CT scan reveals the final moments of Inca children sacrificed as “messengers of God”

The famous Inca “ice mummies” have remained a secret since their discovery decades ago, but CT scans are beginning to reveal what these children’s final moments were like, a new study has found.

Researchers wrote in a study that they examined the bodies of four Incan children who were murdered nearly 500 years ago and left in the remote mountains of the Andes as “messengers to the gods.” But new CT scans reveal that at least one of these children was killed elsewhere and then transported to the mountaintop, according to a study published in the April issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The study also showed that some of the children chosen for sacrifice in this capacocha ritual were injured or sick when they were killed, contrary to early Spanish accounts that the victims were always in perfect health.

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“Our findings show that the chronicler’s account needs to be treated with caution,” Dagmara Soša, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw in Poland and lead author of the study, told Live Science. “Historical sources depict children as physically perfect and without flaws, but modern scientific analysis reveals a completely different reality.”

The four mummies are an 8-year-old girl, a 10-year-old girl, a 14-year-old girl, and the mummy of the famous “Lady of Ampat” (also known as the “Ice Maiden” and “Momia Juanita”), who was also sacrificed when she was about 14 years old. Her mummified body was discovered in 1995 at a shrine near the top of the Peruvian volcano Ampat.

Researchers determined that a 10-year-old girl found near the same summit was killed elsewhere. Scans revealed that the organs in her abdomen and chest cavity had been removed and replaced with stones and fabric, before her body was wrapped, placed in a sitting position with her knees pulled up to her chin, and placed on a plateau near the summit.

Although the ice mummies were preserved by the extremely dry air at the nearly 19,000 feet (about 5,800 meters) altitude where they were discovered, the loss of the 10-year-old girl’s organs is the first evidence that any of the bodies had been intentionally prepared for mummification, the researchers wrote, possibly to treat what appeared to be the victims’ physical deficiencies.

ice mummy

Medical scans of the four mummies – three from Mount Ampat and one from a shrine near the top of Sarasala Volcano, nearly 100 miles (160 km) to the west – revealed that some of the young victims suffered from several illnesses.

Scanning the mummy of an 8-year-old girl found on Mount Ampat revealed an enlarged esophagus that could be a symptom of Chagas disease, a common parasitic infection in the area, and scarring on the lungs that could be caused by tuberculosis.

These health conditions are likely common among the Incas at the time, so it’s no wonder the mummy wasn’t as “perfect” as European accounts claimed. “This may reflect general living conditions within the Inca Empire, but it may also indicate that European chroniclers did not fully understand what the Incas themselves considered ideals,” Socha said.

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messenger of god

According to some of the early Spanish writers living in Peru, the Capacocha sacrifice was one of the most important rituals in the Inca world. In these sacrifices, children and teenagers (both boys and girls) were ritually killed and their bodies naturally mummified near the top of a high mountain to serve as “messengers to the gods.”

The methods of killing were different. Some victims were strangled, others suffocated. Professor Soča said each of the four victims in the study appeared to have died from severe blows to the head, possibly from wooden sticks.

Early Spanish accounts say that young victims of Capacocha rituals acted as “messengers” long after they were ritually murdered. For example, the reports of the conquistador Pedro Pizarro (Francisco Pizarro’s younger cousin) state that living people visited ice mummies to seek approval for marriages.

“Evidence suggests that these children…continued to function as intermediaries between the biological community and the sacred apse. [Andean deities] It was long after their deaths,” Soča said.