1,200-year-old remains of sacrificed adults, kids unearthed in Peru

LIMA Feb 23 (BUS): Peruvian archaeologists have discovered eight children and 12 adults who apparently sacrificed some 800 to 1,200 years ago, they reported Tuesday, in large pits at the pre-Inca complex Cajamarquilla east of Lima.

The remains were outside an underground cemetery where a team from the University of San Marcos in Peru in November found an ancient mummy believed to be an important figure tied with ropes in an embryonic position.

The bodies, some mummified and some skeletons, were wrapped in various layers of textiles as part of an ancient pre-Hispanic ritual, archaeologist Peter Van Dalen said, and it is likely that they were sacrificed to accompany the mummy’s main, according to Reuters.

“For them, death was not the end, but the transition to a parallel world where the dead live,” Van Dalen said at a press conference. “They believed that the souls of the dead became protectors of the living.”

The burial pattern was familiar, Van Dalen said, citing the tomb of a master of Siban, a 1,700-year-old ruler found with sacrificed children and adults to be buried with him.

“This is exactly what we are thinking and suggesting in the case of the mummy in Cajamarquilla, which would have been buried with these people,” he said. As part of the ritual, evidence of violence was found in some individuals.

Besides the funerary items, Yumira Huaman, who is part of the team, said there were musical artifacts such as the ‘zambona’, an Andean wind instrument with several wooden tubes shaped like flutes.

“Our investigations indicate that Cajamarquilla’s mummy will be a man of approximately 35 years of age. This character did not have any organs, which means that he was disemboweled after death,” she said.

Peru is home to hundreds of archaeological sites for the cultures that developed before and after the Inca Empire, which 500 years ago dominated the southern part of the continent, ranging from southern Ecuador and Colombia to central Chile.

“The complex is only 1% excavated,” Huaman said. “I think Cajamarquilla has a lot more to say, and a lot more to tell us.”

HF