witnessed by Cortes, was Tenochtitlan, the site of contemporary Mexico City. To the south the Chimu kingdom controlled the territories of coastal South America in the 13th and 14th centuries. Here they exploited their arid climate to build one of the world's largest cities ever made from adobe. In the middle of the 15th century the Chimu were displaced by upstart rulers from the highlands of Peru, the Incas, with their capital in Cuzco. In their short life before they fell to the Spanish, the Incas the dominated trade routes of coastal South America,constructed long bridges with rope, and
built roads and cities with some of the most intricate and precise random rubble masonry ever seen in history.