RELIGION, A POWERFUL TOOL IN ANDEAN PREHISTORY.

The earliest of many distinct cultural stages traced in the upbringing of the Andean civilization is the one named Chavin de Huantar. After a half century's excavations, a 2,800-year-old ruin was discovered in the remote Northern Highlands of Peru, Ancash region, at an elevation of 3,180 meters (10,430 ft), East of the White Mountain range (Cordillera Blanca).
This civilization lasted from about 1200 to 400 B.C., and is the one period in Andean Prehistory when religion seems to have been a powerful tool and a bridge to absorbing all high cultures. At their huge ceremonial center, the Chavin people created a resplendent temple and powerful stone carvings that were superior to later Inca art in that field.
Religion provided a distinctive response to their life's meaning. They had a clear understanding of the relationship between the spirit world and their environment. They were unanimous in these beliefs.
For them the universe, with its spiritual and physical realms, its myriad of gods, human beings, plants, and animals, was established by a series of creative acts coming from a sacred impersonal force existing by itself. This abstract force had its mental qualities (thought, remembrance, consciousness) that evolved through its own existence.
The spirit world had their life in a realm distinct from the physical world. They were able to visit the physical world quite often and had a great deal of responsibility to the events happening in the real world, both beneficial or detrimental to the land or to the human beings.
The people entrusted to the welfare of the land had to exercise a properly executed daily ritual in order to receive the visit of these entities and maintain control over its exact time that had to be done and  maintain a harmonic cycle between the two realms.
They believed that a sacred spiritual energy resided in people, animals, land, places, and inanimate objects. To be in good harmony with it, they had to demonstrate through actions their gaining authority over them. The reflecting balance that existed in the whole universe between the spirit and physical realms had to be maintained through the actions of the ones entrusted with this responsibility.