Kon- Inca GodDeity

The Boneless God

Kon came from the north, walking so swiftly across the land that he seemed to have no bones, a god who moved as wind moves, without resistance or weight. He was a deity of rain and wind on the Pacific coast, known long before the Inca Empire reached the shores. Pedro Cieza de León recorded the tradition that when Kon arrived in the coastal lands, he shaped the world for human habitation. He created the first people and gave them a fertile country watered by abundant rain, a green coast where rivers ran freely from the mountains to the sea.

The Desert

When his people offended him through neglect of the worship he was owed, Kon's blessing turned to wrath. He withdrew the rains. The rivers dried up and their beds turned to dust. The green coast became the arid desert that stretches along the shore of Peru to this day, a narrow band of sand between the Andes and the Pacific where rain almost never falls.

Overthrown by Pachacamac

Pachacamac came from the south. He challenged Kon's dominion over the coast, and in the conflict that followed, Pachacamac proved the stronger power. He drove Kon from the land and turned Kon's human creations into monkeys, transforming them into the shrieking creatures of the forest. Then Pachacamac fashioned new humans to replace them, people who would worship him at the great temple complex near modern Lima that bore his name and drew pilgrims from across the Andes. The old god's shrines fell silent; the new god's oracle spoke for centuries.