The conquistadors did not mention high-altitude sacrifices in their chronicles of the Incas, so archeologists are piecing together a picture of this ritual from finds at once poignant and gruesome: the mummified remains of the sacrificed children. Last week an American-Argentine-Peruvian team announced that they had ascended to the 22,000-foot summit of Mount Llullaillaco in northwest Argentina and unearthed the bodies of three sacrifices frozen in death 500 years ago. Thanks to the cold and lack of oxygen, “they appear the best preserved of any mummy I’ve seen,” says Johan Reinhard, co-leader of the expedition. “The arms looked perfect, even down to visible hairs.”
Buried under five feet of rock and earth, the mummies are already adding new details to scientists’ understanding of Inca religion and imperial power. CT scans showed that the children, age 8 to 15 or so, were not killed by blows to the head. Instead they may have been buried alive, says archeologist Chad Gifford of Columbia University, who is excavating Inca sites in nearby Cachi. They were curled into a fetal position, probably unconscious from hallucinogens mixed in with the corn liquor they drank. “They exude an air of tranquillity,” says Mario Lazarovich, director of cultural heritage in the province of Salta. “Their death was not violent, and this allows us to see the ritual from an Inca point of view: this was not a time of terror and horror but of peace and worship.”
The wooden platform on which the children were laid was strewn with an elaborate offering. Utensils, jewelry and grains surrounded the three, apparently exactly as they were left. Incised ceramic vessels, some still containing corn, dried meat and dregs of liquor, lay beside the children. Nearby were 35 little statues, made of gold, silver and spondylus (sea) shells; bundles of ornate alpaca textiles, and even sandals. A site at 17,200 feet, its wooden roof intact, apparently served as an overnight stop and staging area. “Finding so many artifacts plus the base camp is very, very rare,” says Craig Morris of the American Museum of Natural History. “It should allow us to understand the cultural context of the high-altitude sacrifices, including how the Inca looked at nature.” One inference is that to ascend the mountain was to approach the Sun god.
But the sacrifices were also likely political, suggests Morris. The Inca had conquered or absorbed regions from central Chile into Colombia, becoming the largest and most powerful civilization in the Americas (until the Spanish destroyed them in 1532). By offering their children as sacrifices to the imperial religion, local lords far from the capital of Cuzco, Peru, kept in the emperor’s good graces.
Reinhard has found 18 Inca mummies in the Andes, including the Peruvian “Ice Maiden” in 1995. To reach the top of Llullaillaco the team had to brave driving snow, oxygen deprivation and winds of 70 miles an hour. On March 17 Antonio Mercado, a Salta student on the team, “saw something white in a hole in the bedrock,” he says. “I kept excavating, and there it was: the plume of white feathers” on a perfectly preserved girl. When they found the third mummy, the team members lowered him into the pit by his ankles so he could pull her out.
The still-frozen mummies were driven to Salta, where scientists will analyze the sacrifices’ DNA for clues to their parentage and examine their tissue for signs of disease and their last meal. If the researchers’ hopes are realized, the children will prove as valuable to science as they were precious to their people.
