the 20 metre high 200 metre long and 180 metre wide Huaca Tres Palos, in the background, behind the llamas and alpacas grazing in Lima Zoo.
An understanding of the pre-colonial history of Lima and the surrounding valleys starts with a trip to the zoo in the San Miguel district of Lima. Until the 1940s this was rural farmland on the outskirts of Lima. But rising above the farmland were dozens of mounds that would not grow crops.
The largest were hundreds of metres long and wide, and 30 metres high. Some of these were truncated pyramids built by the Lima people, who occupied the site from 300 to 800 PE, Present Era. Later, around 1000 PE, the Ychsma people built their own ceremonial mounds, plazas and storerooms closer to the sea. Besides the temples and palaces there was a town of residences and workshops, Maranga, a settlement surrounded by walls and with canals bringing water from the Rimac. When the Incas came to the coast, they tidied up and re-organised, adding their buildings.