At the June solstice, during Inti Raymi and the harvest of sacred maize, the Aya Uma emerges: a ritual figure embodying a mediating force between the community, Pachamama, and the cosmic order.
There, in the distance of millennia, sheltered by the sun and cradled by the wind, the sea waters of what is now Ecuador witnessed the flourishing of the children of the Valdivia culture, the first ceramic-making society in the Americas.
