Archaeologists find child sacrifice site in Peru

Ancient pre-Columbian people said to have carried out the ritual on top of a cliff facing the ocean

Archaeologists in Peru have found evidence of the biggest-ever sacrifice of children, uncovering the remains of more than 140 youngsters who were slain alongside 200 llamas as part of a ritual offering some 550 years ago, National Geographic announced in a study.

The site was located on top of a cliff facing the Pacific Ocean in La Libertad, a northern region where the Chimu civilization arose, an ancient pre-Columbian people who worshipped the moon.

The cliff is located just outside the northwestern coastal city of Trujillo, Peru’s third largest city which today has 8,00,000 inhabitants.

“While incidents of human sacrifice among the Aztec, Maya and Inca have been recorded in colonial-era Spanish chronicles and documented in modern scientific excavations, the discovery of a large-scale child sacrifice event in the little-known pre-Columbian Chimu civilisation is unprecedented in the Americas — if not in the entire world,” National Geographic said.

The investigations were carried out by an international team led by NationalGeographic ’s Peruvian explorer Gabriel Prieto, of the National University of Trujillo, and John Verano, a physical anthropologist from Tulane University in New Orleans.

The team uncovered evidence of “the largest single incident of mass child sacrifice in the Americas — and likely in world history.” “I, for one, never expected it,” Mr. Verano told the magazine of the sacrifice site, known to the researchers as “Las Llamas”.

“And I don’t think anyone else would have, either,” he added. The excavations began in 2011 when the team uncovered the remains of 42 children and 76 llamas (camel-like animals) at a 3,500-year-old temple nearby.

By the time the excavations had finished five years later, they had uncovered more than 140 sets of child remains and 200 juvenile llamas, as well as rope and textiles dating to between 1400 and 1450.

Located about 300 metres above sea level, the site is in the middle of a cluster of residential compounds in Huanchaco, a neighbourhood bordering Trujillo.

“The skeletal remains of both children and animals show evidence of cuts to the sternum as well as rib dislocations, which suggest that the victims’ chests were cut open and pulled apart, perhaps to facilitate the removal of the heart,” the magazine said.

Researchers determined that the children were between the ages of five and 14, with their bodies buried facing west — out to sea.