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About 370 km north of Lima and 170 km north of the ruins at Paramonga is the vast complex of Sechin Alto. Michael Moseley (in his book The Incas and Their Ancestors) says that the entire complex covers more than 10 square km. in the Casma Valley. Radiocarbon analysis dates the central Cerro Sechin part of the complex to 1290 BCE, while construction on the overall complex was in full swing even earlier - by 1700 BCE, according to Moseley. The significance of these early dates means that it preceded the much better known site of Chavin de Huantar high in the Andes by nearly a thousand years rather than visa versa as had been thought previously. Moseley notes that the Sechin complex is the largest such complex for its time in the Western Hemisphere.
Cerro Sechin is at the base of a rocky hill and is by far the most fascinating part of the entire complex. The central structure is surrounded by a rectangular wall made of hundreds of large stone slabs. Nearly every slab has a beautifully executed carving of warriors, prisoners, or human body parts. To walk the circumference leaves one with an especially grisly image of the civilization that built this complex. The image at the top, left is an overview of the site of the main structure while to its right is pictured a small section of the wall. The main figure caption lists the subjects of the slabs in the image. Immediately above to the left and right are two details of the slabs. In the center image our guide points to a human backbone. We also were grateful to him for pointing out the long thumbnails on the warriors which were used to gouge out eyeballs.
After our exploration of Cerro Sechin we set out to find the Pampa de Las Llamas-Moxeke Complex, mentioned by Moseley as being nearby. From the complexity of its construction and beauty of friezes that he describes, we decided it would be worth trying to find in spite of having only a vague location on a large scale map. As the sun was setting we found the large mound rising above field pictured on the left above. As the right hand image shows, the entire mound was of human construction with finely cut massive stones near its summit. Web sites: There are very few that have any substantial amount of useful information. Most of these have a passing mention of Cerro Sechin in a course outline. Then, given the age of the site and the spectacular series of carvings, there is an inordinate number of web sites dealing with the "mystical" or "spiritual" nature of Cerro Sechin. There are even a few that purport to link it to UFOs! So I give only one web page. The interested reader should also search the general sites on pre-Inka Peru I have listed elsewhere.
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