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Writing was never developed in the
central Andes. Nothing was known of the Moche culture
until the end of the last century when archaeological
exploration and material remains revealed Moche's
existence. Until that time, the great adobe monuments
known today as the Huaca del
Sol y de la Luna were described
by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish chroniclers
as "the works of the gentiles" (indigenous
peoples) a term they used to refer to the descendants of
native peoples in the New World. Between 1898 and 1899 German archaeologist Max
Uhle excavated at the Huacas del Sol y de la Luna. He
found dozens of tombs buried sequentially, one on top of
the other. Based on objects from the tombs, Uhle
identified three great cultures: the Inca, the Chim? and
an earlier one which he dubbed proto-Chim?.
In the late 1920s a disciple of Uhle's,
North American archaeologist Alfred Kroeber of the
University of California at Berkeley, studied the objects
in the Uhle collection and renamed Uhle's
?proto-Chim?? Early Chim?. At the same time, Peruvian
archaeologist Julio C. Tello, who also excavated on the
north coast, suggested that this culture be called Moche
or Mochica, referring to Muchik, one of the ancient
languages spoken on the north coast. This name is still
used today.
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