Posted on 09/02/2006 1:28:10 PM PDT by wagglebee
As they waited to be sacrificed outside a temple, the victims made no attempt to escape their fate: their throats were cut, they were decapitated and their hearts ripped out.
Their hands were not tied and they offered no resistance to the sacrificial knife. A seed containing a potent drug was used to paralyse their bodies, leaving the victims aware of a terrifying ritual that has been revealed for the first time by a dig in the vast pre-Colombian city of Túcume in northern Peru.
Archaeologists working in the ruined city of giant pyramids have discovered one of the largest sites of human sacrifice in South America.
So far, the team has uncovered the remains of 119 men, women and children as young as five who were hacked to death outside a temple.
Archaeologists believe that the sacrifices reached a bloody crescendo in the final days of the city, as its rulers struggled to stave off catastrophe at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors, who arrived in the area in the 1530s. The pyramid city has been abandoned ever since.
"The discovery of these human sacrifices outside the temple is one of the most important in the history of Peruvian archaeology," said Alfredo Narvaez, the chief archaeologist at the site.
Until recently there has been little archaeological evidence of human sacrifice from the ancient Andes. Historians have had to rely on accounts written by Spanish invaders and grisly depictions on pottery and art.
In the mid 1990s the bodies of individual children sacrificed by the Incas high in the Andes were uncovered, as were the bodies of around 110 men of fighting age, probably captured warriors, sacrificed by the Moche civilisation.
But the picture now emerging from Túcume is one of sacrifice as a way of life which could be carried out on young and old, men and women.
The slaughter was uncovered last summer when Bernarda Delgado, from the Museum of Túcume, and anthropologist J Marla Toyne, from the University of Tulane, led excavations in the blistering heat alongside the longest pyramid in the world, Huaca Larga, a colossal structure of mud bricks half a mile long.
Their investigation features in a BBC series, Lost Cities of the Ancients, to be shown next week. They opened up a 33ft area around a temple that was built around 1,000 years ago, when Túcume became an important ritual centre for the Lambeyeque civilisation. They were confronted by 73 shallow burial pits.
"Of the 119 individuals we recovered from this small area 90 per cent of them show cut marks in the neck and throat — suggesting it was almost a systematic execution," said Toyne.
Knife marks show that the human victims had their throats cut, and were decapitated between the second and third neck vertebra. Finally the sacrificial knife was used to saw open their chests to remove the hearts.
Toyne, sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, found no evidence that the victims had been tied up or that they had fought to avoid this brutal death, and the clean cut marks showed no evidence of individuals moving to avoid the knife.
Narvaez believes the likely explanation is that the victims were drugged before being killed. He found amala seeds at the temple, which contain a chemical that leaves the victim lucid but paralysed and powerless to resist.
The first sacrifices outside the temple were animals — lamas and alpacas. Around 60 have been recovered. Later humans were ritually executed and buried in pits – in marked contrast to other discoveries of sacrifice where bodies were often left in the open for vultures to pick on.
But of the greater significance is the temple where they were sacrificed, which has yielded a treasure trove including hundreds of silver miniatures. "It is the first time in Peruvian archaeology that we have found a temple with this extraordinary context that hasn't been looted," said Narvaez.
The finds give an important new insight into the rituals by which the people of ancient Peru believed they could connect with the vengeful gods who controlled their destinies. Sometimes offering silver or lamas was enough. At others, only a human would suffice.
Narvaez's theory is that the increase in human sacrifice was linked to the greatest upheaval ever to hit South America, the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. That set off chaos and fear in Túcume, leading to a bloody crescendo as more and more blood was offered to the gods.
The sacrifices failed to stop the Spanish advance. The city of Túcume was burnt by its inhabitants and then abandoned. They never returned.
ROFLMFAO!
I made this discovery in New Zealand. The indigenous people of North Island enjoyed a climate that allowed them to grow the traditional Polynesian crops they were used to. But on chilly South Island the tribes - identical ancestry - could not grow enough of the foods they were used to to survive. They did, however, own the supply of jade, prized on both islands.
So did a trade of food for jade develop? Nope: the North Islanders, being short of protein in a country with no native animals whatever, simply added a new item to their diets - South Islanders. They're what's for dinner!
I am not one bit sorry this culture was wiped out. Hurray for Spain!
Plus Ultra!
They should have saved their knives and their aggression for the Spaniards, instead of using it on their own innocent citizens.
They were convinced they had it coming because they had done something to anger their gods. Just like the liberals of today are convinced we did something wrong to bring about 9-11. The proposed solutions are not dissimilar. The Incas sacraficed their own people to these false gods. The liberals propose to sacrafice western civilization to appease the false gods of radical Islam.
But did they find any high priests with their heads chopped off? Nope? Didn't think so.
The original jihadist barbarian certainly lived it.
And I thought of how absolutely angry I got in the days following 9-11.
And how, even if you aren't a noble person (like Cortez) and you come
from an imperfect society (like 1500s Spain)...
you can still spot the savages.
= = = =
INDEED.
. . . though . . . much more difficult is spotting the savagry in the heart of each of us . . . that usually requires Holy Spirit's deep search light in many cases . . . and/or unusual circumstances.
They musta learned this from the white man...
GGG ?
GGG = "GodsGravesGlyphs"
See post #14.
What will future archeologists say, when they dig up the dumpsters where our aborted babies are deposited?
WE have our own mass-scale human sacrifice industry/ritual. The "temples" are Planned Parenthood clinics and other charnel houses where infants are sacrificed to the diabolical powers that our society worships.
You are so very correct.
You are absolutely correct. By God's mercy Europe will rediscover its Christian roots, and America will somehow retain what remains of our Christian heritage. For both of us, the alternative is unimaginable darkness.
One other interesting part of the series (link below) was the final episode.
It mentioned how the worst abuses of the Native Americans by the Spaniards
was brought to an end only after a long lobbying effort by some priests.
I've been out of school many years, but I wouldn't be suprised if that
part of the story is left out of today's history textbooks.
http://www.pbs.org/conquistadors/
These Peruvian indigenous peoples were serious pagans propitiating their idols with human victims. Though I'm sure the Aztecs had them beat
Judaism got it's start as a rebellion against pagan human sacrifice
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