Writings by the major chroniclers of the time, such as Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, were based on fragmentary, second-hand accounts.

Due to the great size of the Marañón River and the surrounding mountainous terrain, the region was relatively isolated from the coast and other areas of Peru, although archaeological evidence shows some interaction between the Chachapoyas and other cultures.

The contemporary Peruvian city of Chachapoyas, Peru, derives its name from the word for this ancient culture, as does the defined architectural style.

[4]The area of the Chachapoyas is sometimes referred to as the "Amazonian Andes" due to its being part of a mountain range covered by dense tropical forest.

[6] The major urban centers, such as the great fortress of Kuelap, with more than 400 interior buildings and massive exterior stone walls reaching upwards of 60 ft (18 m) in height, and Gran Pajatén possibly served to defend against the Wari culture around 800 AD, a Middle Horizon culture that covered much of the coast and highlands.

He recounts that the warlike actions began in Pias, a community on a mountain on the edge of Chachapoyas territory likely to the southwest of Gran Pajatén.

During the time of Huayna Capac's regime, the Chachapoyas rebelled: all of his governors and ministers having been killed, along with a great number of soldiers, and others taken into slavery.

From Cajamarquilla, a delegation of women came to meet them, led by a matron who was a former concubine of Tupac Inca Yupanqui, Huayna Capac's father.

They also arranged the transfer of groups of villagers under the system of mitma (forced resettlement): It gave them grounds to work and places for houses not much far from a hill that is next to the city (Cusco) called Carmenga.

[citation needed]The Inca presence in the territory of Chachapoyas left structures at Quchapampa, Amazonas, in the outskirts of the Utcubamba in the current Leimebamba District, as well as other sites.

Although fortifications such as the citadel at Kuélap may have been an adequate defense against the invading Inca, by this time the Chachapoyas settlements may have become decentralized and fragmented after the threat of Wari invasion had dissipated.

Using the mitma system of ethnic dispersion, the Inca attempted to quell these rebellions by forcing large numbers of Chachapoya people to resettle in remote locations of the empire.

During Manco Inca Yupanqui's rebellion against the Spanish empire, his emissaries enlisted the help of a group of Chachapoyas, but Huaman's supporters remained loyal to the Spaniards.

Choquequirao, an Incan site in southern Peru close to Machu Picchu, was in part built by mitmaqkuna of Chachapoyan origin during the regime of Tupac Inca Yupanqui.

Cieza de León remarked that among the indigenous Peruvians, the Chachapoyas were unusually fair-skinned and famously beautiful: They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen in Indies, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple (...) The women and their husbands always dressed in woolen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos, which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere.

The "mausoleums" may be modified forms of the chullpa or pucullo, elements of funeral architecture observed throughout the Andes, especially in the Tiwanaku and Wari cultures.

Population expansion into the Amazonian Andes seems to have been driven by the desire to expand agrarian land, as evidenced by extensive terracing throughout the region.

The agricultural environments of both the Andes and the coastal region, characterized by its extensive desert areas and limited soil suitable for farming, became insufficient for sustaining a population like the ancestral Peruvians, which had grown for 3000 years.

[13] In the Indiana Jones franchise, the Golden Idol of the Chachapoyans is the artifact of the opening section seen in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark.