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Child mummies 'fattened up' before Inca sacrifice

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Tempest
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« on: October 03, 2007, 01:25:25 am »

Child mummies 'fattened up' before Inca sacrifice


Maev Kennedy
Tuesday October 2, 2007
Guardian Unlimited




 
Doncella's death revealed ... a scientist examines the Llullaillaco Maiden
 
The girl is slumped like a stoned teenager in a doorway, head drooping, hands folded in her lap: she has been dead for more than 500 years, and a team of international archaeologists and scientists, led by Dr Andy Wilson of Bradford University, has just pieced together the appalling last months of her life.
Like other children found on some of the highest peaks of the Andes, the mummy nicknamed the Llullaillaco Maiden had literally been fattened up for death, fed a much better diet in her last year including maize and meat, the luxury foods of aristocrats.

Her fine woven dress and cape are also far from the coarse peasant dress she probably wore before a horrific honour was bestowed on her: she was chosen to be abandoned on a mountain top, a living sacrifice to the gods.
She may indeed, the archaeologists hope, have been stupefied with drugs and alcohol. In her last weeks she was drugged with coca, and probably maize beer - perhaps to bring on merciful oblivion, possibly more pragmatically to combat altitude sickness so she could climb 6,739m to her own death, after walking hundreds of miles from the Inca capital, Cuzco.

The Maiden, aged about 15, whose mummy goes on display this week at a museum in Salta, Argentina, is regarded as one of the most perfect naturally mummified figures from anywhere in the world. She was found in 1999 in a stone shrine on the summit of the volcano, on the borders of Argentina and Chile.

Nearby were two other children, Lightning Girl, aged about 6, whose body was scorched by a direct lightning strike some time after her death, and Llullaillaco Boy, perhaps the most pathetic victim. If the girls were drugged beyond caring, the seven-year-old clearly was not: his clothes were covered with vomit and faeces, evidence, the scientists believe, of his terror. He probably actually died of crushing, so tightly bound that the cloth dislocated his ribs and pelvis.

The precise cause of the other deaths remains uncertain: the bitter cold which preserved their bodies is the most likely explanation. The scientists, many with children of their own, struggled to maintain objectivity. "The mummies were so extraordinarily preserved, it was impossible not to feel fully engaged with them as human beings," Dr Wilson said. "It felt almost as if the individuals were recounting their stories themselves, that was what was so chilling about it."

The team believes the food, the clothes, the jewellery, the expensive pottery left with them, were all intended to raise the status of the children, possibly to make them a more acceptable offering, but possibly more pragmatically so that the Inca rulers could use snatched peasant children, sparing their own. Their deaths were the climax of a complex ritual lasting at least a year, when they were almost certainly brought to Cuzco - the source of the pottery found with them - and then walked enormous distances to the mountains, which must have taken months.

Their hair was cut, and the cut hair carefully placed in small cloth bags with them - analysis of isotopes in hair samples provided the most telling evidence for their short lives - and the girls' elaborately braided soon before death. As if he hadn't endured enough torment, the little boy's was full of nits.

Their deaths were terrifying, and Dr Wilson believes they were meant to be. "The logistics of getting the children there needed imperial organisation," he said. "We believe there was some measure of the Incas demonstrating their power to the colonised: obey, or this is what will happen to you."

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2181861,00.html
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Tempest
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« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2007, 03:11:25 am »

Inca Sacrifice Victims "Fattened Up" Before Death 
Kelly Hearn
for National Geographic News


October 3, 2007
Children selected for Inca ritual sacrifice were "fattened up" with high-protein diets in the months leading up to their deaths, a new study has found.

Researcher Andrew Wilson and his team conducted DNA and chemical tests of hair samples taken from four child mummies found in the Andes mountains in the 1990s. (See a photo gallery of the frozen Inca mummies.)


By studying the ratios of chemicals present in the hair, the team helped show how victims were prepared for death as far as a year in advance, sent on grueling highland journeys, and drugged before the sacrificial ceremonies.

"The findings offer insights into the preparatory stages leading to Inca ritual killing, as represented by the unique capacocha rite," the report reads, referring to the Inca tradition of mountaintop child sacrifice.

Hair logs a chemical record of what an individual consumes, and the information can stay intact in archaeological remains, the study authors point out.

"It is chilling that the children themselves, through their own tissue, give us graphic details and evidence that they were not killed on a whim but were part of a complex process for which they were selected some considerable time before," said Wilson, a lecturer in archaeological sciences at the University of Bradford in Britain.

The study appears online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was funded by the U.K. charity the Wellcome Trust.

"Fattened Up" and Drugged

One extremely well preserved mummy—a 15-year-old girl known as "La Doncella" or the "Llullaillaco Maiden"—appears to have been selected for sacrifice a year in advance, Wilson said.

Tests show the Maiden—whose hair was 9.8 inches (25 centimeters) long, representing more than two years' worth of growth—was raised mostly on a protein-poor "peasant diet" rich in potatoes.

"But 12 months before her death, her diet becomes protein rich," Wilson said, adding that she was likely fed "elite" food such as maize and llama meat.

"We can equate a change in diet of this magnitude with a change in her status, one that occurred as part of her final demise."

 
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« Reply #2 on: October 05, 2007, 03:12:09 am »



An Inca mummy known as the "Maiden"—one of several sacrificial victims found in the Andes mountains—sits on display in a museum in Salta, Argentina, on September 6, 2007.

A new study of the bodies has revealed that the children were "fattened up" with high-protein food for months, then marched on a grueling journey and drugged before their deaths.

AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko
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« Reply #3 on: October 05, 2007, 03:13:40 am »

But the term "fattening up" is used as an illustration, not necessarily a direct reference to weight gain, he said.

"The tissue on the Maiden's forearm is plump, for example," he said. "This is an illustration that these individuals were in good health and condition."


What's more, the chemical evidence shows another shift several months before death, indicating that the children were forced on a grueling pilgrimage.

The route likely went from Cusco, Peru—the Inca capital—to high-altitude mountain shrines, where the children were drugged and then killed or left to die, Wilson added.

The Maiden, for example, was fed fermented maize beer and chewed coca leaves before her death.

(Related: "Mystery Mountain of the Inca" in National Geographic magazine [February 2004].)

Last Months of Life

"This work gives a very interesting and intimate picture of the last months before the deaths of the individuals involved in the capacocha ceremonies," said Kelly J. Knudson, a bioarchaeologist at Arizona State University.

Sonia Guillén, a Peruvian archaeologist, said the study was interesting and helps confirm much of what is known about this type of sacrifice.

"One key question is how these children differed from others in terms of diet," she said.

Other capacocha victims have been found, and other studies have looked at isotopic signatures in order to measure seasonal variations in diet, study leader Wilson said.

But none "has linked to such a graphic piece of evidence that would suggest a diet shift of this magnitude that could be equated with change in status."

Study co-author Timothy Taylor, also from the University of Bradford, said in a written statement that "the treatment of such peasant children may have served to instill fear and exert social control over remote mountain areas newly incorporated into the empire."

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071003-inca-sacrifice.html
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