Tagged “friezes”
Chan Chan
How did the Chimú raise the largest earthen city on Earth — roughly 20 square kilometers of adobe palaces, tapering earthquake-resistant walls, and marine friezes — and keep tens of thousands of people alive in one of the driest deserts on the planet, where it almost never rains?
c. 850–1470 CE (Chimú kingdom of Chimor) · Chan Chan, near Trujillo, La Libertad Region, PeruAdded July 2026
HIGH WONDERKuélap
How did a pre-Inca cloud-forest people, with no writing, no draft animals, and no iron tools, quarry and haul an enormous volume of limestone up to a 3,000-metre ridgetop and raise perimeter walls up to 20 metres high around more than 400 stone houses — and why did they wrap a mountaintop settlement in defences on that scale?
main construction c. 900–1100 CE, on a site first occupied around the 6th century (Chachapoya culture) · Kuélap, near Tingo, Luya Province, Amazonas Region, PeruAdded July 2026