15th-century mass child sacrifice site in Peru may be linked to El Nino event

An archaeologist was shocked to have come across a sacrificial mass grave but his theory behind the event is even more unbelievable.

A mass child sacrifice in Peru that occurred over 500 years ago may have been due to an “El Nino” event.

According to archaeologist Gabriel Prieto, the mass grave­ dated between 1400-1450AD — which holds the skeletal remains of 132 children — may have been made by the Chimu people in an effort to halt devastating weather.

“The sacrifice was made to the gods to stop the devastating rains and floods that was affecting their city (entirely built with mud bricks) and their sophisticated inter-valley irrigation canals,” the professor in archaeology at the National University of Trujillo told Fox News.

“The floods possibly destroyed their agricultural fields.”

The skeletons were uncovered at a site near Huanchaco, a small town on the northwest coast of Peru. Some of the ruins of Chan Chan — the ancient capital of the Chimu people and at one time one of the largest cities in the Americas — still stand in Huanchaco. The area has long been an attraction for archaeologists.

Ancient mass graves have also been discovered in the area. Here, an archaeologist works on an excavation site where human remains were found, in Huanchaco, Peru. Picture: Celso Roldan/AFP/Getty Images

“The Chimu was not a tribe,” Prof Prieto said. “They were a large empire whose capital city covered more than 8sq miles (20sq km). The city of Chan Chan had palaces, temples, storage facility areas, cemeteries, workshop neighbourhoods, irrigation canals … Their territory extended over more than 620 miles (997km) along the north coast of Peru.”

The Chimus, the second-largest empire of the ancient Andes, were eventually conquered by the Incas in 1470.

In 2011, an owner of a local pizza place alerted Prof Prieto after his children found some dogs sniffing some human bones stuck in the sand in a nearby vacant piece of land.

“I thought it is going to be another looted cemetery of the Chimu period in the Huanchaco area,” Prof Prieto said. “I never expected to find a children sacrificial ground.”

Archaeologists found the remains of 42 children and more than 70 young llamas in 2011, near Trujillo, Peru. By 2016 the number had grown to over 130 children and 200 young llamas. Picture: Reuters

The sheer number of child skeletons discovered at the site was shocking. The ages of the children (whose shroud-wrapped skeletal remains were found alongside 206 llamas) ranged between five and 14. They had been placed in unusual positions for Chimu burial — instead of sitting upright, they were curled up and on their backs. They were all sacrificed in the same grisly fashion — by a knife to the chest.

“The sacrificial procedure was to make a horizontal cut on the sternum to open up the chest cavity and possibly extract their heart,” Prof Prieto said.

The cut locations were consistent, with no stop-starts of the blade to indicate hesitation on the killer’s part. The slayings were brutally systematic.

One huge clue the researchers are basing their assumption that the killings were made to appease the gods during an El Nino event was the huge slab of ancient, dried-up mud the children were buried in. Very deep mud is synonymous with the heavy rain that plagues Peru during El Nino.

During a time when mass sacrifices in the area weren’t unheard of — four such events were believed to have been carried out between 1200 and 1520 — it is not hard to assume that religious and political leaders agreed to such an act to stop the devastating rains.

Prof Prieto and his team are currently analysing the feather headdresses and painted cloth found in the sacrificial grave.

This article originally appeared on Fox News and was reproduced with permission