The Incas killed in ceremonies children and adolescents. Some of the victims were apparently already months previously selected and prepared for their end – with intoxicants.

The Incas have children, they chose for a human sacrifice, probably prepared for months with alcohol and coca leaves on her death. This practice took an international team of researchers in the study of three 500 year old child mummies from the Argentine Andes. As the scientists in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ report, the consumption of alcohol and coca was a part of the ritual preparation for the sacrifice.

For their findings, the researchers examined by the archaeologist Andrew Wilson of the University of Bradford (UK), among others, the hair of the three children’s bodies had been discovered near the summit of the volcano Llullaillaco in 1999. They were so well preserved because they froze in the high altitude. The volcano is now on the border of Argentina and Chile.

Inca Culture:Access to the world of spirits

That coca and alcohol played a role in the human sacrifices of the Incas, was already known. The residues in the hair can now be more precise conclusions about how these rituals were prepared. Thus, the diet of the eldest child, a 13-year-old girl, a year before her death have changed dramatically. Presumably they had been selected at this time as victims and especially well taken care of from there.

The human sacrifice rituals in the defunct Inca Empire are known under the name Capacocha. The selected children usually laid back long distances and participated in ceremonies in the Inca capital of Cusco, before they went to the sometimes hundreds of miles distant mountain peaks – where they were eventually sacrificed.

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