The Bear in Andean Culture

Thanks to archaeological findings and the millenary Andean oral tradition we know that the Andean bear played an important role in ancient, pre-Columbian Andean cultures. It has been represented in various ways throughout time and across cultures, sometimes more explicitly and sometimes less, but always showing its important symbolic and spiritual meaning. The Andean bear has been seen as a wild brother, an agricultural competitor, an anthropomorphic figure present in artistic representations, ceremonies and traditional stories, until today. 

Let’s discover together how the Andean bear has been represented and what it meant for different cultures in different times.

Hunters and gatherers of the Marañón Culture (6000 to 500 BC) represented the Andean Bear in a realistic way. They recognized the bear as a wild brother, a true architect and gardener of the forest, capable of modifying the landscape and waterways. Similarities between bears and humans were recognized and included the ability of manipulating small objects, the upright postures, having the same food resources, being diurnal and capable to produce similar sounds.

With the emergence of agriculture and livestock (around 800 BC), the perception of the bear and its representations change. It now becomes a feared competitor that is avoided whenever possible. As a result, it is no longer represented realistically, and its form becomes deliberately hidden. It is often represented as a semi human and semi bear mythical being, including attributes of other predators such as eagles, felines and snakes.

However, some rare examples of ancient, realistic representations of the Andean bear still remain and have been found in Chiclayo and Chaparrí (Peru). They are currently displayed in the Rumiñan Interpretation Center of Chaparrí. Both are fragments of pre-Hispanic pottery. 

One of them has been found in 2006 by Luis Pardo and Kourosh Larizadeh on the Modelo market in the city of Chiclayo. The Archeologist Dr. Carlos Elera saw in it part of an ornamented handle of a Muchik vessel.

In 2018, park ranger Ivan Vallejos found another ceramic fragment showing a realistic representation of an Andean bear. He found it inside the rescued bears’ facilities in Chaparrí. The two findings are first hints of the bear’s presence in ancient Andean cultures and open a path towards future investigations.

In the Moche era (200 – 800 AD) traits of the Andean bear can be found within the representation of divine characters, visible as zoomorphic beings, especially in the valleys of Chancay, La Leche and Zaña. These mythical beings include bear traits such as strength and the power over life. One example is El Degollador, the deity representing the act of sacrifice. 

The traditional dancers of the Chachapoyas show the presence of a bear musician dancer taking part at a collective choreography. The transformation of the animal into a human being indicates how society recognizes these elements as part of their own culture. 

At La Jalca in the Amazonas region, a theatrical representation of “Juan el Oso” is shown every year at the end of June. The half bear and half man character, makes the mixture of humanity and wild nature a successful combination for life and shows the deep symbolic relationship between the two species. Popular oral traditions of the people of La Jalca tell how Juan el Oso is always victorious in thousands of adventures.

During the Qoyllur Riti festival in Cusco, celebrated between May and June before Corpus Christi, the Ukukus, humans transformed into bears, collect water from the snowy Sinaq'ara mountain (4900 masl), which are inhabited by the spirits, and bring it down to the regions inhabited by living beings, in the form of a river. This act symbolizes the connection between sacred water and the life on earth. 

Susanna Paisley and Nicholas Saunders remind us that “Since water is a mediator between earth and sky in Andean thought, it is not surprising that bears, who are mediators, also have watery symbolic connections.” (2010)

Paisley, S., & Saunders, N. J. (2010). A god forsaken: the sacred bear in Andean iconography and cosmology. World Archaeology, 42(2), 245-260.

Since pre-Columbian times, the Andean bear has been worshipped as great mediator capable of guiding people through various transitions in their life: from being sick to healthy, adolescent to adult, dead to alive, evil to good and hell to heaven. 

All these passages are attributed to the powers of the Andean bear and are believed to originate from the large elevation range the bear inhabits spanning from the coast up to the highest mountains, and from the Andean dry forests to the humid Amazona jungles.