Inca Child Sacrifices Had Cocaine in Their Hair and Nails, Study Finds

All eight mummified children tested in a new toxicology study of Inca sacrifice victims carried traces of cocaine, and several had also been given alcohol or a psychoactive plant compound before they died. The work, led by University of Warsaw archaeologist Dogmara Socha, was published in the journal Antiquity and first described for general readers by Science Alert, according to Archaeology Magazine.

The children were buried around 500 years ago at sites in Peru and Argentina. Their deaths were part of the capacocha, one of the holiest rituals of the Inca Empire.

What the capacocha ritual was

During a capacocha, the Inca offered young children as sacrifices, often at shrines built high in the Andes. The ceremony marked major events in the empire, and it was also performed to calm the gods when natural disasters struck.

How the team tested the mummies

Socha’s group ran toxicological tests on hair and nail samples from the eight victims. Hair and nails grow slowly and lock in traces of substances a person took, so they can record what someone consumed over the months and weeks before death, not only on the final day.

Cocaine turned up in every sample. The researchers think this most likely means the children chewed coca leaves. Chewing coca dulls hunger and tiredness, and the team suggests that may have helped the children survive the hard climb to the mountain shrines.

The results for other substances varied from child to child. Some victims had been given alcohol, probably chicha, a beer brewed from maize. One 14-year-old girl, known as the Ampato Maiden, tested positive for harmine. That compound comes from plants and is used in making ayahuasca, a psychoactive brew.

What the researchers did not expect

“What surprised me most was the diversity of the results,” Socha said. She explained that coca use appears to have been common across the group, while the use of other substances differed a lot. In her view, that points to a more complicated and varied way of preparing the children than archaeologists had assumed.

What it means for the study of the Inca

The study gives direct chemical evidence of what happened to capacocha victims in the period before their deaths. It also suggests that the ritual was not carried out in one fixed way. Different children, at different sites, appear to have been given different substances.

What is still unclear

The sample is small: eight children from sites in two countries. That is enough to show patterns such as the universal presence of cocaine, but too few to explain why some victims received alcohol or harmine and others did not. The reports also do not say how the doses were given or how much each child consumed. Questions about who decided which substances to use, and whether the choices depended on the site, the event or the child, remain open.

The full paper is available in Antiquity for readers who want the detailed results for each mummy.

Source: Archaeology Magazine