5 THINGS ABOUT THE SITE OF CHILD SACRIFICE
1 WHAT WAS DISCOVERED
Archeologists in northern Peru say they have found what could be the world’s largest case of child sacrifice. The preColumbian burial site, known as Las Llamas, contains the skeletons of 140 children aged between five and 14 when they were ritually sacrificed during a ceremony about 550 years ago, experts who led the excavation said. The site, near the modern day city of Trujillo, also contained the remains of 200 young llamas.
2 WHY SACRIFICE CHILDREN?
The burial site was apparently built by the ancient Chimu empire. It is thought the children were sacrificed as floods ravaged the Peruvian coastline. “They were possibly offering the gods the most important thing they had as a society, and the most important thing is children because they represent the future,” said Gabriel Prieto, an archeology professor at Peru’s National University of Trujillo, who led the excavation, along with John Verano of Tulane University.
3 WHAT ABOUT THE LLAMAS?
“Llamas were also very important because these people had no other beasts of burden. They were a fundamental part of the economy,” Prieto said.
4 WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE?
Verano said the skeletons contained lesions on the breastbones, probably made by a ceremonial knife. Dislocated ribcages suggest that whoever was performing the sacrifices may have been trying to extract the children’s hearts. Prieto said that researchers also found footprints, indicating the children were marched to their deaths.
5 WAS IT COMMON?
Several ancient cultures in the Americas practised human sacrifices including the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Incas, who conquered the Chimu empire in the late 15th century. But the mass sacrifice of children is something that has rarely been documented. Jeffrey Quilter, the director of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University, described it as a “remarkable discovery.”