Boys and girls were selected, often as part of an annual tribute to the Inca state. Chosen children typically came from noble families hoping to gain political favor through these rituals. The ...

Researchers have found evidence that hallucinogenic plants were used on children as part of sacrificial rituals in Peru hundreds of years ago. Ritual ceremonies played an important role in the Inca ...

"Beautiful beyond exaggeration," is how one Spanish chronicler described Tanta Carhua. Carhua was a ten-year old Inca child whose father offered her to the Inca Emperor as a Capacocha sacrifice. She ...

Sitting cross-legged, a Mona Lisa half-smile playing on her lips, the Llullaillaco Maiden looks at peace. When she was unearthed in 1999, the lump of coca in her teeth and her icy mountaintop tomb ...

Mummy of another Inca girl sacrificed in a volcano, Llullaillaco in Argentina. Credit: grooverpedro / Wikimedia Commons / Flickr The discovery of an Inca mummy on the Quehuar Volcano, located in the ...

A recent toxicology analysis of the 500-year-old remains of two small children sacrificed in a ritual atop southern Peru’s Ampato volcano showed that the children’s hair and fingernails contained ...

The mummified remains of the Ice Maiden of Ampato—a child sacrifice victim—were stunningly preserved. Now, archaeology and science have restored her gaze. The 15-year-old Ice Maiden of Ampato, as ...