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.