal peoples isn't known.

The Chimu had their own explanation
of how they came to be here,

and it began at sea.

Lying alongside the city
of Chan Chan

is the mighty Pacific Ocean.

The Spanish recorded a Chimu story
about how their ancestors

sailed down the coast from lands
further north.

Whatever the truth of that legend,

the Pacific Ocean offered sustenance
to the early cultures of the coast.

So, just going out to do some
fishing with Juan and Luis.

Past the surf, I'm really struck by
the vastness out here.

Just heading out into
the Pacific Ocean.

Right down the coast, you go down
past Chile down to the Antarctic.

Out here, the whole expanse
of the Pacific,

going right across
towards Australia.

But as the Chimu and their ancestors
discovered,

you don't have to go far to find
the sea's bounty.

Here off the coast of Peru,

you'll find one of the richest
marine environments in the world.

It's home to the Humboldt Current,

that pulls up cold water
right from the Antarctic

that's full of plankton and fish
and marine life.

And this stretch of ocean has been

feeding the coastal populations
of Peru for millennia.

I can really understand
why these coastal peoples

were in awe of the sea.

Many believed that deities
controlled it,

determining the weather
and the day's catch.

TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH:

The Chimus were masters
of fishing technology.

They used fish hooks, harpoons and
nets to try and catch their prey.

And now we're going to try
and get this...

The Chimu used fish nets
made of cotton,

and archaeologists have found
hundreds of fish weights

at archaeological sites all along
the coast.

The Chimu believed that their gods
could whip up the ocean into storms

and endow its creatures
with unearthly powers.

You see the pelican a lot
in many of the friezes in Chan Chan

and the Chimu sites.

It's an iconic bird for the Chimu,

and they were used in the fishing
because it helped the Chimu identify

where the shoals of fish would be
when they're out at sea.

And when you get to the other
end of the net,

there's a last float
on the other side.

I'm hoping a heavy net
means a lot of fish.

I'm glad I've got this big guy
behind me

because it takes a bit of strength
to haul this in.

But this part of the ocean
can be deceptive.

Periodically, atmospheric conditions
warm the water,

killing off its nutrients

and forcing the fish to look
elsewhere for food.

That's not happening today, but I'm
not sure the gods are with us.

THEY SPEAK IN SPANISH

It's not the biggest catch
in the world.

Our meagre catch reminds me
that fishermen around here

can't always rely on the sea
to feed their families.

Coastal peoples,
including the Chimu,

knew that the gods could send them
back to shore empty-handed.

They had to look to the land as well
if they were going to survive.

The coastal desert of Peru

might seem like a harsh,
inhospitable environment,

but it's home to a vital,
life-saving resource.

Winding through the desert sands
are a series of rivers

which bring precious meltwater
down from the high Andean peaks.

Understanding the environment
of the river valleys

is the key to understanding
the rise of the Chimu empire.

'I met up with archaeologist
Dr Jeff Quilter,

'to ask him how these river valleys

'sustained early settlements
on the coast.'

..self-defined Moche?

Well, the environment plays the role
in every culture's development.

The fact that we have these river
valleys that were abundant with life,

surrounded by deserts, clearly had an
effect on how cultures developed.

They developed in the river valleys.

As a matter of fact,
Peru's coastal valleys

were seen as one example of
this great phenomena

that seemed to happen worldwide,

of the origins of civilisations
in river valleys.

Before the Chimu were the Moche,

one of the most violent
and sophisticated cultures

of the Americas.

For over 600 years, they ruled
the Moche River Valley.

It's though that their demise,
around 750 AD,

followed an extreme weather event

so catastrophic that it was almost
two centuries

before the Chimu rose
in the same valley.

And do you think that the Chimu
could have risen up

if it hadn't been for the Moche
before them?

Well, we all build upon the past.

Even though Moche collapsed
in some ways,

a lot of what they did continued.

We see lots of continuities.
They're sometimes subtle,

but they're in some of the ceramics.

The irrigation systems, that were
developed thousands of years

before the Moche, continued,
were expanded by the Chimu,

so we stand on the shoulders
of giants.

CHILDREN CHATTER

Over 200 years passed between
the end of the Moche

and the emergence
of the Chimu empire.

But many of the challenges
remained the same.

One priceless gift that the Chimu
inherited

from their Moche
great-great-great-grandparents,

was that engineering alchemy that
transformed the desert - canals.

The Moche and their ancestors

had been building canals for
hundreds of years.

But the scale and ambition
of Chimu engineering

surpassed anything
that had come before.

I've come to the Jequetepeque
Valley,

just 74 miles from Chan Chan,

to see how the Chimu engineered
their environment.

It's hard to believe,

but the land around here
was once an infertile desert.

To what extent do you think
the irrigation systems...?

'Archaeologist,
Dr Luis Jaime Castillo,

'has been investigating how the land
was reclaimed.'

What I find incredible is how
irrigation can transform

a desert landscape into this
verdant, green agricultural soil.

Well, you have to be aware of one
thing, though.

You've seen the deserts here.
Deserts here are real deserts.

They look like the Sahara.

There's no plants, no animals,
no nothing.

So if you put water there, you're
going to have a wet desert...

but nothing more.
So the point there is

that one of the mysteries that we
have is that the Moche and the Chimu

were forced to constantly
re-create soil.

By sheer human effort, irrigation
canals were carved into the earth.

It appears that thousands of tonnes
of nutrient-rich soil

was transported here from the
forested edges of the valleys.

Without machinery or the wheel,

countless armies of men and women,
over many centuries,

transformed desert sands
into fertile fields.

But importing the soil was only
the start of the people's ingenuity.

One thing that is surprising about
the ancient canals

is that they wind a lot. They are
not straight, like ours. They wind.

And probably the reason why they wind

is because they want to stop
the water.

They want to make the water flow
slowly, nicely,

because the worst enemy of the canal
is the water itself.

If it flows too fast, it's going to
cut the canal,

so you want the water flowing nicely.

The engineering involved sometimes
defies belief.

Some canals have an almost
imperceptible gradient

of 1 in 10,000.

During the early days
of the kingdom,

the Chimu people rebuilt and
expanded the ancient canal network.

But as the population grew,

their canal-building became
more strategic.

I guess the Chimu probably
changed the rules

by creating a larger canal

that serves everyone and that was
clearly controlled by them.

That's this one, the highest one,
the longest one, the widest one.

You can imagine this full of water,
running down. I mean, it's a river.

It's collecting lots and lots of
water and pouring it into the desert.

And by connecting separate
river valleys

to a network of
aqueducts and canals,

the Chimu brought this freshwater
to their deserts.

Thousands of engineers, labourers
and farmers

were mobilised in a collective
effort

that empowered the Chimu elite to
turn their kingdom into an empire.

The Chimu were the only ones that
actually coalesce the whole region

into a single political organisation
that was managed and run centrally,

something that they probably learned
by running irrigation systems,

because their requirements for the
management of irrigation systems

in a way mimics the requirements

for the management of a huge
territory encompassed by the state.

So, it is this society,

this is the incubator of real,
complex societies, I think, in Peru.

And as the deserts were irrigated,

so the Chimu people shared
their gratitude,

by offering the fruits of their
labour to the elite at Chan Chan

by way of tribute.

The surplus fuelled population
growth

and increased the power
of the state.

For the kings and queens
of Chan Chan,

canals and irrigation channels like
these played a crucial role

in the expansion and consolidation
of their empire.

It was their ability to mobilise
and control the skilled workforce

necessary to construct them

that transformed the amount of
agricultural land available.

By 1300 AD,

arable land under Chimu control

had expanded from four square miles
to a staggering 340 square miles.

But the land, as well as the sea,

was subject to extreme
weather events.

And as the population increased,

so too did the risk

posed by catastrophic conditions
to the food supply.

In the face of danger, it seems
the Chimu appealed to their gods.

In August 2011,

an excavation at a village
near Chan Chan shed some light

on the relationship
between the Chimu,

their gods
and their children.

I went to the museum at Chan Chan

to meet archaeologist
Gabriel Prieto.

What he had found
amazed and horrified him.

So, these are some of
your excavated materials.

Yeah, this is it.

I'd like to have a closer look. Can
we take a few and have a look? Sure.

Let me... Sure. OK.

I'll handle it with care.

So, it's quite a lot of
responsibility,

to find a site like this
and start excavating it?

Yeah. I keep it safe from dirt or...

Yeah.
So, how did you start working...?

'When Gabriel began his excavation,

'he never anticipated what he was
about to find.'

I was told by one of the neighbours
who lives around,

he told me his kids
were playing with human skulls.

JAGO LAUGHS

He said to me, "You should come
and see it. You're an archaeologist."

And so I went there with my team

and we ended up digging in this
amazing context.

'Gabriel had stumbled upon

'the remains of 43 individuals.

'Dental evidence suggests that they
were between 10 and 14 years old.

'Boys and girls on the cusp
of puberty.'

'The first signs indicated
a mass ritual killing.'

Wow.

This has literally just come
straight out of... Yeah.

So this is like a red ochre?

Yeah, this is red paint.

It was applied, as you can see,
on the upper part of the face.

Wow. And on the sides.

So, basically, 50% of the human
skulls that we have found

have this pattern.

Was it was something
to do with the ritual...?

It was intentionally made,

to show that these were special kids.

That they were offered
for some special reason.

But, as an archaeologist,

I know that mass burials
can mean many things.

And what makes you think that

they were sacrificed,

that these aren't
the victims of war,

that they have this
ritual context?

Well, we have very strong evidence

that they were actually cutting
through the sternum

and then they
were opening their ribcage

and possibly...it's possibly
to extract the heart. Right.

So you have trauma wounds
in each of the ribcages.

We have trauma in
each of the ribcages

and especially on the sternum.

Basically, what they did is to cut
through the sternum.

That's why you can see
a very clean cut over here.

And this is located here.
They cut it in this way

and then they opened the ribcage in
order to extract or remove the heart.

Working with all the evidence,

Gabriel is assembling a complete
picture of how these children died

and why.

Having worked at the site, what do
you think is the sequence of events

that led to these kids' death?

Well, it is very possible
that at some point

they put all these children together
somewhere here in Chan Chan.

You know, they were at a warehouse

or a big plaza, probably they were
feeding them with special foods,

and then at some point they'd be
appropriated.

For the rituals,
it is very important

that the moon has to be
in the correct position.

So, they took these kids

and they walked through all
the outside of Chan Chan

and they went straight to this spot.

Gabriel is awaiting more tests
to determine

whether any of the children were
related to each other.

But he can see from examination that
they were all fit and healthy.

It's impossible not to think
about the adults

who prepared these children
for their terrible fate.

These children, you know,
they must have had parents.

I mean, do you think that they were
separated in some way from society

at an early age

to break that relationship between
children and adults?

I mean, it's like...
It's a brutal thing to do.

From an anthropological point
of view,

it is very possible that giving
the best that you have -

your children, your siblings -

for a supreme purpose,

probably was something that was
accomplished by their relatives

as something very important,
and probably provided them

with a special status within
the Chimu society.

It would seem that this slaughter
of innocents

was demand by the state.

But what could be so important

that any state would sacrifice
fit and healthy children?

I think that this context
is clear evidence

of the Chimu state as trying to
control a very difficult situation.

Because we have found a very thick
layer of clay...

Right. ..that is on top of sand.

So it's clear that there was
a very strong rain

right before this ritual...

and afterwards.

Which actually made us
think about the gods

and the importance of the
Chimu pantheon on this,

and it's very clear
that this sacrifice was made not

only to stop the rains - these very
dangerous and damaging rains -

but at the same time
to what I consider

is the most important Chimu god,

and it's actually a goddess,
the sea goddess.

The sea goddess, the most important
of all the Chimu deities,

governed the sea and the moon...

..the two indomitable forces of
the coastal environment.

Were these children killed
to appease her wrath?

Human sacrifice is an incredibly
emotive thing.

There's no getting away
from the fact

that brutally murdering
43 children,

ripping out their hearts,
opening up their chests,

is a hard thing for us
to understand.

But as an archaeologist,
we have to try and empathise

with how this can be culturally
acceptable at the time,

perhaps even expected of the elites
who ruled Chan Chan.

Gabriel paints a picture of a
powerful people

desperately battling with their
environment around the mid-1300s...

..the same period that
a catastrophic weather event

struck the Peruvian coast.

Recurring periodically,
but never predictably,

these events are a blight
on Peru's history.

Meteorologists attribute them
to a puzzling phenomenon

they call the
Southern Oscillation,

known more commonly around the world
as El Nino.

El Ninos are a climatic anomaly

that can periodically transform
local weather patterns.

The consequences here in coastal
Peru can be torrential downpours

that transform this barren landscape
into a raging torrent of water.

At their worst, El Ninos can bring
floods, drought,

plagues of insects
and even waves of disease.

So when the Chimu survived the
El Nino of the mid-1300s,

perhaps they believed

their sacrifices had appeased
the sea goddess.

But the damage to their irrigation
canals

seems to have encouraged
a new policy,

one less dependent on the elements.

They abandoned canal-building

and seemed to lose interest in the
time-consuming irrigation business,

instead opting for a new strategy,

a strategy that brought more wealth
and power

to the kings and queens of Chimor -

empire building.

Along the west coast
of South America,

other cultures, some much older
than Chimu,

cultivated the land and traded
with inland peoples

as far away as
present-day Bolivia.

None was as powerful as
the masters of the coast...

..and it took the Chimu
just 100 years

to quadruple the size
of their territory.

The La Leche River Valley, near the
border with Ecuador,

was once home to the Lambayeque
culture that had dominated the area

since the fall of the Moche
in 750 AD.

These eroded structures were
once towering pyramids.

From here, the Lambayeque elite

controlled a valuable trade
in precious metals and shells,

making this place
a strategic target for the Chimu.

This is Tucume,

for centuries
home to the Lambayeque lords,

who built the 26 monumental
pyramids here.

In fact,
this whole landscape is man-made.

But during the 14th century,
the Chimu conquered Tucume,

and built their own elite residences
here on top of the sacred pyramids.

You can hardly get a clearer
demonstration of domination.

Yet, after the initial invasion,
there's no evidence of

violent suppression here, so how did
the Chimu hold onto their power?

I've come to another excavation,
13� miles north of Tucume,

where more information about the
Chimu strategy

is slowly coming to light.

Here, at the recently excavated
site of Cerro Chotolo,

we get a completely different
perspective

on life within the Chimu empire.

250 kilometres away from Chan Chan,
this was home to a Chimu elite,

sent here to administer the northern
frontiers of the empire.

Archaeologist Juan Martinez has
been studying

human and architectural
remains at the site.

TRANSLATION FROM SPANISH:

Dominating the site
today are stone walls forming

a series of concentric circles
up the hillside.

The Chimu elite were segregating
and protecting themselves

but, as at Tucume,
evidence indicates

that the occupation of the site
was peaceful.

This explains why the Chimu didn't
need force to maintain control.

In fact, some archaeologists
think that the Chimu shared power

with the conquered elite.

The defensive walls were for them
as well as for their new masters,

and in return for this protection
and a new framework for society,

precious metals and other valuable
resources flowed back to Chan Chan.

Over the course of around 100 years,

Chimor's expansion
transformed the kingdom.

Where the Chimu had once controlled

only the Moche Valley
around Chan Chan,

by 1400, they ruled a whole
series of key river valleys

to the north and south,

and as Chimu power grew,
so did their wealth.

It was a clever strategy.

It brought lucrative trade routes
under Chimu control

and diversified
the kingdom's resources

and food supplies - a critical
insurance policy in such

a harsh environment,
and all the wealth,

all the abundance, was channelled
back to Chan Chan.

By the early 15th century, Chan Chan
was the centre of the royal family,

a pantheon of powerful gods and the
most powerful empire in Peru.

Today,
it's a popular tourist destination.

Centuries of desert storms have
swept away much of the fine

decorative detail of the adobe
architecture,

but you can still see
glimpses of how it must have looked.

All of these little designs

and reliefs you see in all of this
part of Chan Chan,

they look really nice,

but they're all made of fibreglass,
and they're just reconstructions

of the originals, using photographs
from the original excavation.

Visitors love the reconstructed
palace compound.

But as an archaeologist, my interest
is in the authentic remains,

however depleted they may be.

I want to know how the palace
compound's administrative centres

and different
parts of the city worked together,

because only then can
I really understand how this place

became the centre of one
unified state.

When you approach the city
from the ground, you can't see

the palaces, because they're
enclosed behind towering walls...

..that evoke a sense of power
and segregation.

Archaeologist Guillermo Gonzalez
explained

their part in the Chimu hierarchy.

TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH:

The elite and lower orders may have
been separated by walls,

but theirs was a relationship
of reciprocal need and reward.

It's difficult to get away
from the idea of class structure

when discussing the hierarchies of
Chan Chan, but it's such a Western,

industrial-era term that really
doesn't fit with ancient societies.

Chimu hierarchy was born
out of a shared world-view.

Everything from their
origin myths to

the geography of their empire
reinforced their hierarchy.

The lowest tier - the fishermen
and farmers -

lived beyond the city boundaries.

The next tier up - the artisans -
lived closer to the centre

of power, crammed into the spaces
between the palace compounds.

Outside the walls of this
royal compound,

you can see a whole series of small
single-roomed structures.

Because the elite of this
ancient city controlled

all of the wealth in the region,
it drew in artisans

and craftspeople to come
and live here

and gain access to the raw materials
they needed within the city.

These small spaces clustered
together between the ten palaces

were once home to up to 90%
of the city's population.

Conditions here must have
been cramped,

but it certainly wasn't
a ghetto for a slave class.

Far from it.

Archaeologists have unearthed
tools which suggest that the

residents of those small dwellings
were highly skilled artisans.

Peru's museums house thousands of
Chimu artefacts made by them.

Portrait vases, said to be
modelled on elite individuals,

hint at the integral relationship
between power and art in Chan Chan.

These ceramics are monochrome
and highly polished,

and you can see the faces staring
back at us from over 500 years ago.

But whilst the ceramics are
impressive and unique,

it's in fact the metals
from Chan Chan

that the Chimu are most famous
for.

These exquisite body ornaments
were more than status symbols

for the kings
and queens of Chimor.

They were a precious homage to
the forces that they worshipped

and feared.

To them, gold represented the sun,

and silver represented the moon and
sea. The Chimu were masters of both.

You can see images of monarchs
worked into the metal

alongside sacred feline figures,
birds and sea creatures.

It's not surprising that the
artisans who created these

wonderful treasures were
rewarded for their skills.

The artisan class of Chan Chan were
afforded special privileges.

They could wear ear spools,
marry among themselves

and be buried in their own
cemeteries.

But this wasn't a meritocracy.

The Chimu never expected to become
social climbers.

The artisans who
lived between the palace walls were

allowed inside,
but probably not for long.

In Chan Chan,
archaeologists have found a whole

series of storage rooms, where the
spoils of the kingdom were kept.

But if residents wanted to gain
access to these storage rooms,

they had to walk down these
long corridors,

filled with U-shaped
rooms like these.

These rooms are called audiencias
and they hold the key

to understanding how the kingdom
functioned.

The lower orders were granted
favours - arable land to farm,

or metals to work,

and in return, they brought their
tributes to the audiencias.

All this bounty was
stored in hundreds of storerooms

in the palaces and the outlying
regions.

The Chimu had no currency so these
storerooms were their banks,

amassing the vast
wealth of the whole empire

here in its capital city.

Every level of Chimu society seemed
to work together,

giving and taking tributes,
but they all seemed to know on which

side of the palace walls
they belonged.

The city is in architectural
interpretation of the beliefs

of the Chimu - in other words,

everything is built around
and for the royal family.

Inside the compounds, the kings
and queens of Chan Chan hosted

sacrifices and feasts,
which loyal subjects watched in awe.

And in their storerooms, they
amassed their gold and their silver.

But there was one thing that they
couldn't get enough of,

that they may have valued even
more highly than gold.

To see it,
I'm going back to the shore.

This is the spondylus shell,
which lives further up

the coast in the warmer, deeper
waters off modern-day Ecuador.

For the Chimu, this little shell was
highly prized as a status symbol.

Spanish chroniclers recorded
that the Chimu believed

the oyster inside was
the food of the gods.

Its vivid-pink shell adorned Chimu
jewellery and precious artefacts.

But it was valued for more
than its vibrant exterior.

Surely it had other qualities that
made it SO precious?

One quite interesting theory is that
during prolonged El Nino conditions,

sea surface temperatures here
would have warmed up,

allowing the spondylus to move down
and live off coastal Peru.

The idea is that the Chimu
thought that the spondylus had some

sort of predictive power, and
that it was the harbinger of doom.

Like the sea itself, the spondylus
was endowed with unearthly powers.

Perhaps the elite of Chan Chan
believed that with

the spondylus, they could divine
their fate,

or predict
the will of the sea goddess.

These days, spondylus shells can
be found in Peru's tourist markets -

a sad echo of the days when they
were cherished

for their spiritual value.

Hola!

TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH:

Like many ancient cultures,

the Chimu buried their dead with
their most treasured possessions.

I'm going to see an excavation
of a Chimu woman...

whose remains might shed more light
on the true value

of these enigmatic shells.

In 2010, this late-middle-aged
woman was excavated,

and alongside her body was found
all of her grave goods.

Lovely Chimu ceramics,
beautiful copper metal objects,

but most valuable of all,
clutched in her right hand,

is a spondylus shell.

These shells - there was no safety
equipment to help the Chimu - they

had to free-dive down to the sea
floor, pluck them off the bottom,

and they represent the most valuable
item within the Chimu culture.

The human cost of their harvest
must have added

enormous value to these shells.

Owning one would surely mark its
owner out as an elite individual

in life and in death.

According to one
conquistador account,

a courtier would
walk before the Chimu monarch,

scattering spondylus shell dust
on the ground.

If ever there was a picture
of decadence, it must be that.

Chan Chan was home to an elite
so rich

that it could record
its likeness in gold, a royal family

so privileged that it could walk
upon a shell that others

couldn't let go of, even in death.

The royal family lived in these
compounds,

counting their spondylus shells,

ruling the kingdom,
almost like the divine

givers and takers of life
to the rest of the population.

But of course, they weren't
immortal, and when a ruler died,

it kick-started an extraordinary
chain of events.

Throughout Peru,

death has always been
seen as a continuation of a journey.

In Chan Chan, the king's journey
into the next life began with

an elaborate ritual that has been
captured in one of the rarest

and most extraordinary artefacts,

not just in Peru,
but in the whole of South America.

I couldn't wait to see it.

So, just unpacking this box, and
inside are these beautiful little

wooden figurines,

and we know from the dates
that these are Chimu.

It's very rare to get preserved
wooden artefacts,

so it's a real privilege
to see these wooden figurines

depicting a scene
from a Chimu burial.

It's an absolutely incredible
level of preservation, and you can

still see the paint colours on the
back of these friezes, showing these

fish on the back. It's beautiful.

What we've seen in Chan Chan is
the physical embodiment

of Chimu ideology, built into the
very fabric of the city.

This extraordinary artefact
brings together

the rich threads of Chimu culture

into one evocative scene of life
and death in the capital city.

It really is breathtaking.

This is a beautiful collection of
maquetas - wooden figurines

depicting the burial
of a Chimu royal.

Found in 1995, it reinforces
many of the details that we

learn from the chronicles
written by the first Spanish

to arrive here in coastal Peru.

Here we can see the mummified
remains of the Chimu royal being

carried in a funerary procession
towards the palace complex.

You can see the feathers preserved,

and that's what gives this little
basket its colour.

The figurines each have an
inlay of white shell,

like a mother-of-pearl, and the red
is part of the spondylus shell.

What we can see are many
of the details associated with

the rituals that would have been
carried out on this important day.

You get a whole different
set of characters within this

procession, from members of the
royal family to priests, musicians.

At the back, you can see one figure
right at the back

of the procession,
naked, hands tied behind their back,

which looks like he could be in
trouble - a human sacrifice victim.

At the front,
we have a very interesting character

carrying a basket
full of pulverised spondylus shell.

This whole procession would have
been walked

on a bed of pulverised
spondylus shell.

Again, we see the importance
of spondylus

within these Chimu rituals.

The level of detail in these
maquetas helps

change my understanding of death
within Chimu culture.

It's not about the end of the life
of the royal, as much as their

transference into a new role as an
immortal ancestor,

or as a minaus,
as they are often referred to.

This understanding is important
because the royal lives on for ever

within the belief structure
of the Chimu.

And one of the details that
I really like is that the thing

they're all walking
towards is the palace complex,

and you can see the representation
of the adobe walls

exactly like you see them in the
palace complexes at Chan Chan.

It's easy to imagine the funeral
procession carrying

the monarch's body,
dressed in their burial regalia,

through these gates
to the next life.

In this burial platform,

archaeologists found
the remains of 300 young women,

suggesting that the perceived
needs of the king buried just over

that wall proved fatal for others.

Perhaps those women followed
the procession like the sacrifice

victim in the maqueta,

their hands tied behind their backs.

The monarch was on his way to
becoming a minaus,

an immortal ancestor who would have
dominion over his people for ever.

In Chan Chan, palaces housed
the living AND the dead.

This is the royal tomb where the
king or queen would have been laid

during their transition
between mortality and immortality.

They didn't have to give
up their wealth or possessions,

because they took their servants,
even their home, with them.

Their palace became their mausoleum.

This meant that the heir to
the throne

had to prove their own mettle
by conquering new lands

and building their own palace.

This tradition is
known as split inheritance.

The next-in-line inherited the right
to rule, but not the wealth

or revenues that had belonged to
the previous monarch.

To earn their own tributes,

the monarchs had to give something
back to their people.

That meant each new king or queen
was highly motivated

and keen to demonstrate
their ambition.

Because each new king or queen had
to establish their own reputation,

it explains their relentless drive,

that Chimu
aggression to conquer new territory.

It also explains why there are
so many palaces here at Chan Chan

and that they all date to
different periods.

The ten palaces are a memorial to
the triumphs of the Chimor kingdom -

a kingdom where the people had
brought water to the desert

and vast riches to its kings
and queens.

Where shocking sacrifices were made
to appease the gods

to protect the kingdom
from the elements.

But in the 1460s, Chimor was gravely
threatened - not by another El Nino,

but by a force that would change
South America for ever.

As the Chimu were
extending their northern frontier,

another empire was on the march -
the Inca.

From their Andean strongholds
further south,

they prepared to conquer the coast.

Around 1463, uniformed Inca soldiers
descended from the mountains

to meet the Chimu.

Not even this powerful empire could
withstand the Inca for long.

By 1470, the last king of Chimor
was defeated

and exiled to the victor's
capital of Cusco.

A society that embodied
hierarchy for 450 years

was suddenly without a ruler.

With nobody in control,
the Chimu were lost.

Chan Chan was abandoned,

its people scattered to
the surrounding deserts.

When the Spanish arrived in 1527,

they brought lethal
European diseases

and filled their galleons
with gold and silver.

Tragically, the ruins of Chan Chan
have been repeatedly looted

over the past 500 years.

By the time archaeologists
arrived in the 20th century,

the El Ninos had transformed it
into a true lost city,

a ruin, blasted by sand and storms.

After centuries of neglect,

the painstaking process
of conserving and excavating it

is underway.

Archaeologist Margarita Pena is
overseeing the project.

TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH:

Today, Chan Chan enjoys the status
and protection it deserves.

In 1986, it has made a World
Heritage Site, and it's

taken its rightful place in the
pantheon of Peru's great cultures.

The palaces, friezes

and fragile adobe structures
are being protected and displayed,

and it's a testament to
the builders of this amazing city

that 500 years after the last king
of Chimor was exiled by the Inca,

the corridors, plazas and palaces
of Chan Chan still inspire such awe.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd