Photos: The Mystery of the Inca Children Frozen for 500 Years
In 1999, archaeologists found three mummified Inca children, including a teenage girl they named La Doncella, and two younger children of around six and seven years old. Numerous studies over the years have shown that the children were fed rich foods and even given alcohol and coca before being led to a shrine near the summit of the volcano. They were eventually left to die in a ritual known as capacoha. Despite the extraordinary preservation of the mummies, pinning down exactly when they died remains very difficult, with earlier radiocarbon testing of their hair samples placing their deaths between 1430 and 1520.
A recent scientific analysis has more precisely dated when this ritual took place. By dating the plant offerings buried alongside the children rather than relying solely on the mummies, researchers have narrowed a decades-old mystery to a single likely year, linking the sacrifice to the political ambitions of one of the last great Inca Emperors as his empire began to push into new and unfamiliar territory.
A view of Llullaillaco. Volcán Llullaillaco, en la Provincia de Salta, Argentina. (Lion Hirth/Public Domain)
Dating Plant Remains Instead of Relying on Mummies
An international team of researchers turned to a solution that was more obvious than the bodies of the Inca children–the food buried with them. Their findings were published in Archaeometry. The lead author of the study, Dominika Sieczkowska-Jacyna, an archaeologist at the Silesian University of Technology in Poland, explained that the team wanted to situate the sacrifice within the growth of the Inca Empire to better understand the political role these ceremonies played in Inca society. The researchers named the teenage girl (aged approximately 13) as ‘Llullaillaco Maiden’. She was buried with corn, cassava, and coca leaves, and the seeds of these offerings gave researchers a far more accurate timestamp than the human remains had once provided.
The Llullaillaco Boy (El Niño) was one of three Inca children sacrificed during the Capacocha ritual more than 500 years ago. Exceptionally preserved by the freezing conditions atop Volcán Llullaillaco, the mummy has provided remarkable insights into Inca religion, diet, health, and ceremonial practices. (Groverkr/CC BY 2.0)
Narrowing the Date of Sacrifice to a Certain Year?
Radiocarbon dating of the botanical remains narrowed the possible date of the children’s passing to between 1462 and 1507, with the most probable year being 1499. This period falls within the reign of Huayna Capac, one of the final emperors leading the Inca Empire. He governed the empire from 1493 to his death likely from smallpox (although this is still debated) around 1525-7. Under his leadership and that of his father, Tupac Inca, the empire expanded dramatically, stretching south into Chile under Tupac Inca, and north as far as present-day Colombia and Ecuador under Huayna Capac. By 1499, the immediate region around Llullaillaco would have only recently come under the dominion of the Inca Empire, making the timing of these sacrifices especially significant.
The Llullaillaco Maiden, an exceptionally preserved Inca child mummy discovered atop Volcán Llullaillaco in Argentina. Scientific analyses have revealed details of her final months and the Inca Capacocha ritual. Source: (grooverpdero/CC BY 2.0)
A Ritual Tied to the Expansion of the Inca Empire
The researchers believe the sacrifice was closely tied to Huayna Capac’s political strategy rather than being a routine religious event. According to the study, the ritual may originally have been intended to anchor the Inca presence in a newly absorbed region ritually or to mark a new political milestone during his reign as emperor. Colonial-era historical accounts depict Huayna Capac traveling throughout the southern reaches of his empire, including certain areas of present-day Argentina, and making offerings to the gods through child sacrifice during these journeys. Sieczkowska-Jacyna notes that while the research team cannot attribute these ritual events to a single emperor with absolute certainty, the most likely explanation connects them to an imperial expedition into the region, possibly aimed at forming alliances with certain local groups.
Miniature Inca gold figurine used as a ceremonial offering during the Capacocha ritual. Similar figures accompanied child sacrifices deposited on sacred Andean mountain summits during the Late Horizon. (Thomas Ruedas/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Was Capacocha used as a means of Political Control?
Human sacrifice in the practice of Capacocha wasn’t merely symbolic, researchers say, but served as a deliberate tool for maintaining control across a vast and culturally diverse empire. As the Inca absorbed new territories and peoples, rituals like this one may have helped reinforce loyalty and cosmic balance during a period the empire perceived as unstable. The study’s authors suggest that similar dating techniques should be applied to other known child sacrifices across the breadth of the Andes, which could, in fact, reveal broader patterns linking this ritual practice to the expansion of the Inca Empire.
Inca offerings from mount Llullaillaco (©Constanza Ceruti/Public Domain)
This study’s findings offer one of the clearest timelines yet for a human sacrifice that has fascinated archaeologists for over two decades, showing how even small botanical clues recovered from burial sites can reshape the understanding of a broader historical and political moment. Dating the corn seeds, cassava (Manihot esculenta), and coca leaves recovered from the site, rather than refining the date to a specific year based on the children’s remains, is the most reasonable revision that researchers could make without altering the exact find itself. The Incan mummies were always there. The botanical offerings were always there. The question was which specific material would yield the best answer, and it turned out to be the food left to the gods rather than the bodies themselves.
Source: https://www.ancient-origins.net