Quechuan languages
There is an absence of written language, so the language spoken by the Chavín people is not known, but it is likely now extinct. Some anthropologists have proposed that it was a form of Proto-Quechuan, reasoning that the Quechuan languages' highly regular morphology and syntax compared to surrounding languages would have been useful for allowing intelligible communication between communities separated by mountain ranges, as some Chavín groups were. On the other hand, Alfredo Torero dates the Proto-Quechuan languages to around the beginning of the first millennium CE.