Nazca was an enigmatic culture complex to emerge during the Early Intermediate Period. It was centered in the southern coastal zone around the watersheds of the Ica and Nazca Rivers. Nazca pottery styles went through at least eight distinct phases, until their decline around 600 c.e. The Nazca are especially well known for their geoglyphs, or large-scale geometric symbols etched into the coastal desert. Further north, the Moche were another important coastal culture group and state to emerge in the Early Intermediate.

The site of Moche, in the Moche River valley, has been identified as the capital of the Moche polity. Archaeologists consider Moche to have been a true city; perhaps South America’s first. The largest structure at the Moche type site, a pyramid dubbed Huaca del Sol, measures 525 by 1,115 feet at its base and stands some 131 feet tall, making it one of the Western Hemisphere’s largest preconquest monumental structures.

All of these developments laid the groundwork for the subsequent emergence of two other major state systems, or empires: the Huari and the Tiwanaku.