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
Cannibalism in pre-Columbian America that the Aztec diet was balanced and that the dietary contribution of cannibalism would not have been very effective as a reward. As recently as 2008, Mexico's National Institute of Archaeology and History (INAH) derided as a "myth" historical accounts by Jesuit missionaries reporting ritual cannibalism among the Xiximes people of northern Mexico. But in 2011, archaeologist José Luis Punzo, director of INAH, reported evidence confirming that the Xiximes did indeed practice cannibalism. Cannibalism in pre-Columbian America There is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism, but there is no scholarly consensus as to its extent.