The largest known instance of child sacrifice may have been discovered by archaeologists in northern Peru.

The skeletons of 140 kids, aged between five and 14, who were slaughtered in a ritual some 550 years ago are found at the pre-Columbian burial site known as Las Llamas, according to the scientists who oversaw the excavation.

Also found at the location, which is close to the present-day city of Trujillo, were the remains of 200 juvenile llamas that were ostensibly sacrificed on the same day.

It appears that the ancient Chimu empire constructed the burial site. As floods brought on by the El Nino weather pattern devastated the Peruvian coastline, it is believed that the children were sacrificed.

Children are the most important thing because they represent the future, according to Gabriel Prieto, an archaeology professor at Peru’s National University of Trujillo who has led the excavation alongside John Verano of Tulane University. “They were possibly offering the gods the most important thing they had as a society,” he said.

The children were buried facing the sea, whilst the llamas faced the Andes Mountains to the east, according to Prieto. “Llamas were also very significant since these people had no other animals of burden; they were a crucial component of the economy,” he added.

Although excavation at the burial site began in 2011, National Geographic, which helped fund the project, published the first news of the finds on Thursday.

Prieto said that besides the bones, researchers also found footprints that have survived rain and erosion. The small footprints indicate the children were marched to their deaths from Chan Chan, an ancient city a mile away from Las Llamas, he said.

Verano said the children’s skeletons contained lesions on their breastbones, which were probably made by a ceremonial knife. Dislocated ribcages suggest that whoever was performing the sacrifices may have been trying to extract the children’s hearts.

Jeffrey Quilter, the director of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University, described it as a “remarkable discovery.”

In an email, Quilter told the AP the site provides “concrete evidence” that large scale sacrifices of children occurred in ancient Peru.

“Reports of very large sacrifices are known from other parts of the world, but it is difficult to know if the numbers are exaggerated or not,” Quilter wrote.

Quilter is heading a team of scientists who will analyze DNA samples from the children’s remains to see if they were related and figure out which areas of the Chimu empire the sacrificed youth came from.

Several ancient cultures in the Americas practiced human sacrifices including the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Incas, who conquered the Chimu empire in the late 15th century. But the mass sacrifice of children is something that has rarely been documented.

The Las Llamas site is located in a shantytown, and has been fenced off to stop illegal developers from building homes on it. Prieto says the site shows how in Peru history can be just around the corner.

“This site surrounded by houses in a working class neighbourhood can tell us a lot about a macabre event that is perhaps one of the darkest moments in our history,” Prieto said. “But this is also part of our cultural heritage.”

 Peru: Ancient mass graves of child sacrifice victims unearthed | Al Jazeera English

Source: us.pahilopahilonews.com