In the ruins of Chan Chan, capital of the Chimu empire, in Peru, a communication system was found 1,200-1,400 years ago and known as the first example of telephone technology in the Western Hemisphere.

The tool consists of two pumpkin tops (each 8.9cm long and coated with resin) which act as sound transmitters and receivers.A leather membrane is stretched around each of the gourd bases. The 22.8 meter line connecting the two ends is made of cotton thread. they are too fragile to be physically tested, but the researchers figured out how the tool might have worked.

The archaeologist and anthropologist Ramiro Matos, scholar of the central Andes and curator of the NMAI (National Museum of American Indian) states:“It is a unique object. No others have been discovered. It comes from the genius of an indigenous society that had no written language. It was a tool designed for a particular level of communication, perhaps to give orders to the courtiers who were in the antechambers of power "(the Chimus were known to be a top-down society, where men were not equal, because the Sun had populated the world starting from three eggs, gold for the ruling class, silver for their wives, and copper for all the others). No face-to-face contact would therefore have been necessary, thus ensuring the safety of the upper class.

Chan Chan's glory days ended around 1470, when the Incas conquered the city, and the When the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrived in the old Chimu capital, around 1532, he found it almost completely abandoned, although some accounts of the expedition speak of walls and other architectural elements decorated with precious metals, immediately stolen by the Spanish conquerors