Huge
Pacific swells driven by onshore winds pounded the beaches,
piling great sand dunes above high-tide levels. The fine
sand swirled and blew inland, burying farmland and blocking
river valleys. The dunes were mountains of destruction on
the move.
Thirty kilometers inland from the raging Pacific,
two brightly painted adobe pyramids towered over
the inundated Moche valley. Here the rulers of
the glittering Moche state looked down on their
highly irrigated and normally well-organized domains.
The haughty lords were high above the muddy water,
but the rain left its mark on their adobe mountains.
Water flowed into tiny cracks in the stucco, turning
small imperfections into deep crevices, and crevices
into wide rifts, as the clay crumbled. Deep erosion
gullies soon cratered the once smooth sides of
the sacred edifice as El Niño mocked the
divine powers of the Moche leaders.
The sixth-century El Niño and the droughts of the same century
sowed the seeds of destruction for one of ancient America’s
most spectacular and powerful civilizations.
Excerpted from Floods, Famines, and Emperors
by Brian Fagan (pages 119-120). Basic Books, a Member of the Perseus
Books group. 1999. ISBN number 0-465-01120-9.
This excerpt is used here solely
for non-profit educational purposes.
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