Archaeologists have discovered the bodies of children at a Peruvian burial site, believed to have been sacrificed in a ritual.
In Peru, at Pampa La Cruz, near the coastal town of Trujillo, a series of burial sites that belonged to the Chimù civilization were discovered. These people, who prospered in the region from the 12th to the 15th century, were particularly renowned for their works of art and their production of textiles. Their habitat was then conquered by the Inca Empire in the 16th century.
In a 700-year-old mound located at one of the sites, a macabre discovery was recently made by a group of Peruvian archaeologists. The remains of dozens of naked children’s bodies were found, all with their chests cut open from the collarbone to the sternum, giving access to their hearts. According to Associated Pressthe latest excavations unearthed 43 bodies, while a similar discovery had already been made in 2022 in this archaeological area. Near these bodies, squares of silver and copper were found as well as Spondylus shells, which were considered by these people to be more precious than gold.
By analyzing the corpses more closely, the researchers noticed that the victims all presented cranial modifications: the skull was elongated using boards or headbands. This detail gave clues to the origins of the victims: they could have come from the Lambayeque region, further north of the country. The children could thus have been captured by the Chimù and brought to these burial sites. They would then have exploited them to build irrigation systems, in these areas where crops had difficulty growing naturally.
According to Gabriel Prieto, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Florida who directs the Pampa La Cruz excavation, LiveScienceonce the canals were completed, the children would have been sacrificed. They would likely have been killed as part of a ritual to strengthen the land. “The burial of children in this mound was perhaps an offering to energize the fields. In Andean cosmology, the dead become ancestors, and the ancestors legitimize land rights, justify and support the systems that allow the land to continue to produce,” said Gabriel Prieto. They thus hoped to guarantee the prosperity of the harvests.