TIAHUANCO, THE GATEWAY OF THE SUN.

The ruins of Tiahuanaco bear striking witness to the power of the empire that played a leading role in the development of the ancient Andean cultures.
The monumental remains, with its exceptional buildings, are examples of the ceremonial and public architecture and art, testifying the religious, cultural, and political significance of this civilization as one of the most important manifestations of the ancient Andean race.
The city of Tiahuanaco, capital of the powerful empire that dominated a large area of highlands of the Southern Andes and beyond, is located near the South shores of Lake Titicaca on the Andean High Plateau (Altiplano), at an altitude  of 3,850 meters, in the today Province of Ingavi, Department of La Paz, Bolivia. Most of the ancient city, which was largely built from adobe, has been overlaid by the modern town. However, the monumental stone buildings of the ceremonial centre survive in the protected archaeological zones.
Tiahuanco Culture began as a small settlement which later flourished into a planned city. The maximum expression of the culture is shown in the massive architectural complex that reflects the strong and complex nature of its religious-political structure. The ceremonial-civic centre is spatially organized with the central point of it oriented toward the 4 cardinal points. It is constructed with impressive ashlars stones carved accurately and equipped with a very complex system of underground drainage controlling the flow of rain waters. The public-religious space of the city is shaped by a series of architectural structures that correspond to different periods of cultural accessions: Temple semi-underground, Kalasasaya's temple, Akapana's Pyramid, Pumapunku's Pyramid. In addition, the political-administrative area is represented by the palace of Putuni and Kantatallita.
The most imposing monument is the Pyramid of Akapana with 7 superimposed platforms with stone retaining walls rising to a height of over 18 meters. Only the lowest of these and part of one of the intermediate walls survive intact. It is surrounded by very well-preserved drainage canals. The walls of the small semi-subterranean temple are made up of 48 pillars in red sandstone. There are many carved stone heads set into the walls, symbolizing the power of the defeated enemies with which the wall was formed in the supernatural world.
To the North of the Akapana is Kelasasaya, a large rectangular open temple, used as an observatory or as a mean of communication with the other unseen dimensions. It is entered by a flight of 7 steps in the centre of the Eastern Wall.  The interior contains 2 carved monoliths and the monumental Gate of the Sun, one of the most important religious expressions of the Tiahuanaco culture. It was made from a single slab of andesite, cut to form a large doorway with niches (Hornacinas) on either side. Above the doorway is an elaborate bas-relief frieze depicting a central deity, standing on a stepped platform, wearing an elaborated headdress, and holding a staff in each hand. The deity is flanked by rows of anthropomorphic birds and along the bottom of the panel there is a series of human faces. The ensemble has been interpreted as a cosmological calendar related to agricultural seasons in the unseen world to match the correct seasonal time in the physical world if the harmony between them prevailed.
The settlers of the city perfected the technology for carving and polishing different stone materials for the construction, which together with the architectural technology, enriched the monumental spaces.
The economic base of the culture is evidence through almost 50,000 agricultural fields, known locally as Sucacollos, characterized by their irrigation technology which allowed the different cultures to adapt to the climate conditions.
The Tiahuanaco culture was also characterized by the use of new technologies and materials for the architecture, pottery, textiles, metals, and basket-making. This innovations were subsequently taken up by succeeding civilizations and were extended as far as Cuzco.
Tiahuanco was the epicenter of knowledge due to the fact that it expanded its sphere of influence to the inter Andean Valleys and the Coast.

THE CULT OF THE MOCHES.

Moche culture is one of the oldest in ancient Peru. Its central region was located in the Valley of the Moche River on the Northern Coast not far from the today's city of Trujillo. They lived in a few Oases fromed in the Valleys of the Coastal Rivers. The Oases were separated by a lifeless belt of desert, 10 kilometers wide. At the very same time the Valleys which repeatedly were flooded by Rivers yield good harvest for their inhabitants.
Moche culture developed in the area which had previously belonged under the Chavin rule. Moche religion and art shows signs absorbed from the earlier Chavin culture. Because the rich human-shaped pottery shows that the human typology of the Moche people includes Mongoloid as well as Negroid features, then it confirms that their ways of interaction with the outside phenomena was based in a supernatural way.
The 3 major phenomena in Moche religion are: 1) the cult of the warrior-priest as an official religion.
2) the shaman practice as one with the individual. 3) the cult of the dead.
Knowledge of the Moche pantheon is sketchy. Al Paec the Creator god or the son of the Creator, is depicted in Moche art with ferocious fangs, a puma or jaguar headdress, and snake earrings, and was considered to dwell in the High Mountains. The earplugs were deftly inlaid with shell and turquoise giving them a view of the insight of its Creator god as a quick-neat-witted force and they tried to represent it in the physical world. Also the earrings were decorated  with figures of warriors wielding mace and shield. The earplugs were 4 inches wide and they were worn by the Mochica leaders. Human sacrifices, especially of war prisoners but also Mochica citizens, were done in a clear sense of subordination or power to the one entitled to it. Their blood, representing the energy or substance moving in the physical world, was offered in ritual goblets to their Creator god."Si" was considered the supreme deity. This goddess controlled the seasons and storms that had such an influence on agriculture and daily life. The goddess was seen both at night and during the day. Women played a prominent role in Moche religion and ceremony as it is shown in murals of the tomb of a priestess known as "the lady of Cao" (la senora de Cao). The painted bean warrior figure is a conventional motif in Moche decorations, since they represent the ones defending the Moche power. The maces, round shields, darts and conical crested helmets represented actual fighting gear of the warrior vested in the unseen world. They held a high rank level within society.
Another deity who frequently appears in Moche art is the half-man, half-jaguar Decapitator god. He is often represented holding a sacrificial knife (Tumi) in one hand and the severe head of the conquered force shown as a human head in the other hand. Such detailed scenes of daily life, skilled at rendering movement and action in the painting, mirror the real life events that the Moche people encounter day by day. At the foot of the Moon Pyramid 40 skeletons of men under 30 years of age were found. They were mutilated and thrown from the top of the pyramid. The bodies lie above soft ground which suggests that the power invested in these men were broken in similar stages the skeleton is shown. Ceremonial goblets containing traces of human blood were found also, and costumed and be-jeweled individuals almost exactly like the religious entities depicted in Moche murals, were found there.
The Moche were gifted potters and superb metalworkers. Potters created lifelike representations, and modeled portraits of actual people on their clay effigy vessels. Probably only a person of the nobility, able to carry a great deal of power, enough to defend its people from the judgment of the supernatural forces, had his portrait done in this manner.
The pink jar clay figures, modeled in a naturalistic style, were also used for Moche people in burial rites. The turban was standard headgear. The natural clay gave the vessel its pink tone.
Exquisite gold headdresses and chest plates, gold, silver, and turquoise jewelry (ear-spools and nose ornaments), textiles, tumi-knives, and copper bowls and drinking vessels, found in their tombs reflect the highest level of achievements in their respective craft.
Many fine examples of Moche art have been unearthed from Tombs at Sipan, Saint Joseph of Moro, and the Old Shrine Cao (Haca Cao Viejo), which are the amongst some of the best preserved burial sites from any Andean culture.

MOCHICA, THE DYNAMIC PEOPLE.

The Mochica civilization flourished along the Northern Coast and Valleys of ancient Peru, in particular, in the Chicama and Trujillo Valleys. They were contemporary with the Nazca civilization further down the Coast.
The Mochica people dominated the River Valleys and were a dynamic, original, almost aggressive in a positive way, who worked out many of the social patterns later taken over in the religious and political roots of the Inca empire. The Moche state spread to eventually cover an area from the Huarmey Valley in the South to the Piura Valley in the North, and they even extended their influence as far as the Chincha Islands.
The Mochica society society was based on large-scale production and mass labor. They had a small noble class that organized the rules of production and work of the rest.
Their graphically painted pottery vessels show the power of bejeweled chieftains borne about on litters. Visitors of other ranks are shown dining at a different level at the same site or dimension, presented as a lower table than the one of the chieftains. The quipu, used during the time of the Inca empire, represented the levels in which the administration of power had to be done by using knots and different colors of the rainbow.
Artisans were full-time specialists in their crafts, and one pottery picture shows a line of weavers working away under a foreman's eye in the mass production of textiles. They expressed themselves in art with such a degree of aesthetics that their naturalistic and vibrant murals, ceramics, and metal work are amongst the most highly regarded in America. Historians compare the pottery of these North Coast people of ancient Peru with the art of classical Greece. In all these Mochica pottery there is a strong preoccupation with the power of the entities and things in the material or physical world in relation with the unseen world. Men are seen farming, fishing, hunting, and defending themselves from attacks.
The time of the Mochica seems to have been a kind of cosmological morning for the Andean thinking.
The Mochica built its capital city at the foot of the White Mountain (Cerro Blanco) and once covered an area of 300 hectares. Besides urban housing, plazas, storehouses, and workshop buildings, it also has impressive monuments which include two massive adobe brick pyramid-like mounds. These monumental structures, in their original state, display typical traits of Moche architecture: multiple levels, access ramps, and slanted roofing.
By far, the biggest monument to be found on the Coast is the Pyramid of the Sun (Huaca del Sol) near the modern city of Trujillo, estimated to contain 140 million adobe bricks each stamped with a maker's mark. It has 4 tiers and stands 40 meters high today. Originally it stood over 50 meters high, covered an area of 340x160 meters. A ramp on the North side gives access to the summit, which is a platform in the form of a Cross. The smaller structure known as the Pyramid of the Moon (Huaca de la Luna), stands 500 meters away and was built using some 50 million adobe bricks. It has 3 tiers and is decorated with friezes showing Moche mythology and rituals. The entire structure was once enclosed within a high adobe Brick Wall. Both pyramids were originally brightly colored in red, white, yellow, and black, and were used as an imposing setting to perform sacred rituals and ceremonies.
The European invaders later diverted the Rio Moche in order to break down the Pyramids and loot the tombs within, suggesting that the pyramids were also used by the Moches for generations as a home for the souls of their important persons according to its role.

THE ANCIENT COASTAL PEOPLE OF PERU.

Starting about 500 BC, a strong and distinctive culture began to surface in 3 small River Valleys on the virtually rainless Coast South of what is now Lima.
In this new society, which produced no known large buildings, ancestor worship seems to have been the overriding theme of how people lived their lives in a supernatural way. It is called the Paracas culture, after the modern name of the Desert peninsula on which its richest burial vaults were found. More than 350 Paracas mummy bundles have been dug up, containing mantles buried with the dead.
These people wove magnificent clothes for their dead. The border figures in their garments represent the manner in which the supernatural powers were understood. Some garments bear minuscule designs that faithfully represent embroidered decorations found on other life-sized garments. Some wear wrap-around dresses of a style worn by women in ancient times; others wear two-part outfits, associated with men. The largest and most beautiful decorated garments were mantles that draped over the shoulders, and fell to the knee. After more than 2,200 years, the ancient colors, still glow with beauty.
So fine is the weaving that threads run up to 500 to the square inch.
Some mantles have the design of feline faces painted on it that recall the Chavin motif. Others are embroidered with such description of supernatural entities which were keepers of the gates in their respective unseen worlds. Some figures are winged men with snakes coiled around their eyes, splitting headed condors gobbling fish, and cat-faced men with knives. Most of the animals and plants that appear were tied to species still found on the South Coast, and many human figures wear or carry items careful enough to relate it to the site and time where it was done.
Their jewelry correspond to specimens formed from thin sheets of gleaming gold, representing the careful way of taking something from the womb of the earth and wear it. These include forehead ornaments shaped like a bird with outstretched wings; hair spangles that were disk or star shapes that dangle from the wing tips of the forehead ornament; slender, feather-shaped headdress plumes; and mouth masks.
Whole communities worked, sitting side-by-side only in the embroidering of these clothes for the death.
Their masterpieces of astonishing virtuosity were done thread by thread with simple tools, too delicate and considered ceremonial, and finished so carefully on both sides that it is almost impossible to distinguish which is the correct side. The central cloth and its framing dimensional border are created by different techniques, both with perfect reversibility, except for a variation of 3 border figures, that instead of being duplicated on the back as if flipped in mirror image, appear in back view on one side of the cloth, thereby designating a "front" and "back" to the textile. So fine is the weaving that threads run up to 500 to the square inch. The central cloth and the border hold different color palettes suggesting that they were created at different times. The triple-layer border were designed with color outer veneers of wool "crossed-looping" that envelop inner cotton cores of looping or weaving. While the cotton is off-white, the wool is dyed in jewel-bright tones. White cotton was grown in Coastal Valleys and wool came from camelids that live at high altitudes in the Andes Mountains.
Some of the dead were warriors and priests able to move between worlds, with especially rich mantles and copper battle-axes and gold ornaments at their sides. They were found buried with other people, men and women, who also had the power to move between the unseen worlds to picture and record the events in their minds and transport the information it in the design of the mantle and garments. As witnesses of the event they were able to communicate it to the different levels of entities in the supernatural world and to the people in the world of the living, about to whom the power went. The garments represented the covering of such power in life and in death. The severed heads brandished by some entities, sometimes sprout flourishing plants that grew without respect to the rules, ended decapitated, and the enforcer retain the power. The snake-like streamers that flow from some entities indicates the supernatural qualities of the event. The rules of good and evil were pretty much understood in all levels and harmony between them was a major thing for the people in the living world, their lives depended on it.
The population did not live according to the manner of other cultures in the World. They surfaced from a very dry ground and had a mission to do. When they depicted clothing, always they added a face, or an animal body  to the loose ends of fabrics hanging behind a wearer, considering it a precious carrier of life and harmony between the Worlds.

SUPERNATURAL FORCES REPRESENTED IN ART.

The art styles of Early Andean people was assumed to reflect religious cults and characterize societies on the verge of becoming civilizations. Although we still see a lot of cosmological information in their art, we now realize that a great deal of it referred to the superb military prowess of the individuals who commissioned the art, as well as to their relationships with supernatural ancestors.
One widespread iconographic theme was the powerful forces of nature and its three-dimensional representations. Some of the most widespread motifs were abstract referents to Earth, in its angry form as an Earthquake, and Sky, in its angry form as a  Lightning.
To show the supernatural nature of these forces, craftsmen combined parts of different animals to depict them, thereby creating fantastic creatures not seen in nature. For example, parts of crocodiles or snakes could be combined with parts of birds, fish, sharks, or felines. In many cases artists used the part of the animal with its symbolic meaning that 'the part stands for the whole'; thus a puma or jaguar's canine teeth could stand for the puma or jaguar, or a crocodile's foot could stand for the crocodile.
Earth appeared as an anthropomorphic or a zoomorphic being. It has a cleft in its head, and vegetation was shown sprouted from that cleft, or also be depicted as a crocodile, or symbolized by a crocodile's foot. Honoring the forces of the Earth as remote ancestors of the noble class, was achieved by creating pavements of blocks in a particular way bearing the symbols of them. By doing so, the noble line would assert its supernatural ties to Earth, as one source of its supernatural power.
The Chavin art style is named for the site of Chavin of Huantar, the epicenter for stone monuments, while other regions excelled at gold working, feather working, ceramics, and weaving. The center is situated at 3,150 m in the Mosna Valley, where more than one hundred stone sculptures were found. Additional sculptures have been found at secondary centers below Chavin, such as Runtu, Pojoc, Waman Wain, Gotush, and Yura-yako.
Chavin art was representational, using similes, metaphors, and comparison by substitution, to combine human figures with attributes of raptorial birds, pumas or jaguars, caymans, snakes, and spiders. An example of a simile in Chavin art, put into words, would be "his hair is like snakes," as shown on a monument. The corresponding metaphor would be "his snaky hair". Comparison by substitution would be "a nest of snakes". Common Chavin metaphors included combining the talons of an eagle with the body of a man to convey the image of a supernatural and successful warrior and combining the features of a spider, a man, and a bag of trophy heads to convey the image of submission power from the heads being invested upon the carrier.
Chavin art often emphasizes an animal's most frightening body part, such as the jaw or the foot of a cayman, the canines of a puma or jaguar, or the talons of a condor or hawk. The image of a war leader's role is particularly clear by depicting individuals holding trophy heads or weapons. The battleground  represented involves supernatural forces coming from the Underworld, Middle World, and Upper World. Each level holding its own forces with the respective degree of ferocity and aggressiveness, and the association of these attributes with its respective warriors, and the weapons used for battle.
The representation of Earth and Sky can be seen on monuments like the Tello Obelisk, where Earth and Sky are seemingly symbolized by two supernatural caymans. The depiction, a split representation of the Andean cosmos is seen to be the case of parallel evolution. Though pumas or jaguars are often cited as the key animal in Chavin art, the cayman was actually the most important reptilian animal force in the corpus of Chavin sculpture.

THE WORSHIP OF FELINES.

The Inca people was the largest empire in the South American high lands. They used a variety of methods, from conquest to peaceful assimilation, to incorporate a large portion of Western South America, centered on the Andean mountain ranges, including, besides Peru, large parts of modern Ecuador, Western and South Central Bolivia, North West Argentina, North and North Central Chile, and Southern Colombia into a state comparable to the historical empires of the Old World.

The world the Inca conquered was already an area of high cultures of some 30 centuries' standing. The time of great cultural advance flourished along what is now Peru  soon after 1,000 BC at Cupisnique on the Northern Pacific Coast and Chavin de Huantar in the Highlands. 

The Cupisnique culture had a distintive style of adobe clay architecture but shared artistic styles and religious symbols with the later Chavin culture which arose in the same area. Tombs beneath the sands have yielded thick Cupisnique stirrup-spout jugs and highly decorated clay jars. A Temple was discovered in the Lambayeque Valley that sheds some light on the connection between both cultures because of shared iconography. Some other related temples have also been discovered in the area.

Cupisnique and Chavin shared the same gods and the same architectural and artistic forms, showing intense religious interaction among the cultures of the Early Formative Period from the North Coast to the Andes and down to the Central Andes

The Chavin culture is a major center that developed on the Northern Highlands that gave its name to the entire first era of Andean civilizations. A large part of the Chavin population was based on an agricultural economy. Chavin the Huantar contain ruins and artifacts originally constructed by its predecessors. The citadel is located 160 miles (250 km) North of Lima, Peru, at an elevation of 3,150 meters (10,300ft), East of the White Cordillera ant the star of the Conchucos Valley. The site is formed at the merging of 2 Rivers: the Mosna and the Huanchecsa. Today a massive stone temple, flat-topped pyramid  surrounded by lower platforms, dominates the site. It is 3 stories high and honeycombed with stone-lined passages and rooms. It has a special system of ventilating shafts and is a remarkable piece of complex architecture. But the most important features of the Temple are the grotesque stone sculptures and carved slabs that are set into its laboriously smoothed walls. 

These massive, monstrous carvings have a special style. Whether they represent men, animals, or birds, the figures are shown with a feline mouth. This mouth, which might be that of the a puma, or jaguar, is everywhere. On one monster figure it is affixed at 12 different places on the body. On a condor it is shown as a continuation of the beak. It glares from the head and tail of a snake. Though this image is found in early American art from Mexico to Bolivia, nowhere else is it depicted with such power. It is a symbol that conveyed to ancient Andean people the idea of supernatural power, and its appearance on men and other creatures was enough to make them supernatural.

Not many people seem to have lived continuously at Chavin. No graves have been found there. The symmetrical layout, the careful construction and the nature of the carvings strongly imply that Chavin was a major religious center. 

The feline element spread far and wide from Chavin; its influence is to be seen in the continuing preocupation of later generations of Andean artists with the figure of the puma.

THE TEMPLE OF THE CONDOR.

The extraordinary beauty that resides in Machu Picchu can be seen both in its ruins in the Valley as well as in their wonderful adjoining places that offer the unique flora and fauna of this Valley of the Andes located in Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu Mountain systems.
The wonder that this place offers is its impressive air show showing the majestic flight of the condor. To the Incas the condor was considered a messenger from earth to the entities governing the supernatural World. The bird was a very sacred symbol which obtain the status of King of the Andes, able to be seen from any location of Machu Picchu.
In the sector to the East of the Citadel are the constructions of greater importance for the Inca people, buildings which were designed to be all oriented to the Sun to facilitate measurements of the constellations and the stars. The Temple of the Condor, as well as the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of the 3 Windows, the Sacred Rock, and the residential complex of gardens and patios that served as a monastery for the Virgins of the Sun (Acllawasi) are in this sector.
The Temple of the Condor has its location in the South East of the urban sector of Machu Picchu. It is a natural rock formation that began to take shape by the elements millions of years ago and the Inca people skillfully shaped the rock into the outspread wings of the condor in flight. It shows a series of irregularities in the design of different buildings in a very peculiar way, whose purpose was the melt with the environment, producing a fusion with the profile offered by the rocks of the surrounding area. The Rock massif presents naturally the shape of a bird with wings extended, fact that gave understanding to the Inca people that the settlement designated by their deities for worship and celebration of sacred rituals, were manifested by the reflection of this Rock when illuminated by the Sun projecting the figure of a bird.
On the temple's floor there is a rock carved in the shape of the head, used as a sacrificial altar,  and neck feathers, completing the figure of a 3-dimensional bird.
The Condor represented spirit and higher levels of consciousness, so the Inca people considered the condor to be of elevated importance in the animal and spirit kingdom.
Under the temple there is a small cave that used to contain a mummy as a way of continuity into the afterlife.  A prison like complex stands directly behind the temple, and is comprised of human-size niches and an underground maze of dark dungeons. An accused citizen wold be placed into the niches for up to 3 days to await deliberation of his fate. He could be put to death for sins such as laziness, lust, or theft. In that case they were consumed by wild animals that were locked with them together inside the dungeon.
To the South of the temple is the residential area where the Inca noble class lived, which communicates with the temple through a series of courtyards. They showed signs of having been used for the breeding of Guinea Pigs.
It is possible that the Inca people were capable of building Machu Picchu in the shape of a condor, despite the extremely difficult location and the differences in altitude. The figure of an enormous bird with wings spread out, including the neck and head is only visible from higher locations. One of the best sites is the top of Huayna Picchu, but it is also visible from the Intipunku. Keep in mind that the Inca capital Cuzco, has the shape of a puma.

THE GREAT LIFE OF THE ANDEAN CITIES.

In the Inca society and its way of life, everyone knew his place. They had a very rigid caste system.

The Inca organized their 5 million subjects into "the Land of the 4 Quarters." They also divided their capital city of Cuzco, with its neatly gridded streets, into 4 quarters, and required visitors from the provinces to stay in their own appropriate sections. Each quarter was ruled by a noble.

From one end of the Andes to the other, the state ran factories for making all the cloths, ceramics, and gold ornaments required for ceremonial use and for the nobility. Every craftsmanship was organized in a way that everyone had what they needed. People  were required to contribute either labor or goods to the state. 

In every sizable town and at intervals along the main roads were large stone warehouses which the state required the population to keep stocked against a local shortage or an imperial requisition. 

The Inca also exacted tribute from everybody they conquered, keeping track of their accounts by a system of tying knots in a set of coloring strings called 'quipu.'

Religious education was strictly for the young nobles who would command armies and govern provinces. They were mainly the members of the Inca royal clan, but sons of conquered rulers were also taken into the governing caste. These nobles wore rich fabrics, bright feathers and gold ornaments, that represented the nature of their power. By rigid rule the working class had to dress in a different and  simple fashion. 

The emperor himself wore clothes of the finest vicuna wool that were meticulously disposed of at the end of a single day's wear. He was lord over the priesthood, government, and army. He was considered the son of the divine sun god, "Inti", and, in order to keep the bloodline pure, he ususally married only his sister, though it was possible for the emperor to have as many as 700 concubines and any number of natural children.

The Inca were masters at shaping and fitting stones. They built their most spectacular monuments in places already fortified by nature. The main fortress protecting Cuzco, their imperial headquarters, were built out of rock and defended by a thick wall 1,600 feet long. The Inca city of Machu Picchu, another Inca stronghold  with its mighty masonry, was constructed of blocks of granite. The Inca fashioned their blocks without metal tools of any kind, and their stone walls were put together without any cement or sealer. The city was modeled as if it were  a condor's nest and its function was to protect the Eastern flank against Amazonian raiders, and so ingeniously adapted to the site that it seems a part of the mountains. Before beginning work on large buildings, Inca builders made detailed clay models.

As imperial organizers, these people took over the last of a 3,000-year-old series of cultures and reshaped the religion, government and roads they inherited.

The Inca excelled at engineering. They built roads 3,250 miles long, piped irrigation water through mountain tunnels, hung 200-foot suspension bridges across Andean canyons. 

They were able to take an empire-wide census. For that purpose, they appointed subordinate officials right down to the precinct level: the highest level held responsibilities over 10,000 men, the next over 1,000 men, the next over 500 men, and the lowest over groups of 50 and 10 men. All except the last two ranks were rated as Inca nobles. Each reported to his superior by state couriers, who dashed in relays up and down the mountainsides on the emperor's paved roads.

The Incas, as imperial organizers, rate with the Romans, but the Inca ruled an empire in the clouds, with  its headquarters at 11,000 feet.

THE INCAS WERE THE CROWN OF THE ANDEAN RACE.

One of the first and big civilizations in Middle America, the Maya, had to cut its way out of the jungle. The Aztecs had to conquer their way through Mexico. And far to the South of the American continent, the Andean race, thrust upward through some of the World's most forbidding terrain: the towering mountains and desert coast of Andean Peru.
The empire of the Inca race, which crowned the early civilizations of the Southern American continent, ruled from a capital 11,000 feet in the clouds.
The Andean civilization centered far more than that of Middle America on the material techniques of social life: planning big cities and irrigation works, building highways and a network of communication regardless the condition of the terrain, perfecting the domestic art of weaving and pottery making. The passion of the Inca race for organization in every field extended even to their art work. But the best in Andean art was produced by the race of the ones who preceded the Inca.
Civilization around the World usually traces its origins to the time when men settled down and started cultivating rather than hunting their food. The early race of Andean people showed a versatile talent for domesticating plants and a very disciplined and well developed way of doing it.
Some 5,000 years ago they were already familiar with the cultivation of squash, peppers, gourds, beans, and cotton. By 900 BC, the North and the South areas in which people established their living quarters, grew up with corn as its basic food crop. The corn of the Andes is a very distinctive one from the other types of corn that grow in Middle America. It grows at a very high altitude absorbing from the terrain and the atmosphere the medicinal properties of which it is known for.
The ancient Andean race were better farmers that their European contemporaries, since the way of doing farming had to deal with so many variations of the ground and ecosystems that had to be studied in order to make the soil produce food. For that purpose they terraced the mountainsides and built vast irrigation systems. Then they were able to domesticate the potato, the tomato, the yam, and the lima bean. In textiles, they found a source of wool by taming the llama and alpaca.
Since the ancient race of Andean people never developed writing, all that is known of their early progress is what archaeologists have been able to find out. They traced 6 distinct cultural stages in the succession of the Andean civilization. The earliest of these, named 'Chavin de Huantar', a 2,800-year-old ruin in the Northern Highlands of Peru, lasted from about 1,200 to 200 BC, and is the period in Andean prehistory when religion seems to have absorbed all high culture completely. At their huge ceremonial center, the Chavin people created a resplendent temple and powerful stone carvings.
In the 2nd of these eras, the Paracas people, named for the South Coast peninsula where their tombs and other remains were found, flourished. They wove textiles that have seldom been surpassed by civilized human.
In the 3rd period, the Nazca culture succeded the Paracas while the so-called Mochica people arose on the North Coast. The Mochica people evolved a complicated class society, laid roads and invented new agricultural techniques, since their subdued neighbors in the nearby River Valleys had different ways of  treating the ground. These techniques were later passed on to the Incas. Their pottery is the finest made by the early race of Andean people.
In the 4th period, a single culture originating around Tiahuanaco in the Southern Andes imposed its leadership in art and in war throughout most of Peru. The spread of this culture was not long-lived.
A 5th period opened, and new forces sprang up again along the Coast, notably the Chimu people in the North.
The 6th and last development set the stage for the Andean civilization: the emergence by conquest and annexation of a completely unified state - the Inca empire.

MAN'S STATUS WAS SHOWN BY WHAT HE WORE.

After the establishment of the Inca rule, a great society that developed in the Andes Mountains of South America. The Inca territory stretched almost the length of the Andes Mountain Range, from North to South, more that 2,500 miles wrapping the Andes Highlands, and from the Pacific Ocean in the West to the Amazon River Basin in the East, wrapping the coastal deserts, and the jungle lands.
To manage and communicate across their vast distance and challenging ground, the Inca leaders came to rely on a system of roads. They built 2 main routes, the coastal and the inland road, which was called the Royal Road. Smaller roads connected them. It was as impressive as that of ancient Rome, but built at such unbelievable height on a very challenging ground. About 15,000 miles of road linked all corners of the empire. The roads crossed tropical jungles, high mountains, and raging rivers.
Inca leaders used the roads to travel throughout the empire. Shelters were placed every 15 to 30 miles to give travelers places to rest. The symbolic way in which they were designed represented the journey of the soul after it left the body.
The roads allowed the emperor at Cuzco to communicate with the leaders in distant places. The Incas sent messages by an elaborate relay system, using runners called 'chasquis.' A 'chasqui' was a selected type of human being, trained to carry the message in two different ways, one was using a special set of strings called 'quipu' where knots were tied at different levels strings of different colors, the other was to memorize words that helped to complete the information carried in the 'quipu.' Messenger stations were built every couple of miles along the main roads. Messengers went from one station to the next and they were able to travel more than 250 miles a day. Its effectivity was superb. Incas did not use written language.
The center of the Inca power was wrapped in the capital city of Cuzco, located in a High Valley in the Andes Southern Mountains. According to one Myth, the Inca people were descended from the Sun power known as 'Inti.' Inti commanded his son, Manco Capac, to rise out of the waters of Lake Titicaca in the Highlands of the Southern Peru. Manco Capac then founded the Inca Tribe.
The Incas continue and improved the ideas and institutions that had been pioneered by earlier cultures, especially from the Moche and the Chimu. The Moche lived along the Northern Coast from about 100 BC. They built cities, dug irrigation canals, and developed special classes of workers. The Chimu kingdom, also in Northern Peru, from about 1000 AC. Like the Moche , the Chimu built well-planned cities and used elaborate irrigation methods. They preserved the artistic traditions of the Moche and passed them on, being received by the Incas. They understood that this type of information was connected with astral forces that needed to be balanced and maintained. The chasquis were a type of messengers that new how to communicate with this astral forces.
The world of the Inca have shown a clear definition of a man's status. It was based on a strictly organized class structure. People who were from the Inca lineage by blood were originally from Cuzco.
As they grew in power, its class structure became more complex but each maintaining its special role and responsibility.
Only members of the nobility or the royal family could wear elaborated ornaments of gold and precious stones. The most socially significant of all such ornaments of rank were men's earplugs.
The reason of such differentiation was because of the origin of the soul, focusing the connection of this elemental soul with its place in the unseen world and the purpose it held in the world of the living managing the forces that existed inside and outside of it.
One of the high points of a well-born Inca's life came, after a rigorous schooling in the many arts of wrestling, boxing, fighting and long-distance marching, when a teen-age novice knelt before the emperor himself to have his ears pierced by a gold dagger. When the youth rose, having uttered no cry, he was a man of class. Gradually the hole was made bid enough to bear the weight of the nobleman's huge earplugs. Some of the pendants were enormous, and before many years the young nobleman's earlobes dropped nearly to the shoulders because of the weight of gold carried on it.
When the Europeans arrived to the continent and met the Incas, they were shocked and impressed by the custom that they couldn't understand, and simply they called them "the big ears."
The Incas regarded the earplug as a thing of great beauty because it represented the value of the soul according to its 3 levels of existence.
The art of working in precious metals was highly advanced because of its meaning and connection to the unseen world. Every metal carried its very particular soul. Since the frequency of its language, according to them, dealt with the cosmological  forces of the universe they had an extreme care in dealing with it, because they understood the consequences upon maltreating them. But for the european invaders, it was the lure of that precious metals that drew them to scale the Andes in 1532, kidnap the emperor and overturn his empire.

THE NATURE OF THE INCA POWER.

The Inca religion were a pastoral kind. They believed that people had special connections with the supernatural world. The Creator God, Viracocha,  was above everything and had the biggest power. He was believed to be the supreme God of creation, history, and eternity, who personally ruled the World and intervened regularly with human affairs.
The Incas distinguished themselves  from the predecessors cultures by ruling their empire through a religious and administrative apparatus that respected and accepted the local customs of conquered people, rather than by might alone. That improvements in infrastructure, and religious tolerance gave them enough power to succeed as a culture and placing themselves as the head of an empire that unified a humongous amount of people from different cultures, living in the highlands, forest, and lowlands of the Andes.
The Incas strongly believed in the afterlife. It was believed that a transcedental realm existed in which an essential part or essence of an individual's identity continued to exist after the death of the physical vessel or body. The essential aspect of the individual that survived after death was the most important one because it conferred the personal identity of the individual during his life time in the world of the living.
The Incas encompassed the belief that there was no separation between the spiritual and the material world and souls existed not only in humans, but also in animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains, rivers, or other entities of the natural environment, including thunder and wind.
The Incas were able to understand the difference between the energies of persons and things, as the vital principle of the phenomena of life, and the diseases were traced to spiritual causes.
They Incas cared deeply for their dead, out of respect, loyalty, and continuity of the family lineage, whom they embalmed, mummified and placed into tombs, and looked after them. These included a sense of continuity between this life and the next and the mummification was a way to preserve the corpse of the deceased to ensure the continuity of its life. That is why tombs were treated as houses in the Hereafter and so they were carefully constructed and decorated.
After the death of the Inca, the priests class would come to his resting place and talk to the dead ruler. The supreme priest had he ability to communicate with the souls of the dead rulers through shamanic ways and believed that they possessed the ability to influence the fortune of living, and they often acted as messengers between the worlds. This type of communication was done during the time in which the soul of the death person was expecting to journey until reach his final destination.
The shamanic practice involved the practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with the frequencies of the spiritual world and channeled these transcendental energies into this world in a controlled way. They had access to, and influence in, the world of the benevolent and malevolent spirits. These entities included deities, demons, spirits, and ghosts, and were of varying importance, according to the powers they had and the position they occupied in the unseen world.
The Incas were very aware of the existence of these entities and the power that they had over the living world. To enjoy a fruitful life all the forces had to be maintained in balance in order to maintain peace in all the levels of existency.
The belief in a Hereafter in the pre-Inca cultures in the Andes goes back a long time since the first settlers appeared in the Andes and held an unique way of living. They represented the scenes of their everyday life in the textiles, ornaments, ceramics and other artifacts left in the elaborated tombs of their leaders.
The body of their leaders were treated as if they were alive given the fact that their source of power were still bound to them and there were laws applied between worlds in relation to the reception of that specific power over the hands of the leaders chosen to be invested with it.
Even to the peasant, the continuity of life in the unseen world was a major concern because they knew that everything had a role to fulfill in the world of the living and that role secured the continuity of life in an energy form in the eternal world.

THE NATURAL INSTINCT OF THE ANDEAN CONDOR.

The Andean Condor is one of the most magnificent birds of the world and a symbol of power and health. They also represent a strong connection with its land of origin or birth, because they do not migrate at all.
The Andean Condor is associated with the Sun deity and is the ruler of the Upper World. Condors rest at night and fly by day. They draw the dawn and the sun across the sky and because of that the bird is considered the messenger of the heavens and the carrier of our dreams and prayers, since the Condor flies much higher than any other winged animal. The bird holds a very powerful position in the spirit world and that is the main reason why the bird has such a span of life averaging between 50 and 80 years, roughly the average span of a human being.
The Andean Condor teaches us about the ancient mysteries of life and death, about communion with the spirits and how to soar above our limitations. They have an uncanny ability to sense death, so they are sometimes seen as angels of death, circling around when life is about to end. The bird help us to understand the concept of transformation of that which is dead and no longer alive still have the chance to give energy through its food to the guardian of souls and continue its mission of regeneration.
Condors by nature are carrion eaters (dead animal carcasses). The bird prefer the carcasses of large dead animals like deer, cattle, and sheep. However, they are also known to eat the carcasses of smaller animals like rodents and rabbits.
The Andean Condor lack the strong talons and beaks of Hawks and Eagles, and depend on finding carcasses for food. In fact Condors hardly ever kill for food. They have never been known to attack a living animal. They eat what they find (benevolence) from an animal that was already killed by a predator. They commonly gorge themselves when feeding on a carcass and may go days without eating. Their keen eyesight helps them to locate food. They sometimes travel up to 140 miles per day in search of a meal. They are also keen observers of other scavengers. They are the best natural cleaners of the ecosystem.
The Andean Condor live in the highest peaks (6,9862m) of the rocky, regions of the mountains, including canyons, and gorges. They most often nest in caves. Instead of having many young and expecting only a few able to survive, Condors typically lay one egg and because of that gift that nature give them, they in return provide an extensive amount of parental care.
Like human hair, feathers contain mostly carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen -the essential building blocks of life. Feathers have an ancient symbolic meaning, they are linked to the air element, and freedom, and attributed to a kind of transformation that is strong, swift, and potent. The feathers are used by an Andean shaman on the energetic body of an individual, in smooth, long strokes from the head to the feet, in order to clear the surrounding energy around it. The healing energy is invoked from any of the cardinal directions towards the body.
The prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor says that when the Eagle representing the mental aspect of the World, and the Condor representing the heart of the earth, fly together again (North and the South are no longer at odds), we will again live in harmony and recreate paradise on Earth.

PIURA REGION AND ITS ANCIENT SETTLERS.

Piura is a coastal region in NorthWestern Peru. The region's capital is Piura and its largest port cities, Paita and Talara, are also among the most important in Peru. The area is known for its tropical and dry beaches.
The most important culture that developed in the region was 'Vicus' which stood out for its ceramic and delicate work in gold. The Tallanes or Yungas, however, were the first settlers, who migrated from the mountains. During a period that is still vague, they lived in 'behetrias', which were simple settlements without a head or an organization. Later they were assimilated by the Mochicas and, centuries later by the Incas, during the rule of Tupac Inca Yupanqui.
The Yungas or Tallanes, expert potters, were the inhabitants of the warm or temperate climate on the slopes of the Andes, in a narrow band of forest along the Eastern slope of the Andes Mountains. The terrain, formed by valleys, fluvial mountain trails and streams, is extremely rugged and varied, contributing to the ecological diversity. The use of the 'taclla', a farming tool was the first characteristic of this first etnic group that settled on the Plains of North-Western Peru. Narihuala (17km South of Piura) is considered the capital of the Tallan Nation and is the most important architectural evidence of a great monument, both in its size and the prominent platform of 2 pyramids. The Narihuala Temple was built as a sanctuary in the honor of the Tacllan god 'Walac'. Later the Tacllan territory was invaded by the Mochica and Chimu. Tacllan in North-Western Peru today is the name of an agricultural tool with a running board.
Huaca El Loro (Shrine named 'The Parrot"), within a forest of carob trees, in the Pomac Historical Sanctuary, near Chiclayo, Peru is a Tallan archaeological site, where a 1,000-year-old mummy of a nobleman wearing a distinctive headdress, a large gold, silver and copper facemask adorned with 25-cms-wide eyes, and a chest plate and surrounded by gold and silver ornaments, buried in a lavish tom, was discovered, alongside with three other bodies. This man was probably the leader of a group that was integrated into Sican society.
The Sican culture is one of the several groups of goldsmiths who predated the Inca and flourished in Peru's Lambayeque region. They are known for their lost-wax casting in gold ornament production, and the production of arsenical copper, which is the closest material to bronze found in prehistoric archaeology. The Sican were descendants of the Moche, and were involved in long-distance trade for emeralds and amber. Although geographically within the same area of Northern Peru, Sican flourished long after the Moche civilization and the famous Lord of Sipan.
The history of the Sican can be divided into 3 distinct periods: Early from 750-900 AC, Middle from 900-1100AC, and Late from 1100-1375AC. The Tallan nobleman buried at the Huaca dates back to Middle Sican age, which is known for its elite funeral traditions. Toms were typically packed with treasures, and were dug as much as 10 meters deep before being refilled with sand.
Piura is the land of a unique 'algarrobo trees', a variety of mesquite similar to the carob tree, and it is the region with the most equatorial tropical dry forest in the whole Pacific.
These eco-regions carry a unique variety of orchids, birds, reptiles, plants, and mammals. Piura is known for the best and oldest lime-lemons in South America as well as South America's finest mango. Piura also produces bananas, coconuts, rice and other fruits as local income. With Lambayeque, it is the original home of 'Pima cotton'. Fishing is blessed by two ocean currents.
Piura is a host to a stunning 'mestizo culture' since all races mix here. The population are characterized by their witty minds, melancholy music, and welcoming personalities, Like all Peruvians, they are heavy drinkers of 'chicha de jora', 'pisco', or beer and all of them have a tendency towards creativity and art as their source of income.

THE EXTRAORDINARY ANDEAN SHAMAN.

The extraordinary category of people  who have come to be known as an Andean shaman is a person chosen by the spirits to mediate between the human and the spiritual realms. It is the most ancient spiritual practice of all in the Andean world, because it entails no natural dogma, it is about experiencing and knowing. It is a path of the heart that opens and enfolds all that exist in the natural world. A spiritual journey of beauty and balance.
The Andean shaman, typically through a trance state during a ritual, gain access to altered states of consciousness in order to perceive, interact with and influence in, the benevolent or malevolent spirits in the spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into the world of the living, in order to achieve healing or negotiate life and death of the individual or a community.
The Andean shaman is considered a man of high degree; that is, men who have taken a spiritual degree in the secret life beyond the material world, a step which implies discipline, mental training, courage and perseverance. He is a man of respected and often standing personality and is of immense social significance. The psychological health of the group largely depends on faith in his trained power. Many of these powers have specialized in the working of the human mind, and in the influence of mind on the body and mind on mind.
The more attuned the shaman is to the ways of old ancient practices, far greater power he is entitled to wield, because he is in closer touch with the spirits.
A shaman's ability to achieve a proper lasting healing, be in the physical or psychological, depends primarily on his personal motivation or intention to heal. He must be alert and focused, persistent, caring or loving, courageous and flexible. He has to asses the patient's cognitive skills, that is the ability to think subjectively and objectively, as well as the understanding of the emotional responses to the experience on both sides. He assesses the patient's spirit and the ability to recognize and understand the symbolic messages received from the spiritual realms that are trying to guide the patient along the spiritual path.
The energy forces of the spirit world are understood as similar to the 4 cardinal points. The shaman of the North would check to see that all is well with his Southern relatives, and make sure the relatives of the South are full filling their part of the time-honored cosmic deal of holding up the universal energy forces by living according to law.
The Andean shaman avoid to live inside a world of continual and unrelenting distraction, separated from the natural world, and ever changing life-styles in which the minds are never still. For people that live inside this type of life-style, a shaman is a primitive tribal doctor who sing and dance around a patient doing all sorts of weird things. The life-style of an Andean shaman is far from being primitive and therefore useless in our modern world, instead it is immersed in a time-tested meditative journey in order to listen and experience important spiritual lessons and truths. A shaman needs to be familiar with the powers that are most influencing his own life as birth totems. But as well as totems, which are characteristics of the soul and from the universal forces that come at the time of birth, he can, by studying the characteristics or powers of other beings, gain understanding and use of other powers which are often referred to as spirit guides, spirit helpers or angels. The knowledge that comes through this journey is not limited and superficial, because shamanism itself does come from a very ancient and old school of knowledge in which a selective progress is mandatory, regardless culture, race, or ethnicity.
We, as human beings, are part of nature. We need to learn again to reconnect ourselves with it and be aware of the symbolic messages that we receive from the spirit world and then discern what the message is trying to say. There are many symbols that are common, and therefore a good shaman who is very alert to his own human spirit can be of great help in translating these cryptic messages.
We are made up of all the same elements that plants, birds, animals, and minerals are made of in this planet. The characteristics or powers of all bird, plant, herb, animals and mineral beings must be clearly known to all of us. It is experienced differently for different individuals and the understanding behind all of these would fill a complete spiritual encyclopedia. This understanding has a lot to do with the understanding of Andean Mythology, it's functions and physics.

THE HIGH-ALTITUDE ADAPTATION OF THE ANDEAN HIGHLANDERS.

For thousands of years, high-altitude populations have inhabited plateaus in the Andean Mountains.
The first humans that lived on the highlands of the Andes arrived there for more or less than 12,000 years. High-altitude adaptation in animals and humans has been an instance of evolutionary process.
Since the time of the European arrival, which started in the early 1,500s, considerable genetic admixture has occurred with the Andeans, resulting in the introduction of 5% to 30% of European genes into the contemporary Andean gene pool.
At high altitudes barometric pressure is reduced and less oxygen is inhaled. As a result, the arterial oxygen content, being a measure of the oxygen carrying capacity, determined by hemoglobin concentration and oxygen saturation, is found higher in the Andean highlanders, compared to the sea-level population. That is, more oxygen per blood volume. This confers an ability to carry more oxygen in each red blood cell, making a more effective transport of oxygen in their body, while their breathing is essentially at the same rate.
The Andean highlanders are known to have their reproduction levels at a normal rate, without any effect in the giving birth or the risk for early pregnancy loss, which are common to hypoxic stress.
They have developmentally acquired enlarged residual lung volume and its associated increase in alveolar area, which are supplemented with increased tissue thickness. Though the physical growth in body size is delayed, growth in lung volumes is accelerated.
High-altitude environments can be debilitating to sea-level individuals exposed to elevations above 3,000m/9,843ft for periods ranging from several hours to days. Moderate symptoms induces substantial alterations in physiological and psychological parameters within a few hours. Immediately upon ascent to high altitude, there is a decreased blood oxygenation, which reduces the oxygen supply throughout the periphery and in the brain. With time the body compensates, at least in part, for the lack of oxygen, with a variety of responses.
High altitude then produces substantial impairments in a number of cognitive performances. Changes in psychomotor performance, mental skills, reaction time, vigilance, memory, and logical reasoning have all been measured at altitudes above 3,000m/9,843ft. Observed behaviors suggest that the initial mood experienced at altitude is euphoria, followed by depression. Individuals may also become quarrelsome, irritable, anxious, and apathetic.
Although disturbances in emotional control have been noticed since the time the first Europeans arrived to the highlands, there are few studies assessing mood changes at altitude.
In 1543, the anatomist Andreas Vesalius was the first to distinguish clearly between White Matter and the Gray Matter that overlay regions of the cerebral cortex. In the 19th century, the physician Jean Martin Charcot advanced in the understanding of White Matter's role with his studies of multiple sclerosis, a disease of young adults characterized by primary damage to the White Matter of the central nervous system. At the turn of the 20th century, the ascendancy of Sigmund Freud turned biomedical thinking toward psychoanalytic explanations of behavior, and for more than 50 years all of the brain- white and gray matter alike- was neglected. In 1965, Norman Geschwind, M.D., proposed that one mechanism underlying dysfunctional brain-behavior relationship rests on cerebral disconnection. He also advanced the view that the dense connectivity of the brain underlay its mental operations. Central to this concept was the idea that an intricate web of white matter pathways course exists within and between the brain's hemispheres.
The cerebral hemispheres work together to store memories, make judgments, form thoughts and learn new information. The left hemisphere of the brain controls writing, speech, comprehension and arithmetic. It is dominant in language and hand use in around 92 percent of people.
The distinct fissures of the brain made it be seen as divided into lobes. Both the left and the right hemispheres have 4 lobes: frontal, temporal, occipital and parietal. They have complex relationships, and they do not function alone. The frontal lobe is responsible for controlling speech, which involves writing and speaking. It also controls personality, behavior and emotions; problem solving, judgment and planning; intelligence, self awareness and concentration, and body movement.
On the other hand, the right hemisphere plays an important role in spacial processing and interpreting visual information.
Exercise promotes a greater demand for oxygen, so exposure to high altitude affects directly the neurotransmitter levels in the brain inducing a number of neurological and behavioral disturbances affecting the mood states of the individual. Cognitive performance is more vulnerable than psychomotor performance, then complex tasks are typically more affected than simple tasks. It manifests itself in increased errors, slowing of performance, or combination of these factors. Impairments occur in a graded manner.
Because human cognitive function is sensitive to changes in oxygen availability, exposure to high altitude should produce a continuum of effects as altitude level and duration increase.
Interestingly, some studies have reported that some of the changes in performance after exposures to extreme altitudes persist for up to a year after return to lower altitudes.

THE IMPERIAL WAY OF THE INCAS.

Of the big civilizations of the New World, the Maya, one of the first in Middle America, had to cut its way out of the jungle. The Aztecs had to conquer their way through Mexico. Far to the South, other mighty civilization, the Andean, thrust upward through some of the world's most forbidding terrain: the towering mountains and desert coast of Andean Peru.
The Inca Empire, which crowned these early civilizations of the Southern half of the globe, ruled from a capital 11,152ft/3,400m  in the clouds, near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes, Peru.
The Andean civilization centered far more than that of Middle America on the material techniques of life: - Planning big cities and irrigation works, - Building highways and a network of communications, and - Perfecting the domestic arts of weaving and pottery making.
The Inca passion for organization in every field extended even to their art work. The best in Andean art was produced by the Andean peoples who preceded the Incas and they simply absorbed and perfected the technique.
Civilization around the world traces their origins to the time when men settled down and started cultivating rather than hunting their food. The early people of South America showed a versatile talent for domesticating plants, many of them unknown in the Old World. Some 5,000 years ago they were already cultivating squash, peppers, gourds, beans, and cotton on the Coast of Peru.
By the time of the European invasion, these early people of South America were already better farmers that their Europeans contemporaries. They had domesticated the potato, the corn, the tomato, the yam, and the lima beans. They found a source of wool by taming the llama and the alpaca. They terraced the mountainsides and built vast irrigation systems.
Since very ancient time Pre-Inca civilizations of the Central Andes occupied an area, at over 4,000 m of elevation, which today is regarded as marginal for many basic crops. The ancient People of the Andes were able to build a dense population that supported both a city life and a highly organized social and economic society as evidenced from archaeological findings. Part of it lie in the type of agricultural technology employed, together with the choice of food plants, which together ensured both quantity and quality of sustenance. A strong economic base was in existence from at least 2000 years before the present time.
The extensive agricultural cultivation and irrigation system still work today and produce just like they did long time ago. The vast majority of these agricultural terraces are built on the sides of mountains and hills, and required hard work for creation, but ensured food production over a long period of time.  The reason for creating stepped agricultural fields are various. For example, the Sacred Valley region, in which the Vilcanota River, the main artery of life,  flows surrounded by abrupt mountains that are over 4000 m high, the sun's rays don't reach deep enough in the Valley, which remain cooler in their bottoms. Then the mountain sides ensure more intense sunlight for longer time during the day. In some parts there is little space in the Valleys, so the usage of steps actually increases the area available for agriculture.
The benefits of the steeped technology included defense against landslide and floods. In this way the water did not accumulate and run down over the towns below. The rocks used for creating the steps strengthened the sides of the mountains, that protecting what was in the Valleys from possible mudslide during heavy rainfall. Higher grounds protected the plantations from disasters.
The Vilcanota River is terrifying when its affluent and intense rain increase its volume. During the glorious period of the Inca Empire, the Sacre valley of the Vilcanota River was one of the most agriculturally productive region of the world. When Europeans waited for the rain to come, the incas were controlling the irrigation of the terraces by diverting small quantities of water from mountain rivers, making a sort of balance in the ecosystem of the land. The threat of drought was practically eliminated.
Up to this point in history, no culture in the world had spread a civilization over a similar terrain conditions like the whole of Peru's arid Coasts and High Mountains.

THE PARACAS PEOPLE OF PERU.

Paracas is a desert peninsula located within the Pisco Province in the Ica region, on the Southern Coast of Peru.
The Paracas culture was an Andean society between approximately 1000 to 100 BC, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management and significant contributions in the textiles arts. Most information about the ancient lives of Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside territory of the site on the peninsula.
It is here where Peruvian archaeologist, Julio C. Tello (1880-1947), discovered 429 mummies bundles from two clusters in the subterranean structure (necropolis) at Wari Kayan, during excavations in 1927-8 on the Northern side of the Red Mountain (Cerro Colorado) area of the Paracas Peninsula.
It was a massive and elaborated graveyard containing tombs filled with the remains of individuals with the largest elongated skulls found anywhere in the world. The mummified bodies were swaddled in colorful fabrics, some of which were richly embroidered with wool to create elaborated patterns, which are among the best South American textiles ever found. The individuals were then placed in baskets in a sitting position, and interred facing North; as with all South American mummies. Their preservation is due to natural desiccation. Almost 400 embroidered cloths were recovered. All the burials were of males and the quality of their grave gifts suggests that they were of high status.
The men interred in the graveyard had conical, and so unusual elongated skulls. The cranial volume were measured and they were up to 25% larger and 60% heavier than conventional human skulls, containing only one parietal plate, rather than two.
The parietal bones are two bones in the human skull which, joined together at a fibrous joint, form the sides and roof of the cranium. Each bone is roughly quadrilateral in form, and has two surfaces, four borders, and four angles. The external surface of the parietal bone is convex, and marked near the center by an eminence which indicates the point where ossification commenced. The parietal bone is ossified in membrane from a single center, which appears at the parietal eminence about 8th week of fetal life. Ossification gradually extends in a radial manner from the center toward the margins of the bone; the angles are consequently the parts last formed, and it is here that the fontanelles exist.
A 19th century doctor Johann Jacob Von Tschudi claimed that the parietal bone found on the skulls was an evidence of a very ancient race of people inhabiting the land. The skulls had two abnormal holes and only one parietal plate instead of two. The little holes appeared to be a common human variation allowing the passage of veins connecting the venous system inside the skull to that on the outside.
DNA tests for the skulls were performed and they had concluded that the individuals were not fully humans, because other examples of cranial deformation did not alter the size, wight or cranial volume, as seen in the Paracas skulls. Although, the test did not confirm they were from one of our earlier ancestors instead. But there is a little more to say about of these Paracas skulls. The fact is the remains were found almost a century ago, but since the 1850's the idea of the elongated skulls has been around for a very while.
David Forbes wrote and submitted a research paper, "On Aymara People of Bolivia and Peru" to the Ethnological Society of London in 1870. In it he describes not only his examinations of the skulls, but those of his predecessors Mariano Eduardo de Rivero & Ustariz and Johan Von Tschudi who also had investigated the elongated skulls as early as the 1850's. Undoubtedly, the People of the Andes knew about them long before the Europeans put their feet in South American Lands.
The average cranial capacity of the skulls from the necropolis is about 1600 cc. Normal human cranial capacity varies widely, with 1350 cc. being the modern average.
The human skull has 3 bones (plates) that comprise the spherical shape of the skull. They are the frontal lobe, the parietal bone (left and right) and the occipital bone. The main difference in elongated skulls is that they have 2 major skull bones, the frontal and the back plates.
The Peruvian archaeologists, Julio C. Tello had previously excavated at Chavin of Huantar and recognized that there were cultural afinities between its products and those found at Wari Kayan and suggested that the Paracas People was related to the largely Chavin Culture. Comparisons have also been made between the later Paracas textiles and those of the Nazca Culture, suggesting another relationship. The pottery was largely plain and thin walled; and very similar to ceramics found in the Canete and Chincha Valleys, to the North of Paracas.
A Paracas Necropolis settlement has been found at White Sand (Arena Blanca), in the Coastal Plain below the Red Mountain (Cerro Colorado). It covers an area of some 5 hectares, divided into 20 separate districts, with buildings made from cobbles in dried mud. Its inhabitants had cultivated plants, while cotton nets may be evidence for fishing. Further settlements are known in the Ica Valley to the South.
The Ica Valley of Peru is one of the driest places in the world. Ground water is provided by the Ica River, rising in the Mountains of Huancavelica. The Mountain People there is already lacking water because of the British and American mining pollution and depleted ice caps which feeds the River. Much of the water supply is diverted to the British funded asparagus farms in the Ica Valley, as a result wells are drying up and water rate prices are astronomical high, forcing farmers to sell their farms to the asparagus trade. Supplies are severely rationed, yet one giant asparagus farm can use much water as the entire city of Ica every day.
Greed as an inordinate or insatiable longing, especially for wealth, status, and power did not exist in this region of Peru.  The ancient individuals interred in the land graveyard came from a time when the world were completely different than the one we live today, and there is a common belief that they will return and do justice to people of all kinds and the land entrusted to them.

THE STARGATE OF HAYU MARCA.

A huge mysterious door-like structure in the Hayu Marca mountain region of Southern Peru near Lake Titicaca, and hour drive from the city of Puno, has long been revered by the locals as the "City of the Gods." The door has been carved out of a natural rock face and in all measures exactly 23' in height and width, with a smaller alcove in the center at the base which measures 6' in height.
The remote area is known as a Valley of the Spirits, or Stone Forest, made of strange rock formations that resemble animals, beings, buildings, dinosaurs, and artificial structures.
The local people of the region had a legend that spoke of a 'Gateway to the Land of the Gods', and in that legend, it was said that in times long past great heroes had gone to join their gods, and passed through the gate for a glorious new life of immortality, and on a very rare occasions those men returned for a very short time with their gods to inspect all the lands in the kingdom, through the gate.
Dreams about the use of the doorway appears to be common by the local population and in them they see a pathway made of light colored marble, with a small door open with a brilliant blue/white light coming from what looked like a shimmering tunnel. Others see that the Gate is made of two doorways, almost in a T shape. The larger door is for the gods themselves and the smaller door is for the mortals, to pass through.
Another legend of a mortal passing through the doorway appears to lend credibility to the alleged dreams of the locals about the gate. The legend tells of the time when European invaders arrived in Peru in the 16th CE, looting Inca sacred places taking their gold and precious stones along their way.
One Inca priest fled his temple with a sacred golden disk known as "the Key of the Gods of the Seven rays," and hid in the mountains of Hayu Marca. The priest eventually came upon the gate which was being watched by shaman priests. He presented to them the golden disk, and a ritual was performed immediately by them, with the conclusion of a supernatural occurrence initiated by the golden disk which opened the portal, and behind it was a tunnel that shone with an intense blue/white light. The priest handed the golden disk to the shaman priests and then passed through the portal and never to be seen again.
Investigators have observed a small, round, hand sized, circular indention in the rock on the right hand column of the small entrance doorway. The examinations led them to believe that should a disk shaped object be inserted into the indention, it would be held in place by the surrounding rock.
It is interesting to note that the structure resembles the Gate of the Sun at Tiahuanaco and 5 other archaeological sites which link together a cross by an imaginary straight lines crossing each other exactly at the point where the plateau and Lake Titicaca are located.  Locals report glowing blue spheres and bright white and rainbow-colored objects sighted over the Lake.
The aforementioned legend concludes with a prophecy that the door of the gods will one day open many times bigger than it actually is, and allow the gods to return in their Sun Ships and all the Americas once united by a common spiritual tradition and leader, will be again reunited in the same spirit.
Peru is a land steeped in ancient prophecies and wisdom. Life in the inca Empire was measured by a 1000 year cosmic cycle called an Inti (Sun). This cycle was then divided into halves, each of which was referred to as a Pachacutec.
The cosmological vision of the Andean world is the conception of duality that is in permanent opposition, but complementary. The same principle applies to each Pachacutec. However, Pachacutec also is used to refer to the transitional time that divided each Pachacutec and this is characterized as a time of great changes.
During the 500 years of the 8th Pachacutec cycle, Pachacutec, the greatest leader of the Incas, ruled. This was a time of Light when the Inca Empire flourished and there were expansion and good fortune. The 9th Pachacutec cycle, on the opposite side of the duality, brought with it the 500 years of darkness when the European invaders looted the land and its resources. We are now entering the 10th Pachacutec cycle, which the local people refer to as the returning to Light, and the sacred Solar Disk is going to be re-activated accessing the cosmic wisdom and reaching again a higher level of spiritual consciousness making the Andean people flourish again but this time in the spiritual realm.

ANDEAN MYTH ABOUT THE TIME BEFORE CREATION.

There is no single creation story among Andean peoples. Some tales hold that the Earth was created by the Most Powerful of the Gods of the Spirit World, others that particular and powerful entities were created by the Most Powerful of the Gods to be in charge of His House.
There was a time when everything was still, and all was dark. There was no life, no death.
All the spirits of the earth were asleep -or almost all, and the earth was a bare plain. The spirits of the sun, moon, and the stars slept beneath the earth. All the eternal ancestors slept there, too.
The great Father of All Spirits was the only one awake. Gently he awoke the spirit of the Cosmic Sun Mother. As she opened her eyes a warm ray of light spread out towards the sleeping earth.
The Father of All Spirits said to the Cosmic Sun Mother, "Mother, I have work for you. Go down the Earth plane and awake the sleeping spirits of the eternal ancestors, and give them forms." They woke themselves out of their own eternity and broke through to the surface and wandered the earth plane waiting for the Cosmic Sun Mother.
The Cosmic Sun Mother glided down to Earth plane, which was bare at that time and began to walk in all directions and everywhere she walked spirited plants grew. After returning to the field where she had begun her work the Cosmic Sun Mother rested, well pleased with herself.
The Father of All Spirits came and saw her work, but instructed her to go into the caves and wake the spirits that were sleeping inside them. This time the Cosmic Sun Mother ventured into the dark caves on the mountainsides, created in the spirited world. The bright light that radiated from her awoke the spirits and after she left insects of all kinds flew out of the caves. The Cosmic Sun Mother sat down and watched the glorious sight of her insects mingling with her flowers, having a mind on their own.
However once again the Father of All the Spirits urged her on. This time the Cosmic Sun Mother ventured into a very deep cave, spreading her light around her spirit. Heat from the Mother melted the ice and the rivers and streams of the Cosmic World were created.
Then the Cosmic Sun Mother created the cosmic minds of fish and small snakes, lizards and frogs. Then she awoke the cosmic spirits of the birds and animals and they burst into the sunshine in a glorious array of colors to mingle with the cosmic minds of the ones already created by her.
Seeing this the Father of All Spirits was pleased with the Cosmic Sun Mother's work. She called all her creatures to her and instructed them to enjoy the wealth of the earth plane and to live peacefully with one another. Then she rose into the sky and became the celestial Sun.
The living creatures watched the Sun in awe as she crept across the sky, towards the West. However when she finally sunk beneath the horizon they were panic-stricken, thinking she had deserted them.
All night they stood frozen in their places, thinking that the end of time had come. After what seemed to them a lifetime the Sun Mother peeked her head above the horizon in the East. Their children learned to expect her coming and going in the seasonal cycle's she formed, and were no longer afraid.
At first the children lived together peaceful, in complete harmony, but eventually envy crept into their spirited hearts. They began to argue and, harmony was broken forming two opposed natures in the Cosmical World.
Darkness appeared again and engulfed everything but the powerful Light from the Cosmic Sun Mother prevailed in the heart of all the children that loved the time of peace and harmony that they once had.
The duality of the cosmic forces were born due to the conflict and formed itself two entities , the one with the Light and the other with the rebellious Darkness.
The spirits in the earth plane mutated into half animal and half plant entities, and were shapeless bundles, vague and unfinished, not able to settle, lying near where water holes and salt lakes could be created. Their mind force were able to adopt  a complete tree form, sometimes human shape, sometimes as part animal and human, and sometimes as part human and plant.
The Sun Mother was forced to come down from her home in the sky to mediate in the laws now controlling the middle plane, the earth, since the upper plane was the domain of the cosmic forces, and the lower plane, the domain of the rebellious forces.
She then agreed to have an agreement between the earth's plane and the forces governing the destiny of the universe, giving them freedom to act in each soul knowing that her powerful minded children will maintain the laws of harmony and peace in the earth's plane, as long as they were able to.
However she was not so pleased with the end result. The rats she had made had changed into bats; giant lizards and large fishes began to appear in a physical form, governed by the mind of the underworld. As a consequence the soul of every man and woman in the earth's plane became a descendant from the bundle of which they were formed, owing allegiance to it, making their journey on the earth's plane harder.
So the spirit of the Sun Mother looked down upon the Earth's plane and thought to herself that she must create new creatures less the Father of All Spirits be angered by what she now saw.
Then the spirit of Sun Mother gave birth to two children, a son and a daughter.  The son god was the spirit of the Morning Star and the goddess was the spirit of the Moon. Then two more children were born to them and these spirits she sent to the Earth's plane.
The spirit of the Sun Mother made them superior to the spirit of the cosmic animals because they had part of her cosmic and universal mind. They became the physical form of the Sun, the Moon, and the stars.

THE NATURE AND INSTINCT OF THE ANDEAN CONDOR.

The Andean condor is the largest flying bird in the world by combined measurement of weight and wingspan. It has a maximum wingspan of 3.3m/10ft10in, and weighing up to 15kg/33lb.
The structure of the wings and the placement of the feathers allows this large bird to soar when it catch thermal air currents that rise up as the sun heats the ground. On the wing the movements of the condor are graceful. The lack of large sternum to anchor correspondingly large flight muscles identifies it physiologically as a primary soarer. The bird flaps its wings on rising from the ground, but after attaining a moderate elevation they seem to sail on the air. The condor's huge wings allows the bird to stay aloft for hours, scanning the fields below. The average flying speed that a bird can reach is up to 88km/55mi per hour, at an altitude of 4,600m/15,000ft or more.
The Andean condor is also one of the world's longest-living birds, with a life-span of over 70 years and mate for life.
The adult plumage is uniformly black, with the exception of a frill of white feathers nearly surrounding the base of the neck which meticulously kept clean by the bird. The male has large white patches on the wings. The head and neck are nearly featherless, which exposes the skin to the sterilizing effects of dehydration and solar ultraviolet light at high altitudes. The skin has a dull red color, which flush and therefore change color in response to their emotional state, which serve to communicate between individuals. In the male, there is a wattle on the neck and a large, dark red fleshy growth or crest on top of the head.
The middle toe is greatly elongated, and the hinder one but slightly developed, while the talon of all the toes are comparatively straight and blunt. The feet are more adapted to walking as in the case of their relatives the storks, and of little use as weapons or organs of prehension as in birds of pray. The female, contrary to the nature and usual rule among birds of prey, is smaller than the male. One or two eggs are usually laid. They nest at elevations of up to 5,000m/16,000ft on inaccessible rock ledges.
Sexual maturity and breeding behavior do not appear in the condor until 5 or 6 years of age. The young are covered with grayish down until they are almost as large as their parents. They are able to fly after 6 months, but continue to roost and hunt with their parents until age 2, when they are displaced by a new clutch.
There is a well-developed social structure within large groups of condors, with competition to determine a 'pecking order' by body language, competitive play behavior, and a wide variety of vocalizations, even though the condor has no voice box. The bird also is known for its extraordinary eyesight, and inquisitive and engaging intelligence.
Wild condors inhabit large territories, often traveling 250km/160mi a day in search of carrion, large carcasses, such as those of a deer or cattle, are their preference. In the wild they are intermittent eaters, often going for a few days without eating, then gorging themselves on several kilograms at once.
In Andean mythology, the Andean condor was associated with the sun deity, and was believed to be the ruler of the upper world.

THE NAZCA CULTURE AND ITS GEO-GLYPHS.

Some billions of years ago the earth's crust and surface figures began to form and shift into a semblance of what we know as the Earth planet today. The shape of the continents and the climate were quite different as well. South America began to form and then, at some point in the southern part of Peru, lush valleys, and gorges, began to appear, and between them all dry elevated plains. These plains were covered in dark red surface stones that would be polished by the desert wind.
About 2,000 years ago the Nazca people inhabited this area. Most people of today learn about them because of the famous geo-glyphys etched in the desert between the Ingenious (Ingenio) and Nazca River Valleys.
Stretching across the Nazca Plains -like a giant map or blue print left by a superior mind of ancient andean people, lie the famous geo-glyphs. They are also known as Nazca lines, figures, pictures, or images, and are shown in direction of the rising of important stars and marking planetary events like sun solstices.
The geo-glyphs are located in the Pampa region, the desolate plain of the Peruvian coast which comprises the Pampas of San Jose (Jumana), Socos, the Ingenious (el Ingenio), and others in the province of Nazca, which is 400km/640mi South of the capital city of Lima. They cover an area of approximately 450 square kilometers of sandy desert as well as the slopes of the contours of the Andes.
The geo-glyphs were first spotted when commercial airlines began flying across the Peruvian desert in the 1920s. Today people sometimes fly in hot air balloons to view the splendors of the geo-glyphs.
The plain is unique for its remarkably ability to preserve the markings upon it, due to the combination of the climate (one of the driest on Earth, with only 20 minutes of rainfall per year), and the flat, stony ground which reduces the effect of the wind at ground level. With no dust or sand to cover the plain, and little rain or wind to erode it, the geo-glyphs drawn here tend to stay drawn. In any other climate, these geo-glyphs would have been obliterated in months, but Nazca is one of the driest and most windless regions on earth.
These climate factors, combined with the existence of a lighter-colored subsoil beneath the desert crust, formed an enormous drawing board for the Nazca people upon which huge lines, trapezoids, and animal figures were etched, and the nature of their mind ideally suited to the ones who wanted to leave a mark for eternity.
The geo-glyphs are the most impressive ones in the world, because of their numbers, characteristics, dimensions, and cultural continuity as they were made and remade by removing the oxidised darker surface stones and top soil to expose the lighter colored underneath floor. In this way the geo-glyphs were drawn as furrows of a lighter color, even though in some cases they became prints. In other cases, the stones defining the lines and drawings form small lateral humps of different sizes.
About 300 figures made of straight lines, and geometric shapes, are etched in the surface of the desert pampa sand. The concentration and juxtaposition of the lines and drawings leave no doubt that they required intensive long-term labor as is demonstrated by the stylistic continuity of the designs, which clearly correspond to different stages of cosmological changes.
There appear to be two kinds of designs:
- One design consists of figures of various beings, trees, plants, flowers, objects (such as tripods, looms and fans) and other strange figures as yet unidentified, such as anthropomorphic ones (that include deformed animals) of colossal proportions made with well-defined lines. Examples of animal designs are a humming-bird, condor, monkey, llama, duck, lizard, spider, and even a killer whale.
- The other design forms lines that could be single (straight and curved) or in groups and could cross each other in complicated networks. The width and length of them could vary, one of the longest straight lines is 20 km long and the total combined length of the geo-glyphs has been estimated at over 1,300 km. Those lines used to describe a specific shape are generally composed of a single continuous line. Designs could be geometric shapes such as triangles, spirals, trapezoids, arrows, and zig-zags.
The geo-glyphs are an enigma, for their exact purpose and meaning remains unknown. It has inspired fantastic explanations like they were done by semi-gods, a landing strip for returning beings, a celestial calendar used for religious rituals related to cosmological dates and seasons, confirming the spirit embodied in the clans (ayllus) who made up the sacred population of Nazca people and to determine through rituals their religious functions held up by reciprocity and redistribution of the energy forces trusted to them, or a map of underground water supplies mapping the orientation of the cosmic energies trusted to them.
How were they created so precisely? Some of the lines continue for kilometers on end only varying by a few degrees. It is possible that these lines were created before the Nazca, but it is somehow difficult to prove it.

DEATH, AN IMPORTANT PART OF INCA LIFE.

Like many ancient Andean people before them, the Incas viewed Death in two ways. One was biological death, when the body ceased functionally and was mummified. The other was the passing of the soul to a place active only in the mind, souls and daily lives of the living until they were replaced by other prominent figures. However, some of them were never forgotten. They were considered heroic figures who gave the Inca their identity.
As long as they maintained alive in their minds the world beyond the living world, deities, supernatural, powers and curses were an active force very much entwined with human nature, such beliefs and practices have somehow continued alive to the present day.
Death was considered an important part of life in the realm of the living and mummification was a rite of passage into the abstract, or the non-physical one, the world of the spirits.
The mummification processes were precise and complicated. One of the things that made this process complicated was that every civilian had to be mummified. All of the people of various places on the social ladder were buried. Tombs and mummies were well preserved, revered and considered extremely sacred. Ancestor veneration frightened the European crown and clergy, because their minds were already corrupted by the belief that human power dominated the world beyond the living and no entity or force was able to punish them in their wrongdoings. They destroyed the burial chambers of these important corpses and robbed them in an attempt to undermine the spiritual power of the Inca religion founded in ancestral veneration and worship. They portrayed themselves as being sent by their ancestors in order to establish a proper order in the world of the living. At the beginning it worked out but at the end they themselves brought the Inca curses to their own lives and to the crowns responsible of the destruction behind the curtains.
The intention of the curse, according to Inca beliefs, was to submit the soul of the inflicter to the proper supernatural power in charge of the ancestral tree of souls from which the individual belonged to. This supernatural forces then inflicted misfortunes of any kind to the person and the descendants according to the weight of the wrongness done by the individual or community of people.
Curse was a powerful phenomenon, viewed as the summoned wrath of the beings in the upper world towards the wrongness of humans against the law of nature, or the presence of evil forces using nature as a weapon to defied the power of the upper world.
The reason why some of mummies survived from the hand of the Europeans and for so long is because most of the mummies were buried in the high peaks of the Andean mountains, symbolizing the power of nature against the power of man winning nature over him. The high mountains being a very cold place by nature, the mummies were kept frozen and this frozen estate kept them from deteriorating.
To help them in the afterlife, the mummies were bundled with offerings of food, tools, and precious items inside of their wrappings. Their internal organs were kept inside of their bodies and then buried or put in an above ground tombs called 'chullpas.'
If the person were a king he would be seated on a special throne, with the arms across their chest and their knees up to their chests. They would be dressed in fancy clothes and adorned with pieces of silver and gold and parts of animals would be put on the outer layer of him and onto it offerings to the gods. Fake heads also and masks would be put on the face.
The mummies of the Inca rulers were among the holiest objects of Inca religion. They were actually treated as if they were still alive. They had servants, maintained ownership of their property, were consulted as oracles, and were taken to major festivals or to visit other mummies.
If the deceased was not from the ruling class their mummies were placed in a tomb above the ones in the ground. They were accessible and people could leave gifts, food, or belongings.
If they were a religious sacrifice they were put in a long fancy robes that were so big so it allowed room to grow in, during the afterlife. Then they were wrapped up and some of their belongings were placed inside the wrappings. They were then put into the ground in many high peaks of the Andes. They were considered like demigods with a specific mission in the afterlife.

ANDEAN SHAMANISM.

In Andean Shamanism, the Human Energy Field has long being understood since the human body is the replica of the energy fields that act in the universe.
The 'aura' or 'human energy field' is understood as a field of energy which surrounds and penetrates our body. The aura underlies and supports the functioning of the body. Contained within the aura are the energetic aspects of every structure and function of the body, as well as everything that we experience (physical sensations, thoughts, feelings, states of consciousness, etc.)
Activities in all cells, tissues and organs generate specific magnetic pulse-action that can be detected on the skin surface. The laws of physics prove this concept since they demand that any electrical current generates a corresponding magnetic field in the surrounding space.
Andean people believes it is through the energy field that we are connected with everyone and everything else that exists.
From the time of their ancestors, the ability to see things that lies beyond the reach of the physical sight, was taught through special trained religious people (Shaman). They developed a keen sensitiveness  to the subtle energy that surrounds everything in the world.
The role of ancestral spirits are the most important knowledge known by the shamans and the role they have upon the domain of the elements: water, earth, fire, air. They were identified by frequencies of sound and matter. Also by vibrations in the earth energy field. It was a world of living energies.
The shaman's perception of the healing powers of nature opens the door or the portal for the dramatic realignment of matter to a degree that is capable of its healing and restore the harmonize work between the energies. The shaman is capable to activate the individual's inner healer power that resides within the body by removing obstacles that impair the healing process.
The world around the shamanism is totally different than the Western idea of it. They describe the world as made up of two separate and yet coexisting energies: the natural ones and the spiritual ones.
In the spiritual world, people have bodies, live in houses, enjoy community life, and are surrounded by landscapes similar to the physical world. Everything there is more vivid and much more alive. What we see respond to what we are thinking. Time boundaries do not exist. We always have all the time we need. Particular individuals are only as near or as far away as our thoughts go, and thinking of a person or place can actually bring us there. It is a place where our inner state are reflected in our surroundings and where all life originates from, and is sustained by Love and Wisdom of our Creator.
Incas believed in sharing and integrating knowledge, specially the ones in regard to spiritual knowledge. They connected all the people in one single language, the language of their religion, but they did not stop their people from new incorporated lands to continue paying respect to their deities.
The Andean way teaches us about the power of collective religious thinking bringing respect to the grounding chord, the invisible line of energy from our bodies in the earth to the cosmical one belonging to Vira-Cocha, the Creator of everything.