This page groups deities by the earliest year a surviving written or inscribed source places them, sorting gods by how far back their documented worship can actually be traced. Archaeologists call this kind of earliest possible date a terminus post quem, which Wikipedia defines as "the earliest date the event may have happened or the item was in existence." Browsing by first attestation separates deities known from the oldest surviving records from ones who only appear in much later texts.
Facts
Attestation
Era of AttestationThe state cult is attested archaeologically from the imperial expansion of the fifteenth century. The textual record is entirely post-conquest, running from the chronicles of the 1550s to Guaman Poma in 1615. 2 Veneration TodayPachamama and the mountain apus continue to receive offerings in Andean communities, alongside and within Catholic practice. 3 Veneration TodayThe Inca state cult ended with the Spanish conquest and the execution of Tupac Amaru in 1572. 2 Overview
What Defines This GroupingThe gods of the Inca state and of the wider Andean world it governed. There was no pre-conquest writing in the Andes, so every text is colonial: Spanish chroniclers, and indigenous and mestizo authors writing under Spanish rule. The Inca state cult was also superimposed on older and more widespread Andean belief, several elements of which outlasted it. 2 Learn More
The gods of the Inca
This group holds the deities of the Inca empire of the Andes, recorded mainly by Spanish chroniclers and indigenous writers after the conquest, and overlapping with older and wider Andean belief. Inca religion centred on the sun, the sacred landscape and the divine status of the ruler.
The browser will find the creator Viracocha, the sun-god Inti (ancestor of the ruling dynasty), the moon Mama Killa, the thunder-and-weather god Illapa, and the earth-mother Pachamama, who remains venerated in Andean communities. The atlas notes the colonial filter of the sources and the continuity of some beliefs in present-day Andean practice.
Era Attested Start Year
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. The Incas, 2nd edition
Terence N. D'Altroy, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014chs. 6-7
3. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. Andean ReligionsView the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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