See How Ancient Past and Present Meet in This Coastal Town | National Geographic

(soft music)

[Gabriel] This is Huanchaco. This is my hometown. Huanchaco is a small fishing village that is north of the city of Trujillo, and it's a very rich place in archaeological sites. There has been a continuous occupation in this area for more than 3500 years. Local fishermen are still fishing in the traditional ways, using reed boats, so it's really something that has that magic sense for this town.

One of the problems we have in Huanchaco is that we are losing that traditional knowledge. If we lose these sites, you will never learn what happened three thousand years ago. I think that when I was already seven or eight, I was very sure that I wanted to be an archaeologist. It was really a very unique time. You play with your friends on the beach, you help the fishermen, you just spend time walking around archaeological sites.

We are currently working at seven sites in the Huanchaco area, and the main goal of this project is to learn more about how these common people built up as a society and transformed over the years. When you learn about Peru, you always hear about Machu Picchu or the Nazca Lines. That's very important, but we want to learn not in the big temples; we want to learn what happened in the small house. You get a big picture of how society worked, and that's what we want to do.

One of the problems we have is urban expansion, which is really destroying many sites, and one of our goals is actually to protect and to study the sites before they get destroyed. One of my dreams is to have people from Huanchaco becoming archaeologists and working in the area, getting them involved, giving job opportunities, but at the same time, feeding their own identity, their own cultural background.

It opens also an opportunity for local people to learn that protecting archaeological sites is very important. Coming back to a place like Huanchaco and working here is, for me, like returning the favor. We need spaces for people to learn more about their own past. The real importance of these small sites is that we can link the past with the present.

We can really tell, you know, you are not only just a fisherman; you're a person living in that site that has more than three thousand years of cultural continuity. That makes you very unique in this world. (soft music)