The Sechín River is a seasonal river about long in the

Ancash department Ancash (; ) is a department and region in western 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, an ...

of Peru that remains dry for long seasons, increasing its volume at times of rain in the mountains at its source. It is of irregular regime, due to this is known as ''Loco River''. It rises at an altitude of in the

Cordillera Negra The Cordillera Negra (Spanish language, Spanish for "black range"), Yana Walla in Quechuan languages, qechua is part of the ''Cordillera Occidental'', one of three mountain ranges in the Andes of west central Peru. It is almost entirely located wi ...

and it ends by flowing into the

Casma River The Casma River, which upstream is called Río Grande, is a river that crosses northern Casma province in the Ancash Region of Peru. It originates in the Black Mountain Range and drains into the Pacific Ocean. Major tributaries include the Sech ...

about inland from the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. The Casma-Sechin basin runs down the western slopes of the Andes mountain range - one of the world’s driest deserts. The city of Casma, population 30,000, is located near the junction of the two rivers. The

Pan-American Highway The Pan-American Highway is a vast network of roads that stretches about 30,000 kilometers (about 19,000 miles) from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in the northernmost part of North America to Ushuaia, Argentina, at the southern tip of South America. I ...

crosses the Sechin River at Casma. Historical records showed that the Sechín was severely affected by flooding in 1925 from an extremely strong

El Niño EL, El or el may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional entities * El, a character from the manga series ''Shugo Chara!'' by Peach-Pit * Eleven (''Stranger Things'') (El), a fictional character in the TV series ''Stranger Things'' * El, fami ...

cycle. Elders alive at the time recounted that the rains of 1925 were significantly stronger than those in 1871 and 1891, although the rains from 1891 were considered "calamatious." The archeological site of Cerro Sechín was discovered near the Sechín River by Peruvian archeologist

Julio C. Tello Julio César Tello Rojas (April 11, 1880 – June 3, 1947) was a Peruvian archaeologist. Tello is considered the "father of Peruvian archeology" and was the first indigenous archaeologist in South America. He made the major discoveries of the pr ...

in 1937. Cerro Sechin is one of the archaeological sites of the

Casma–Sechin culture The Casma–Sechin culture (alternatively Sechin Complex) (c. 3600 BCE–200 BCE) of Peru refers to the large concentration of pre-historic ruins in the valleys of the Casma River and its tributary the Sechin River and along the nearby coast of ...

along the two rivers. The Casma-Sechin culture is one of the oldest civilizations in the Americas with monumental architecture dating back to 3600 BCE.

References

Rivers of Peru Rivers of the Department of Ancash {{Peru-river-stub

See also

References