The Chimú culture was centered on Chimor with its capital city, Chan Chan, a large adobe city in the Moche Valley of present-day Trujillo, Peru. The culture arose about 900 AD, succeeding the Moche culture, and was later conquered by the Inca emperor Topa Inca Yupanqui around 1470, fifty years before the arrival of the Spanish in the region.

During their reign the Chimú maintained the largest and most important political system in Peru before the Inca. Their culture was based on agriculture, aided by immense works of irrigation engineering. They did excellent work in textiles and in gold, silver, and copper and their distinctive pottery is used to date Andean civilization all along the north coast of Peru.

There was a stratified social system from peasant to nobility. The people paid tribute to the rulers with products or labor. By 1470, however, the Inca Empire from Cusco defeated the Chimú. They moved Minchancaman, the final Chimú emperor, to Cusco and redirected gold and silver there to adorn the Qurikancha, the Golden Temple located in Cusco, the most important temple in the Inca Empire. The conquering Inca absorbed much of the Chimú high culture into their own imperial organization, including the Chimú political organization, irrigation systems, and road engineering.

North Coast of Peru, early Chimú
culture, circa 1000 A.D.,
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, 1/22/20