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.
Its no coincidence that startling rise in power of elite homosexuals in western culture coincides with the legalization of abortion and the glorification of ancient pagan cultures because in most cases whatever the names & faces of their gods happen to be -- the actual priestly practices around the ancient world included human sacrifice and homosexuality in the priesthood.
I think we're still looking at the deritus of communism because when you abolish God --all you've done is put man in his place. The pharoah Ramses and Joe Stalin had a lot in common including the concern of their people that they be properly embalmed.
Its no coincidence that startling rise in power of elite homosexuals in western culture coincides with the legalization of abortion and the glorification of ancient pagan cultures because in most cases whatever the names & faces of their gods happen to be -- the actual priestly practices around the ancient world included human sacrifice and homosexuality in the priesthood.
I think we're still looking at the deritus of communism because when you abolish God --all you've done is put man in his place. The pharoah Ramses and Joe Stalin had a lot in common including the concern of their people that they be properly embalmed.
"oops,,,sacrifing=sacrificing. Should have just said "uncivilized"!
How can you call them civilizations uncivilized?
They were civilized, I tell you. See sample below:
Túcume civilisation
Andes civilisation
Moche civilisation
Lambeyeque civilisation
< /sarc off >
I suspect you are quite right.
Thanks.
Sounds like you believe that feces is a better measure of truth and life than blood.
Very interesting connecting-the-dots...
No Spanish conquest, no sacrifices -- well, not these sacrifices, anyway.
So these sacrifices at the margin will suffice to inculpate Spanish civilization, and by extension, as you point out, the heirs and defenders of Western Civ, most particularly George W. Bush.
You're right -- it's Bush's fault!
Blaming dead white european males, again. LOL.
[kinoxi] You are weird,but entertaining.
He also has a point.
Gays glorify anti-Christian and anti-Jewish sources and civilizations precisely because they are always looking for counterweights to the curses laid on their defining entertainments in Genesis and Leviticus.
The elevation of abortion, on the other hand, was the work of socialists and Communists.
Another measure of a civilization is seen in their art; If I can draw or sculp it, it's proof they were primitive!
Bumpin for later read
>>the concern of their people that they be properly embalmed.
Why was that?
>>the concern of their people that they be properly embalmed.
Why was that?
////////////////
beats me.
But its plain the pharoahs were turned into mummies and lenin was set out in formaldihyde in Red Square
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