Mama Qucha

	Mama Qucha Mama Qucha (Quechua: "Mother Sea" or "Mother Lake", hispanicized spelling Mama Cocha) is the ancient Incan goddess of sea and fishes, guardian of sailors and fishermen, wife of Viracocha, mother of Inti and Mama Killa. In some regions of empire people believed she was the goddess of all bodies of water, including lakes, rivers, and even human-made watercourses. Mama Cocha was more important to people living beside the coastal regions due to nearness and dependence upon the sea. Inca beliefs in Mama Cocha and other water deities indicate that the people back then understood the basics of the hydrological cycle. They knew the seawater Seawater, or salt water, is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% (35 g/L, 35 ppt, 600 mM). This means that every kilogram (roughly one liter by volume) of seawater has appro ... was replenishing the rain, which then fell over the ground. References {{deity-stub Inca goddesse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
picture info	Quechua Languages Quechua (, ; ), usually called ("people's language") in Quechuan languages, is an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples, primarily living in the Peruvian Andes. Derived from a common ancestral language, it is the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language family of the Americas, with an estimated 8–10 million speakers as of 2004.Adelaar 2004, pp. 167–168, 255. Approximately 25% (7.7 million) of Peruvians speak a Quechuan language. It is perhaps most widely known for being the main language family of the Inca Empire. The Spanish encouraged its use until the Peruvian struggle for independence of the 1780s. As a result, Quechua variants are still widely spoken today, being the co-official language of many regions and the second most spoken language family in Peru. History Quechua had already expanded across wide ranges of the central Andes long before the expansion of the Inca Empire. The Inca were one among many peoples in present-day Peru who already spok ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
picture info	Inca Mythology Inca mythology or religion includes many stories and legends that attempt to explain or symbolize Inca beliefs. Basic beliefs Scholarly research demonstrates that Runa (Quechua speakers) belief systems were integrated with their view of the cosmos, especially in regard to the way that the Runa observed the motions of the Milky Way and the solar system as seen from Cusco, the capital of Tawantinsuyu whose name means "rock of the owl". From this perspective, their stories depict the movements of constellations, planets, and planetary formations, which are all connected to their agricultural cycles. This was especially important for the Runa, as they relied on cyclical agricultural seasons, which were not only connected to annual cycles, but to a much wider cycle of time (every 800 years at a time). This way of keeping time was deployed in order to ensure the cultural transmission of key information, in spite of regime change or social catastrophes. After the Spanish conquest of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
picture info	Viracocha Viracocha is the great creator deity in the pre-Inca and Inca mythology in the Andes region of South America. Full name and some spelling alternatives are Wiracocha, Apu Qun Tiqsi Wiraqutra, and Con-Tici (also spelled Kon-Tiki, the source of the name of Thor Heyerdahl's raft). Viracocha was one of the most important deities in the Inca pantheon and seen as the creator of all things, or the substance from which all things are created, and intimately associated with the sea.:56 Viracocha created the universe, sun, moon, and stars, time (by commanding the sun to move over the sky) and civilization itself. Viracocha was worshipped as god of the sun and of storms. He was represented as wearing the sun for a crown, with thunderbolts in his hands, and tears descending from his eyes as rain. In accord with the Inca cosmogony, Viracocha may be assimilated to Saturn, the "old god", the maker of time or "deus faber" (god maker), corresponding to the visible planet with the longest revolu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]