(ANSA) – LIMA, FEBRUARY 14 – A team of archaeologists last week found 16 pre-Inca mummies dating back to 1000-1200 years ago in Peru, during excavation works in the Cajamarquilla complex, 20 kilometers east of Lima. which those of six children who are supposed to have been sacrificed to honor a high-ranking personality, buried not far away in the same site.
Those responsible for the excavations, Pieter Van Dalen and Yomira Huamán, of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, explained to the newspaper La República that “all these bodies seem to have a link with a mummy, found last year and identified as a man of upper class – for all the offerings present in his tomb – died between 800 and 1000 AD (AD) “.
After that discovery, excavations continued for several months, at a deeper level than the sumptuous tomb, and eventually the other mummies emerged.
“The first thing we asked ourselves – explained Van Dalen and Huamán – is why so many children? And also why did the adult skeletons have fractures, as if they had suffered a violent death?”.
This scenario, they added, “reinforced the hypothesis that these burials were sacrifices made to serve as companions for the deceased in the world of the dead.”
Archaeologists have pointed out that there is also a famous precedent to comfort this possible mass sacrifice: the tomb of the Lord of Sipán (250 AD), where three women, four men, a child and various animals were buried next to that ruler Mochica ” .
Finally, as regards the link between Cajamarquilla’s mummy and the sacrificed people, Van Dalen and Huamán suspect that “they may have been servants, concubines, children or other kind of relatives”.
If this version is scientifically accepted, they concluded, “this may have been the oldest mass sacrifice of children ever discovered in Peru.” (HANDLE).
Source: Ansa
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