Thousands of years ago, a child in Peru was sacrificed as part of an ancient ritual, their head severed at the neck and made into a type of trophy. A new analysis of a single hair plucked from the mummy’s skull reveals that the child consumed a psychoactive cactus prior to execution, as part of the ceremony. The child’s preserved head was one of 22 human remains associated with the ancient Nazca society examined in a new study; all of these individuals lived during the pre-Hispanic era (3500 B.C. to A.D. 476) and were buried near the southern coast of...
