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South America
Andes, Amazon, and Southern Cone

The Andes

Keep In Mind
The Inca Empire had no writing system, but instead recorded information with knotted strings called quipu.

When the Spanish conquistadors destroyed the Inca Empire (with help from Amerindian allies who made up most of their troops), they destroyed many of the quipu strings, which means that much of our knowledge about Andean mythology comes from Spanish chroniclers as well as Andean Native informants in the post-conquest colonial era (1600s-1800s).
One such text is the Huarochiri Manuscript, or "A Narrative of the Errors, False Gods, and Other Superstitions and Diabolical Rites of the Indians"
You can tell that it was the "more enlightened" Christian priests who were writing this down.

Accounts like this must be taken with a grain of salt
(or a bundle of llama wool)


The Andes region is still predominantly Amerindian by ethnicity today.

Also, saying "Ancient Inca" is misleading because (Fun Fact)
Cambridge University is older than the Inca Empire!

Cambridge University was founded in 1209.
The Inca Empire started in 1438.

Before that, there were earlier civilizations in the Andes such as the Moche, the Chavin, the Tiwanaku, and the Nazca [known for the Nazca lines, which (Shock Horror) were not made by space aliens].

Colombian Highlands

Amazon Rainforest

According to a chart sourced from a book called War Before Civilization:  The Myth of the Peaceful Savage by University of Illinois professor Lawrence H. Keeley, the Shuar and the Yanomami rank highest in percentage of deaths of men due to war.
(around 60% and 42% respectively)


By contrast, for the so-called "Western world" in the 20th century (including World Wars One and Two), that percentage comes to a mere 1%.

According to many South American Native peoples, the world was once ruled by women...but then all the spiritual power was transferred to men.

In the Brazilian Tupi version of this rather misogynistic theme, a lad named Jurupari arranged for the death of his mother (a virgin named Ceucy who was miraculously made fertile by the Sun who was sick of female rule).

Whoever first told these kind of stories probably couldn't get a date.

Southern Cone

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