Viracocha

According to Inca tradition, Viracocha created humanity by fashioning people from stone at Tiwanaku near Lake Titicaca, or alternatively from clay. He first made a race of giants but was displeased with them and destroyed them in a flood, then created humans in proper form. After creation, he dispersed different peoples to different regions by sending them underground through caves and springs to emerge in their designated territories.

Lake Titicaca, located on the border of modern-day Bolivia and Peru, is central to Viracocha's mythology as the site where he created the sun, moon, and stars after emerging from the waters. The Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) in the lake was considered especially sacred, housing a temple to the sun. The ruins of Tiwanaku near the lake's southern shore are associated with Viracocha's creative acts.

After completing his work of creation and teaching humanity essential skills, Viracocha reportedly walked westward across the Pacific Ocean, promising to return one day. In some versions, he was accompanied by two assistants and traveled disguised as an old man. His departure across the sea left the Incas and their predecessors awaiting his eventual return, a belief that had complex consequences when the Spanish arrived.

Viracocha was typically depicted as a tall, bearded man wearing a long white robe and carrying a staff, imagery that differed from the more common indigenous representation styles. This distinctive appearance led some scholars to speculate about possible pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact, though mainstream archaeology attributes the imagery to indigenous artistic conventions. The Staff God motif found at sites like Tiwanaku and Chavín de Huántar is associated with Viracocha.