Xllang

The Xllang are the people of the Sican, or Lambayeque, culture, which occupied the river valleys of the north Peruvian coast around Chiclayo from about 750 to 1375. Succeeding the Moche, they farmed the irrigated valleys of the La Leche and Lambayeque rivers and spoke Muchik.

Between 900 and 1100 their religious capital at Batán Grande presided over a florescence of adobe temple mounds, fine black ceramics and arsenical-bronze and gold metallurgy; elite tombs held gold masks and tumbaga ornaments. A generation-long drought around 1020 shattered the old order.

The temples of Batán Grande were burned and abandoned between 1050 and 1100, and a new capital rose at Túcume, where twenty-six great mounds were built around La Raya mountain. In 1337 the Lambayeque polities still ruled their valleys, but the expansion of Chimor ended their independence around 1375.