SUMMARYArchaeologists reexamined the remains of an Incan sacrificial boy and concluded he died from blunt force trauma rather than freezing to death. The findings were published in Science Advances and add detail to the Capachoca ritual practiced by the Incas, in which children were taken to remote mountain sites and offered as sacrifices.
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Sacrificial Incan boy died of blunt force trauma
Credit:
Administrative Archive, Regional Museum of Iquique–CORMUDESI
It's known that the Incas practiced a human sacrifice ritual known as Capachoca, in which children were offered to the mountains and believed to become divine themselves, serving as intermediaries with the gods. This often involved pilgrimages to the remote sacrificial sites, with colonial accounts describing strangulation, asphyxiation, and blunt force trauma as the most common methods of sacrifice. Archaeologists have reanalyzed the remains of one such victim and concluded the boy died from blunt force trauma, rather than freezing to death as previously believed. They described their findings in a paper published in the journal Science Advances.