“This number of children, this number of animals, must have represented a massive investment on the part of the State,” adds Gabriel Prieto.
Jane Eva Baxter, professor of anthropology at DePaul University and specialist in the history of children and childhood, notes that it is possible that the Chimús considered children one of the most precious offerings they could do to the gods.
“You sacrifice the future and all that potential,” she explains. All the energy and effort that went into carrying your family, your society into the future, you take all of that away when you take the life of a child. »
The need to calm the spirits and stop the El Niño-induced precipitation was undoubtedly an urgent problem for the Chimús, but the mass sacrifice appears to have been carefully orchestrated. It appears that healthy boys and girls were brought in from several parts of this sprawling empire. Research is also underway to determine why these children in particular were led to this tragic fate. Young llamas, another important resource, were selected from state-owned herds and appear to have been chosen especially for the event based on their age and the color of their coat.
At the Huanchaquito-Las Llamas site, where Gabriel Prieto and his colleague John Verano, a specialist in physical anthropology at Tulane University, exhumed most of the young victims between 2011 and 2018 and reconstructed the sequence of events using confounding evidence and forensic clues.
The arrangement of footprints and traces preserved in the dried mud indicates that a formal procession was organized to the sacrificial site. The prints of small bare feet, as well as those left by four-legged animals dragged against their will, lead Gabriel Prieto and John Verano to say that the victims were taken alive to their graves, where they were put to death. The absence of insects among the remains meant that the children were wrapped in shrouds and quickly buried alongside the llamas.
Did this offering help calm the torrential rains? It's impossible to know, but this disturbing episode provides a glimpse into the desperate final years of a declining empire.
