Chimor

Chimor, the Chimu Empire, was the desert-coast kingdom of northern Peru, the largest realm of the Late Intermediate Period with a thousand kilometres of shoreline. Its culture rose around 900 on the ruins of Moche, and legend brings its founder Taycanamo out of the sea on a balsa raft to raise Chan Chan, the mud-brick capital his sons Guacricur and Nancempinco swelled up and down the valleys, The realm grew from the Moche Valley past Huarmey to Trujillo, with Farfan holding the Jequetepeque north, taking Sican by the sword and learning from Cajamarca and Wari. Chimor's engineers watered the desert valleys with canals, its smiths worked copper, gold, silver and tumbaga, and its armies held a thousand kilometres of coast. It was the last Andean power that might have stopped the Incas, but Topa Inca Yupanqui broke it around 1470, fifty years before the Spanish came, and the desert capital emptied into legend.