page_title: Department of Ancash
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Department of Ancash / History
caption_attribution_description: Monumento Arqueológico Chavín de Huántar. In 2006 I spent 4 months in the town of Chavín de Huántar for anthropological research on tourism. I made this picture during one of my numerous visits to the ruins.
context_page_description: Ancash is a department of northern Peru. It is bordered by the departments of La Libertad on the north, Huánuco and Pasco on the east, Lima on the south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. Its capital is the city of Huaraz, and its largest city and port is Chimbote. The name of the region originates from the Quechua word anqash, from anqas or from anka.
context_section_description: Between 400 and 600 BC, the first Peruvian civilization, known as Chavín, originated and flourished in this zone. The importance of this culture lies not only in its antiquity but in the history and culture it shares with other cultures along the Andean and Amazonian territories. As archaeologist Julio C. Tello put it, "Chavín was the mother of all the cultures that later bloomed in the old Peru." The name Chavín comes from the Quechua word Chawpin, which translates as center or headquarters. Tello believed that people came from the Amazonas, scaled the Andes, and developed the Chavín culture.
  During the Inca age, the population of the Santa valley was assimilated into the Inca empire by Pachacuti.
  The first Spaniards came to Huaylas attracted by the fame of the silver veins of the department. In time, the Spanish destroyed the Inca cities.  It was during this time that Jerónimo de Alvarado founded the city of Huaraz. Though in the Colonial Age this city held little importance and its artistic and cultural life did not have much relevance, it became the headquarters for Simón Bolívar during his campaign to liberate Peru.
  The department of Ancash was created following the defeat of the Peru-Bolivia Confederation by the combined forces of the Peruvian restoration army and the Chilean army at the battle of Yungay in 1839.
  The 1970 Ancash earthquake devastated the department, killing more than 50,000 people and damaging 186,000 houses in one of the deadliest natural disasters in Peru.
  Today, most of the Ancash population is concentrated in the Callejón de Huaylas.
  Beginning in 2011, the department has been the site of an ongoing anti-mining protest over allegations of water contamination and public versus private rights to the natural resources of the zone. Clashes between protesters, mining company security, and the federal police have resulted in numerous deaths and injuries.
caption: Chavín de Huantar
exif: {"Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Express (Android)", "Image DateTime": "2021:06:10 23:21:38", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0231", "EXIF OffsetTime": "b'+02:00\\xc2V\\xdaT\\xee'", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB"}