Inca mummies: Child sacrifice victims fed drugs and alcohol

[dipsydoodle]

Tests on three mummies found in Argentina have shed new light on the Inca practice of child sacrifice.

Scientists have revealed that drugs and alcohol played a key part in the months and weeks leading up to the children's deaths.

Tests on one of the children, a teenage girl, suggest that she was heavily sedated just before her demise.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23496345


Archaeological, radiological, and biological evidence offer insight into Inca child sacrifice.

Examination of three frozen bodies, a 13-y-old girl and a girl and boy aged 4 to 5 y, separately entombed near the Andean summit of Volcán Llullaillaco, Argentina, sheds new light on human sacrifice as a central part of the Imperial Inca capacocha rite, described by chroniclers writing after the Spanish conquest. The high-resolution diachronic data presented here, obtained directly from scalp hair, implies escalating coca and alcohol ingestion in the lead-up to death. These data, combined with archaeological and radiological evidence, deepen our understanding of the circumstances and context of final placement on the mountain top. We argue that the individuals were treated differently according to their age, status, and ritual role. Finally, we relate our findings to questions of consent, coercion, and/or compliance, and the controversial issues of ideological justification and strategies of social control and political legitimation pursued by the expansionist Inca state before European contact.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/24/1305117110

[KansDem]

1. It was the least they could do...

"In the case of the maiden, there is no sign of violence. She is incredibly well looked after: she has a good layer of fat, she has beautifully groomed hair, beautiful clothes," said Dr Brown.

"In this case we think with the combination of being placed in the grave with the alcohol and the cold - the mountain is over 6,000m above sea level - she would have passed away quietly."

...before leaving her to die from the elements.

I'll never understand the sacrifice of innocents in the name of myth and superstition. And "yes," that includes modern warfare.

[Warpy]

2. I suppose when you're trying to stop 9+ earthquakes and erupting volcanoes

you give the mountains your most precious things, and that would be the most beautiful children.

They didn't know about tectonic plates, remember.?

[KansDem]

4. I find it amusing that the leaders never give themselves to the gods...

It's always someone they selected, like a 5-year-old child.

You would think the leaders would be prime sacrificial material since they possess "wisdom" and "experience."

Besides, just think of the true sacrifice the entire community would make by giving up its "best and brightest."

[Chemisse]

3. At least the children did not spend their last moments in terror.

I see this as a good thing.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Thanks for shedding more light on this sacrifice.

Hope the victims had absolutely NO idea what was happening to them, and didn't suffer in any sense. This was not their idea, after all.

[masoncharest]

6. Alcohol drug treatment centers

This article is fine, not sure why everyone is so upset here... if you eat coca leaves you get a mild stimulant, if you eat a bunch it gets a bit more intense: Alcohol drug treatment centers