Jama

The Jama belief belongs to the Jama Coaque culture, which developed on the coast of Manabí in Ecuador between the Coaque and Jama rivers from about 355 BC until 1532. It has no written record and has been pieced together from its pottery by comparison with Mesoamerica and the north coast of Peru.

The cosmos had three levels, the sky, the earth and the underworld. Jama, the chief deity of the earth, has a human body and a reptile face, and is probably an iguana. A bat god of rain and the night sky haunts the underworld waters, and a death god is shown without arms or legs. The moon appears as an opossum.

Priests who were also shamans served as go-betweens and carried out human sacrifice. The dead were buried in jars.