Geopferte Inka-Kinder starben ganz anders als wir dachten. Inka-Jungen und -Mädchen, die für Menschenopfer ausgewählt wurden, wanderten vor ihrem rituellen Tod Tausende von Kilometern auf heiligen Pilgerfahrten durch Inka-Gemeinschaften, oft in der Nähe hoher Gipfel in den Anden, wie neue Forschungsergebnisse zeigen
https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/sacrificed-inca-children-died-very-170514921.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKNJEf64MUZLihT7QPAokGHsbAQdGN4Ss3euuEgTc3Jmw4av64RTGE-vmjhKmLdQDj6D9H5R08xdk7BaZFtv849reZWsjPsJMC2H5gJpFtgOBWdDqMltD94_mrsd0ZtQfr-XZSGJIIkUwKw4zgZG-_vYBEoQVOT1ubtQSwsgTwCW
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Capacocha was not limited to the final act of offering at the mountain,“ study first author Verónica Silva-Pinto, an archaeologist at Diego Portales University in Santiago, Chile, told Live Science in an email. „It was an extended ritual process that began months earlier and involved mobility, dietary changes, the participation of different communities, and the creation of sacred landscapes.“
But some other experts, while welcoming the study, are cautious about some of its details.
The new study is based on new examinations of three Capacocha mummies from two sites: The „Niño de El Plomo“ or El Plomo Boy, who was about 8 or 9 years old in the 15th century when he was sacrificed near the 17,700 foot (5,400 meter) summit of Cerro El Plomo, now in central Chile; and two girls, one about age 9 and the other about 18, who were sacrificed about 30 years earlier near the top of what’s now Cerro Esmeralda in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert.
Inca boys and girls chosen for human sacrifice trekked through Inca communities for thousands of miles on sacred pilgrimages before their ritual deaths, often near high peaks in the Andes Mountains, a new analysis of their mummies reveals.
The research also looks again at the manners of their deaths and found that none of three children in the Inca ritual, known as Capacocha, died in the ways that scientists previously thought
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz9055
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Can you better explain what’s new about this? It’s unclear to me. What was the previous idea?
Alternatively, they were children from neighboring villages that were not part of the empire, who were forced into bondage and required to hike their way to a certain death. Who really knows?
Did the children know what was going to happen to them?
Is this new?
This was explained to me when visiting museums in Arequipa Peru years ago.
Not sure if this is news. I read about this years ago. The idea in rituals of this sort is to wear people out to the point of exhaustion so they don’t care anymore. In some cultures they would have days-long rituals, dancing until people literally collapsed from exhaustion. In this case, the lack of oxygen at high elevations is also part of it. After so much uphill hiking in thin air, the mind is in a different state. The feeling that comes from this was attributed to being physically closer to the Gods.
So the evidence suggests that instead of strangulation, the cause of death in at least some of the subjects was trauma to the skull via a sharp instrument in and around the temple area as far as I can tell.
I just wanted to double check – it’s still a disgusting and unforgivable travesty what was done to the kids, right?
I saw some of the remains at a museum a while back and it honestly is quite upsetting.
thousands of miles? Thousands?
What a disgusting form of torture to parade them around.
Nothing about the death itself seems to be new information. I saw one of the sacrificed children, mummified in a museum in Arequipa, back in 2020. The museum had an extensive amount of information about the sacrificed kids and their journeys, and even a ~30min video made to look like a simulation of the journey for this one particular girl.
The details are really interesting and perhaps less morbid than it seems. ‚Sacrifice children‘ were selected, usually from well-off families, at really young ages (usually mid-to-early singe digits). They were sent off to divine temples where they lives a simple but good life, being raised with the awareness that they are going to be sacrifices to the gods. It was considered a great honour, and it’s likely that the children themselves were brought up to believe strongly in their purpose. Actually only some of these children would end up sacrificed, as demand wasn’t numerous and it wasn’t an easy decision. Chosen children would indeed walk for long distances to the sacrificial place, which was usually a mountain peak, where they would be closest to the gods. There they would be given a concoction of drugs (this was meant to induce euphoria and relief fear), and killed ceremonially, usually with a quick mace blow to the back of the head.
It seems the only extra info is that journeys were sometimes more extensive than a beeline from the temple to the mountain – which makes sense, because the Inca empire was immense, and sacrifices were likely targeted to multiple places that were affected by the same problem (it was usually El Nino-related weather troubles, or volcano eruptions).