Ruins and Graves of Pachacamac

First settled around A.D. 200, Pachacamac is one of the longest continuously inhabited sites in South America. When archaeologists began exploring the site in the 1890s they found a vast complex of monumental buildings and looted burials. In 1993, archaeologist Peter Eeckhout, of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, began the first comprehensive excavation of one of the mud-brick stepped pyramids at this site. Eeckhout concluded the pyramids may have been palaces of the Ychsma lords who ruled Pachacamac and some of its surroundings during A.D. 900–1470.