MOCHICA, THE DYNAMIC PEOPLE.

The Mochica civilization flourished along the Northern Coast and Valleys of ancient Peru, in particular, in the Chicama and Trujillo Valleys. They were contemporary with the Nazca civilization further down the Coast.
The Mochica people dominated the River Valleys and were a dynamic, original, almost aggressive in a positive way, who worked out many of the social patterns later taken over in the religious and political roots of the Inca empire. The Moche state spread to eventually cover an area from the Huarmey Valley in the South to the Piura Valley in the North, and they even extended their influence as far as the Chincha Islands.
The Mochica society society was based on large-scale production and mass labor. They had a small noble class that organized the rules of production and work of the rest.
Their graphically painted pottery vessels show the power of bejeweled chieftains borne about on litters. Visitors of other ranks are shown dining at a different level at the same site or dimension, presented as a lower table than the one of the chieftains. The quipu, used during the time of the Inca empire, represented the levels in which the administration of power had to be done by using knots and different colors of the rainbow.
Artisans were full-time specialists in their crafts, and one pottery picture shows a line of weavers working away under a foreman's eye in the mass production of textiles. They expressed themselves in art with such a degree of aesthetics that their naturalistic and vibrant murals, ceramics, and metal work are amongst the most highly regarded in America. Historians compare the pottery of these North Coast people of ancient Peru with the art of classical Greece. In all these Mochica pottery there is a strong preoccupation with the power of the entities and things in the material or physical world in relation with the unseen world. Men are seen farming, fishing, hunting, and defending themselves from attacks.
The time of the Mochica seems to have been a kind of cosmological morning for the Andean thinking.
The Mochica built its capital city at the foot of the White Mountain (Cerro Blanco) and once covered an area of 300 hectares. Besides urban housing, plazas, storehouses, and workshop buildings, it also has impressive monuments which include two massive adobe brick pyramid-like mounds. These monumental structures, in their original state, display typical traits of Moche architecture: multiple levels, access ramps, and slanted roofing.
By far, the biggest monument to be found on the Coast is the Pyramid of the Sun (Huaca del Sol) near the modern city of Trujillo, estimated to contain 140 million adobe bricks each stamped with a maker's mark. It has 4 tiers and stands 40 meters high today. Originally it stood over 50 meters high, covered an area of 340x160 meters. A ramp on the North side gives access to the summit, which is a platform in the form of a Cross. The smaller structure known as the Pyramid of the Moon (Huaca de la Luna), stands 500 meters away and was built using some 50 million adobe bricks. It has 3 tiers and is decorated with friezes showing Moche mythology and rituals. The entire structure was once enclosed within a high adobe Brick Wall. Both pyramids were originally brightly colored in red, white, yellow, and black, and were used as an imposing setting to perform sacred rituals and ceremonies.
The European invaders later diverted the Rio Moche in order to break down the Pyramids and loot the tombs within, suggesting that the pyramids were also used by the Moches for generations as a home for the souls of their important persons according to its role.