Forensic Analysis of Frozen Inca Mummies Reveals That Sacrificed Children Were Plied With Coca Leaves

Five centuries after children were sacrificed on volcanic peaks in the Andes, chemical clues preserved in their hair and fingernails show how the empire used intoxicating blends to soothe the children during their final months. Forensic Analysis of Frozen Inca Mummies Reveals That Sacrificed Children Were Plied With Coca Leaves, Corn Beer and Ayahuasca Compounds Before Death. A mummy known as El Niño (The Boy), a seven-year old Inca child found in 1999 on the top of the Llullaillaco volcano in the Argentine Andes.

Juan Mabromata / AFP via Getty Images The capacocha was one of the most sacred ceremonies of the Inca Empire, involving the sacrifice of children on the high-altitude volcanic peaks of the Andes. Now, new research reveals how children were drugged in preparation for their fate. Researchers analyzed hair and fingernail samples taken from eight frozen child mummies discovered on mountains across Peru and Argentina: one boy and seven girls who were between the ages of six and 14 when they died some five centuries ago.

The toxicological screenings revealed that the youths were administered intoxicating and mind-altering substances including cocaine, ceremonial corn beer and an alkaloid linked to ayahuasca brews, according to a study published in Antiquity this week. While earlier studies primarily focused on coca leaves, Dagmara Socha, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Warsaw and the study’s first author, explains in a statement, “our aim was to identify a broader range of psychoactive substances administered to the children and to determine whether patterns in their use could provide new insights into how capacocha ceremonies were conducted at different locations.” “Recent advances in toxicology now allow for the identification of low concentrations of such substances,” she adds. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Antiquity Journal (@antiquityjournal) Early Spanish chroniclers like friar Martín de Murúa noted that capacocha ceremonies were meant to ensure there would be “no famine nor lack of fruits of the earth, nor would there be drought, nor pestilence, nor rebellion.” But how priests managed the victims’ emotional and physical states remained poorly understood.

Inca rulers sacrificed healthy young boys and girls from across the vast empire during moments of profound crisis like prolonged droughts, famines or political turmoil to appease the mountain deities and restore cosmic order.