Remains of dozens of children possibly sacrificed 600 years ago found in northern Peru

The skeletal remains of 43 children were found in a field near an urban center in northern Peru, with signs of having been sacrificed in rituals more than 600 years ago, said an archaeologist who participated in the discovery.

Some of the remains had almost complete body bones and were in separate graves in the vicinity of a neighborhood one kilometer from the coast of the Huanchaco district, in the Trujillo region, about 600 kilometers north of Lima.

Near the graves, the skeletal remains of two adults and nine llamas were also found, a camelid that is a South American relative of the camel, although without a hump, that lives in the country’s Andes.

“Many of these remains have cuts on the sternum and some with cuts on their ribs, therefore it suggests that these cuts have been caused by a pointed, sharp element or object and possibly a knife,” said the archaeologist, Julio Asencio. Nicolás, at the place of discovery.

The remains were 50/60 centimeters underground, he added.

The researcher stated that the human remains would be from the years 1,200 and 1,450 and would belong to the local Chimú culture, which dominated northern Peru between the 700s and 1,500s.

This is not the first time that bone remains of children from the Chimú culture have been discovered. Archaeologists believe that the sacrifices to minors sought to counteract the negative effects, with rains and floods, of the El Niño climate phenomenon.

In 2018, local archaeologists reported the discovery of 140 children along with about 200 llamas in another area of ​​Huanchaco, with evidence that they had been sacrificed about 600 years ago, due to signs of cuts on the sternum and ribs.

Peru is home to hundreds of archaeological ruins of various cultures that developed before and during the Inca Empire, which dominated the southern part of America 500 years ago, covering from southern Ecuador and Colombia to central Chile.

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