PYRAMIDS ARCHAEOLOGICAL COMPLEX IN LA LECHE VALLEY
This territory is irrigated by the La Leche River, a dry river that is activated during the seasonal rainy season of the neighboring mountains, does not flow into the sea and naturally irrigates the largest desert in Peru. This channel is also activated cyclically by the rains caused by the El Niño Phenomenon, filling the valley with fertile sediments used by an agriculture that maintains ancestral crops from an irrigation system that still preserves pre-Hispanic channels. This territory preserves two large settlements characterized by monumental truncated pyramids shaped adobe constructions, which house very rich funerary contexts, scientifically investigated, surrounded by an ecosystem of equatorial dry forest, which houses various species of flora and fauna, some endemic or threatened by climate change and anthropic effects.
The Mochica culture is considered one of the most important that developed on the north coast of Peru and it is perhaps the pre-Inca culture that we know the most aspects of due to its multiple and magnificent ceramics, in which a true catalog can be found. of the daily life of the Moche people. This kingdom developed approximately between the III century B.C. and VI AD within the Early Horizon period, its main range was in the valleys of Trujillo and Lambayeque. Its unique development of the power of the Moche Valley, which managed to organize a state of conquest that subdued those of Virú and other valleys, both to the north and to the south, forming a kingdom that spanned from Lambayeque to Nepeña, with extensions to Piura, to the north, and Huarmey to the south.
Moche society was stratified. Social classes were basically reduced to two: leaders and people. The economy was mainly based on agriculture and trade; hunting, fishing and gathering were complements. There are graphic testimonies about the Moche religious ideology, its rites and its priesthood. A magical-religious being appears as the central figure of the highest hierarchy, he is easily identified by his tiger-toothed mouth with fangs and by his large semi-lunar headdress.