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.