All the other dead went down to Mictlan, under the northern deserts, the abode of Mictlantecuhtli, the skeleton-masked god of death. There they traveled for four years until they arrived at the ninth hell, where they disappeared altogether.
Offerings were made to the dead 80 days after the funeral, then one year, two, three, and four years later. Then all link between the dead and the living was severed. But the warriors who crossed the heavens in the retinue of the sun were thought to come back to earth after four years as hummingbirds. The Cihuateteo were said to appear at night at the crossroads and strike the passersby with palsy. Worldview
The world vision of the Aztec conceded only a small part to man in the scheme of things. His destiny was submitted to the all-powerful tonalpohualli (the calendrical round); his life in the other world did not result from any moral judgment. His duty was to fight and die for the gods and for the preservation of the world order. Moreover, witchcraft, omens, and portents dominated everyday life. That such a pessimistic outlook should have coexisted with the wonderful dynamism of Aztec civilization is in itself a remarkable achievement. Aztec ritual calendar
Tonalpohualli, an Aztec term meaning “the count of days,” was the name of the ritual calendar of 260 days. It ran parallel to the solar calendar of 365 days, which was divided into 18 months of 20 days and five supplementary unlucky days. The word tonalli means both “day” and “destiny”: the 260-day calendar was mainly used for purposes of divination. The days were named by the combination of 20 signs—natural phenomena such as wind and earthquake, animals like rabbit and jaguar, plants such as reeds, and objects like flint knife and house—with the numbers 1 to 13. Thus the calendrical round included 20 series of 13 days.
Specialized priests called tonalpouhque interpreted the signs and numbers on such occasions as birth, marriage, departure of traders to faraway lands, and election of rulers. Each day and each 13-day series were deemed lucky, unlucky, or indifferent according to the deities presiding over them. Thus Ce-Coatl (“One-Snake”) was held as favourable to the traders, Chicome-Xochitl (“Seven-Flower”) to the scribes and the weavers, and Nahui-Ehécatl (“Four-Wind”) to the magicians. The men who were born during the Ce-Ocelotl (“One-Jaguar”) series would die on the sacrificial stone, those whose birth took place on the day Ometochtli (“Two-Rabbit”) would be drunkards, and so on. The tonalpohualli dominated every aspect of public and private life. Jacques Soustelle Andean civilization
For several thousand years before the Spanish invasion of Peru in 1532, a wide variety of high mountain and desert coastal kingdoms developed in western South America. The extraordinary artistic and technological achievements of these people, along with their historical continuity across centuries, have encouraged modern observers to refer to them as a single Andean civilization.
Principal sites of Andean civilization.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
A look at a modern map reveals that no single South American state encompasses all of the territories controlled by the Inca (Inka) before the coming of the Spanish; rather these territories were spread over parts of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, and in 1532 they were all part of a single Inca state called Tawantinsuyu, the “Realm of the Four Parts.” Earlier, local hegemonies—some coastal, others centred in the mountains, and still others bridging these geographic barriers—had risen, expanded, and eventually collapsed.
The Inca of Cuzco (Cusco) were themselves newcomers to most of the regions that they came to dominate. Such rapid expansion did not allow for complete consolidation; and the Spanish were able to take advantage of what had been a recent incorporation of numerous regional ethnic groups and the resentments that the Inca victory had created among the ethnic lords. Some of these, like Don Francisco Cusichaq, lord of Xauxa, the earliest colonial capital, lived long enough after 1532 to testify before a Spanish court of inquiry that he regretted having opened the country to the Europeans. For 30 years his bookkeepers had recorded on their knotted quipu (khipu) accounts not only everything the Spanish had received from Xauxa warehouses but also, on separate knot-strings, everything that had been considered stolen.
The outsider visiting the Andes perceives two overwhelming geographic realities: the Pacific coastal desert stretching for thousands of miles and the high Andes rising parallel to the coast. These contrasting regions—utter desert on the coast and high, looming mountains to the east (where the bulk of the pre-Columbian population lived above 10,000 feet [3,000 metres])—could, and at several times in Andean history did, coalesce into a single political entity. Thus, it is possible to speak of a single Andean civilization, even if at times, early and late, there was no political integration. One indicator of this social unity is extant even now: Quechua, one of the Andean languages, is still spoken by some 10,000,000 people from northern Ecuador to northern Argentina, a distance of thousands of miles. The nature of Andean civilization
The coastal desert was inhabited for millennia by fishermen, and many of their settlements have been studied by archaeologists. The people in these communities were familiar with the sea and depended heavily on its products, but from very early times they also used and possibly cultivated native varieties of cotton. Textiles have been the major art form in the Andes for thousands of years. It is known that these textiles—found preserved in the coastal sands—have woven into them a wealth of information on Andean peoples; and, while the information in the textiles still cannot be read, it is believed that they will eventually be as revealing as have been the Meso-American codices.
In modern Peru irrigation eventually may permit the cultivation of the lower reaches of most rivers. Still, it is useful to note that of some 50 rivers descending from the Andean glaciers to the Peruvian coast, only three have water flowing through them year-round. Such an ambitious irrigation scheme would be most productive only if the waters were tapped quite high on the western slope and if several rivers were connected through canals high in the Andes, thus allowing the scarce waters of three or four valleys to be pooled into a single one as needed. Rumours of such a project reached the first Spaniards in Peru: in the final decade before the invasion, the Inca were said to be planning to bore through a mountain in what today is northern Chile, so that water from the Amazonic watershed would flow westward to the deserts and thus alter the continental divide.
Archaeologists, particularly non-Peruvian scholars, have concentrated on the study of coastal peoples: they have found that sites are more accessible along the Pan-American Highway; that the hot and dry climate presents none of the challenges of the high altitudes; and that the remains, mummified in the desert sands, are immediately rewarding. Pottery finds have portrayed such things as fishing or warfare, diseases, weapons, cultivated plants, and differences in rank and in sexual habits among the Andeans. Usually this evidence has been recovered by professional grave looters but sometimes also by archaeologists themselves. One of the most remarkable of the latter type of finds is the grave of a Moche leader that was discovered near the village of Sipan on the northern coast of Peru in the mid-1980s. Since the mid-20th century architectural studies of ceremonial and political centres have allowed researchers to follow changes in the location and the architectural features of important Andean cities. Distance from the sea and the degree of dependence on maritime products, the proximity to irrigation waters from the highlands, and the repeated efforts to control militarily more than a single irrigated valley have all received attention from archaeologists.