THE ANDEAN MENTALITY.

Andean people, considering in first place those who were conquered by the Incas, during the period of time in which the Inca Empire extended from Ecuador in the North, over Peru and Bolivia to Northern Argentina and Chile in the South. They did not leave any codices -religious, astronomical, historical or any "dated" monuments. Nor did they have any sort of script, which could have been deciphered.
Although we are able to relate representations left by the Andean people in relation to the realities they faced, but we are not able to understand the symbols for what they stood and the gods and mythical beings where they are represented.
Due to the physical and spiritual isolation of the Andean civilizations, in which the Western influence at the point of contact provoke a huge disruption in this South American continent than anywhere else, the only way to understand the ancient Andean way of life is through the study of modern Andean religion is therefore of great importance in order to understand why and how these people achieved so much power through the unified mentality of its subjects.
Because of its ancestral system, religion was intimately interwoven with its political and social system, and no understanding of the one is possible without the understanding of the other.
The primary concept on which the Andean people based their social organization was "conquest." The conquerors considered themselves to be of heavenly origin, or from fruits of trees dropped on earth with a purpose or mission to handle, whereas the ancestors of the conquered ones had come out from the ground or of the earth, and needed to be taught about the rules of existence.
The central religious concept was that of the Creator, the invisible creative power of which all the other deities were only aspects , represented as his sons  and descendants. His best known name was that of Viracocha -Foam or Fat of the Sea - describing how his power to create the earth (priestly power was symbolized by fat on water boiling in a pot) floated like the earth itself on the unlimited waters surrounding it.
Viracocha was the first to rise after the recurring floods out of the water having dominion over it and to create the world, the Sun, Moon and Stars, the plants and animals, and mankind, for which reason he was called Pacha'Ya'Chachic. He was the real, living, and invisible Sun, male and female, his place in earth was on the slopes of the pyramid, symbolizing the Cosmos, as his place in the interior of the earth was the dirty, low base (Tiesi) of the world and as such was Pacha'Camac (Lord of the Earth) the responsible or originator of the earthquakes in the interior of the earth.
In a more mythological way, Viracocha was said to be born in Lake Titicaca, symbolically, the highest navigable water in the earth (as in heaven so in earth), creating there the Sun and the Moon and the souls of different peoples of mankind whom he sent first underground to their respective localities.
Viracocha had 3 sons or servants. One was bad, reversing all the creation laws of Viracocha by making lakes into mountains and mountains into lakes. He was sent away and so became the underworld power of destruction, causing earthquakes and landslides in the raining seasons with the purpose of obtaining the souls and bodies of those serving the dark power. He was also the god of death  and fertility, of the time when the seeds are in the ground.
The other 2 sons of Viracocha represented the 2 forces in the society, that of the conquerors and that of the conquered. On the basis of this understanding were also built all those beliefs of particular clans of people in which the local chief represented in society the same position of power as Viracocha held and still has in the whole Cosmos. The 2 chief's sons were those, one by a woman of his, the conqueror's family and the other by a woman of the conquered. Just as the Sun was created in Lake Titicaca to travel from there through the skies to the West, so Viracocha went West to through the Mountains to Ecuador to create mankind, in order to bring the different souls of peoples out of their caves. His 2 sons also travelled West, but one to his right, along the slopes of the Andes, where he created the rivers and plants, especially the useful ones, and the other to his left creating the same at sea level on the coast.
They all came together on the Coast in Ecuador where they disappeared, again like a foam, on the waters of the Ocean.
The Sun and the Moon, the visible ones, were the Children of Viracocha. Generally they were considered to be his son and his daughter in the physical plane. Just as in Cuzco Manco Capac, the ancestor of the Inca emperors, was related there to the conquerors as son of the sun and his wife to the conquered as daughter of the moon, so these two were also related to conquerors and conquered. The moon was the brightest, but the sun threw ashes in her face and since then the sun was the brighter and more powerful one.
The Andean people used their cosmological model also as a conceptualization of their own social hierarchy and in this the emperor and the queen were related to the sun and the moon. The secondary children of the emperor by foreign women or those of conquered people were related to the Children of the Sun and the Moon. As such were considered Venus -the Morning Star being their son and the Evening Star their daughter- and the Thunder and all the conquered huacas. These were the heavenly deities although in the lowest of these -Venus or the Thunder- in connection with the earthly deities.
The highland peoples identified themselves with the heavenly deities whereas the lowland peoples were connected with lowest plane of gods in the Cosmos. To the highland people the responsibility of maintaining the balance between the forces of the Cosmos and of the earth was a major responsibility and their training was very severe, whereas the people at the sea level held a different weight of responsibility that dealt with the level of deities in charge of it. Everything was built with the purpose of maintain harmony as a whole regardless the challenge that the land itself represented having people in mountains, people in the jungle, and coastal people, it really was the training camp of the highlanders.
The coastal people and those of the Eastern slopes made of their deities their major ones because of their connection. On the coast the major temple and pyramid was that of Pacha'Camac, Lord of the Earth, 30 km South of Lima, Peru. He was venerated as creator of the earth and made earthquakes. He was represented in an animal form as the spirit of a fox in contrast to the spirit of a wolf that by nature is territorial and cunning, and his female counterpart was the skunk that acted as his wife, both the lowest of their class according to its kind. To the mountain people, this lowest of all deities was Pacha'Mama (Mother Earth), who was also represented as the Amaru, a mythical dragon, originated in the Eastern Lowlands. The Amaru was the archetype of all the low and powerful animals, especially serpents, felines, and pigs. Pachamama or the Amaru was a priestess and sorceress, who slept with all men.
The Amaru lived under earth and in the rivers, and just as Thunder and Lightening  were the destructive power of Viracocha descending from heaven, so Amaru manifested itself in earthquakes, in a lightning that goes upwards from earth to heaven, in the fire that erupts from volcanoes, and in the landslides occasioned by the overflow of water and mud during the raining season.
Of this undivided chthonic force, we must consider Pacha'Mama and Mama'Cocha (Mother Sea), as the two subdivisions just like the sun and moon were those of Viracocha. The sea was the most important god of the Chimu, whereas they related the sun to their huacas. Venus was to them a child of the sea. To the Incas the wells were subdivisions, children of the sea and they have a strong female character.
The connection between Heaven (spirit) above and Water (mind or soul) and Earth (physical body) below was established by the Milky Way and the Rainbow, the female and male aspects of the same concept. They both were the protectors of the world from flood, especially in the dry season, by drinking its excess of water. But because of this ability they are also very dangerous. Once they abstain from doing this, the earth will immerse again in the water just as in the beginning during the flood.
Only a well integrated and stable society, keeling the established order of things, can keep the Milky Way and the Rainbow functioning in harmony. But war and not living by the laws of nature can make the flood or other phenomena recur again.
These were the basic elements with which the Andean peoples built their knowledge and understanding of the spiritual, mental and physical laws that govern the Cosmos.