Ancient civilization sacrificed more than 100 of their children to stop bad weather, say archaelogis
Ancient civilization sacrificed more than 100 of their children to stop bad weather, say archaelogists
'What we've got is no ambiguity at all — all of these kids have their chests cut open,' Verano said
WASHINGTON POST Updated: March 11, 2019
Archeologists working in Peru have found what they say is the site of the largest child sacrifice in the world. About 140 children and more than 200 animals — probably llamas — were killed in the middle of the 1400s. A civilization known as the Chimu sacrificed the children in response to catastrophic weather, the scientists suggest. An unusual layer of thick mud, a sign of an extreme El Nino event, covered the burial pits.
The children’s bodies were buried on the skirt of a bluff that, six centuries years ago, overlooked the Pacific. It now overlooks the ocean and a housing development. Gabriel Prieto, an archaeologist at the National University of Trujillo, was working nearby when the owner of a pizza restaurant told him construction workers had uncovered an “unusual concentration of human remains” in a dune.
The number of human skulls that emerged from the sand stunned Prieto. They were in an “excellent state of preservation,” he said.
The site was less than a kilometer — about a 15-minute walk — from the ancient Chimu metropolis of Chan Chan, the largest city in pre-Colombian South America. That the Chimu sacrificed children here, and in such numbers, came as a surprise to researchers. Archaeologists knew the Inca people, who conquered the Chimu at the end of the 15th century, killed children in mountaintop rituals. But before this research, no similar accounts existed for the Chimu.
More:
https://calgaryherald.com/news/world/fifteenth-century-child-sacrifice-was-response-to-catastrophic-weather-archeologists-say/wcm/1c43258f-dfd4-49cd-a2dd-9760990ffa6b
