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.
Dr Emma Brown, from the department of archaeological sciences at the University of Bradford, said:
"The Spanish chroniclers suggest that children were sacrificed for all kinds of reasons: important life milestones in the lives of the Incas, in times of war or natural disasters, but there was a calendar of rituals too."
Frozen in time
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.
Dr Emma Brown, from the department of archaeological sciences at the University of Bradford, said:
"The Spanish chroniclers suggest that children were sacrificed for all kinds of reasons: important life milestones in the lives of the Incas, in times of war or natural disasters, but there was a calendar of rituals too."
Frozen in time
More @ BBC
Sorta pisses all over that "Noble Savage" campfire, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteHeh.:) Kinda' like the Tuscaroras:
Deletereports state that women were killed by having saplings forced into their vaginas.
http://www.namsouth.com/viewtopic.php?t=119&highlight=tuscaroras+family
I think that's pretty much how they still do it in Chicago this day and age. But they do it at the altar of political correctness.
Deletethe altar of political correctness.
DeleteI guess PC is a religion to them.