Huaca de la Luna
Interesting facts
- The neighbouring Huaca del Sol is estimated to contain more than 130 million adobe bricks, making it the largest pre-Columbian adobe structure in the Americas.
- In the early seventeenth century Spanish colonists diverted the Moche River against the Huaca del Sol to wash out its gold, destroying about two-thirds of it.
- Excavations in 1995–96 led by Steve Bourget uncovered the remains of dozens of sacrificed young men, with estimates ranging from about 40 to more than 70.
- Most of the war-captive victims died from a heavy blow to the head, and their bodies were thrown down from the temple and left unburied.
- Sacrifices linked to El Niño rains followed a different rite, with the throat cut and the body defleshed and put on display.
- There is also evidence of child sacrifice, possibly made as offerings when a new temple phase was completed.
- Archaeologists have counted 128 distinct maker’s marks on the adobe bricks, each thought to identify the community that produced them.
- The red of the murals came from the mineral hematite and the white from clay, while other colours were made from organic sources.
- The name Ai Apaec is a modern label: Rafael Larco Hoyle took it from Muchik speakers, though the valley’s ancient language was probably Quingnam.
- Moche pottery found here depicts temples with war-club roof combs that closely match the decoration of real Moche buildings.
Why it is worth it
Behind a plain-looking mound of mud brick at the foot of Cerro Blanco, the Huaca de la Luna hides some of the most vivid painted walls of the ancient Americas: tier after tier of red, white, yellow and black reliefs, among them the staring, fanged face of the deity usually called Ai Apaec, rows of warriors and lines of naked captives led with ropes around their necks. Wind-blown sand covered the structure for centuries and kept the colours remarkably fresh.
The temple was built by the Moche, a culture that dominated the valleys of Peru's northern coast between about the first and ninth centuries AD. Together with the far larger Huaca del Sol across the plain, it formed the core of the Moche capital known today as Cerro Blanco. While the Huaca del Sol seems to have housed administrative and residential functions and was partly destroyed and looted under Spanish rule, the Huaca de la Luna was a ceremonial centre and survived far better. Its main platform rises about 30 metres, and excavation has shown that it grew like an onion: roughly every century for six hundred years, a new temple was built over the old one, sealing earlier painted walls inside. The adobe bricks carry more than a hundred different maker's marks, apparently identifying the communities that supplied them, and the decorated surfaces add up to around 10,000 square metres.
The site also revealed a darker side of Moche religion. In a plaza at the foot of a rocky outcrop on the eastern side, archaeologists found the skeletons of numerous adult men, many with fractures and signs of captivity, who had been sacrificed and left exposed. Some of these deaths appear to coincide with episodes of heavy rain linked to El Niño, though whether the rituals were a response to such disasters remains debated. Systematic excavation began in the early 1990s, and a site museum stands near the temples. The modern city of Trujillo, founded by the Spanish in 1534, lies just across the Moche River and is also the gateway to the vast adobe city of Chan Chan.
Getting there
The temple stands in Moche District, about 4 km from the small town of Moche and about 5 km from the Pacific coast, with Trujillo's centre a short drive to the north-west. The nearest airport is Trujillo's Capitán FAP Carlos Martínez de Pinillos International Airport (TRU), about 14 km away.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Chan Chan 9.6 km · archaeological-site
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From the encyclopaedia
Huaca de la Luna is a large adobe brick structure built mainly by the Moche people of northern Peru. It sits roughly 5 kilometers from the Pacific Ocean, 4 km from the modern city of Trujillo, and near the mouth of the Moche River. The site was inhabited between the 1st and 9th century AD. Along with Huaca del Sol, Huaca de la Luna is part of Huacas de Moche. The Huacas are major components of the ancient Moche capital city of Cerro Blanco.
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