Peru as loose confederation of cities scattered along the coast of northern Peru and southern Ecuador, the Chimu flourished from about 1140 to 1450. Their capital was at Chan Chan outside of modern-day Trujillo. In the highlands, both the Tiahuanaco culture, near Lake Titicaca in both Peru and Bolivia, and the Wari culture, near the present-day city of Ayacucho, developed large urban settlements and wide-ranging state systems between 500 and 1000 AD. In the 15th century, the Incas emerged as a powerful state which, in the span of a century, formed the largest empire in pre-Columbian America with their capital in
Pre-Columbian rafts one attempt reached Costa Rica. The various voyages have demonstrated the seaworthiness of prehistoric rafts and, in the words of an early Spaniard, that the Indians who sailed them were "great mariners." The Spanish colonists in Peru and Ecuador from the 16th to the 19th centuries relied on the Indians of the Peruvian and Ecuadorian coasts and their rafts for coastal trade. Pre-Columbian rafts Pre-Columbian rafts plied the Pacific Coast of South America for trade from about 100 BCE, and possibly much earlier. The 16th century descriptions by the Spanish of the rafts used by Native Americans along the seacoasts