Near the ancient ruins of Chan Chan in northern Peru, archaeologists have opened a door that has been closed for six centuries — a burial chamber of the Chimu civilization, holding the remains of at least 38 individuals alongside weapons and ceremonial objects left exactly as the living once arranged them. In a region where looting has erased so much of the pre-Incan past, the tomb's unbroken stillness is itself a kind of miracle. It reminds us that history is not only what survives, but what escapes the reach of those who would unmake it.