Amazing tale of the Inca ice maiden-a human sacrifice
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Amazing tale of the Inca ice maiden – a human sacrifice left to die 500 years ago
FIVE hundred years ago this teenage girl was drugged and left to die on a freezing mountain. Scientists can now reveal her astonishing story.
IN AN area of South America then ruled by the Inca civilisation, she would have been singled out for her blemish–free looks and the fact that she was a virgin. Thus selected at the age of 12 she would have been taken away from her peasant parents and given a remarkable year–long preparation for her particular role in life, one that was deemed a great honour.
She would have been put under the guidance of priestesses and dressed in the best clothes. Her hair would have been immaculately braided and her modest diet replaced with the finest foods.
In the final few weeks of her life she would also have been plied with alcohol and mind–altering drugs. Then, when she was surely in a muddled, drunken state, she would have been taken to a sacred mountaintop four miles high in freezing temperatures. There she would have been left in a tomb to die at the extreme altitude. Such was the fate of an Incan human sacrifice and this mummified 13–year–old was one such victim.
She is now more than 500 years old but, with her legs crossed, arms folded and head on her shoulder, she still looks like the teenager she was when she perished. Dubbed the Inca Ice Maiden she seems as if she is simply asleep but her body has actually been frozen and impeccably preserved for half a millennium. And although she looks peaceful scientists now know the grim details of her death.
Her body and those of two younger children, believed to be around four or five years old, were discovered in 1999, entombed near the summit of the Llullaillaco volcano in Argentina, a site 6,000ft higher than Mont Blanc. They have been called the best–preserved mummies in the world.
All were already believed to have been sacrificed in a ceremony known as capacocha. Such ceremonies were carried out by the Incas, the civilisation that dominated South America until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century.
However research just carried out on the children's 500–year–old hair paints a far more detailed picture of the ceremony, one that tallies with accounts of Spanish settlers who were shocked by such practices. With the Inca Ice Maiden, who has the longest hair, the findings were the most specific.
Says Dr Andrew Wilson of the University of Bradford who has been leading the international research: "We have been able to quite literally unlock history from her hair, giving voice to a very personal account of what happened to her. This isn't a desiccated mummy or a set of bones. This is a person, this is a child. I suppose that's what makes it all the more chilling."
Chief among the new discoveries is how the child sacrifices were drugged and intoxicated. The tests show they had consumed alcohol and coca leaves (from which cocaine is extracted) in the months before their deaths. This was perhaps to induce an altered state of consciousness associated by the Incas with religious experience.
With the Inca Maiden the time that she ingested these substances could be accurately pinpointed.
HER coca intake increased sharply a year before her death, when it is believed she was chosen for sacrifice and when her diet also changed from a potato–based peasant one to one rich in meat and maize.
Then in the last few weeks of her life her alcohol intake soared. It was most likely used to sedate her and subdue any resistance she may have put up. However in her last moments it could also have helped her deal with the cold and enable her to peacefully drift off into unconsciousness and then death.
"There is no sign of violence," says Dr Emma Brown, an archaeologist at Bradford University. "What we suspect is that she was probably in a stupor when put in the ground. We think a combination of the altitude, the cold and the low oxygen meant that she would have just slipped away."
Quite how sacrifices were viewed at the time is hard to determine. The Incas believed agricultural fertility and success were dependent on divine help and that was achieved by making human sacrifices but it has also been suggested capacocha rituals were intended to instil fear and control members of the rapidly expanding empire.
One Spanish Jesuit priest, Bernabe Cobo, wrote about such sacri–fices in 1653, detailing how parents forced to give up their children had to pretend to feel honoured. "It was a major offence to show any sadness. They were obliged to do it with gestures of happiness and satisfaction, as if they were taking their children to bestow on them a very important reward," he wrote.
Dr Brown says: "We know that some parents, particularly those who were politically ambitious, volunteered. Others were quite pleased, though, when their daughter was sexually active early because she couldn't be taken."
Sacrifice victims had to be virginal and, says Brown: "From what we know of the Spanish chronicles, particularly attractive or gifted women were chosen. The Incas actually had someone who went out to find these young women and take them from their families."
As the door of the Inca Maiden's tomb was closed off more than 500 years ago, we will never know whether she felt picked for a great honour or condemned to a terrible fate. We can only hope that, dosed up on drink and drugs, she was already unconscious as the last light disappeared.
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sigh
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Death did come, but it should be painless for her...