Inca Human Sacrifice

In the Incan reading pages of the textbook, they briefly mentioned human sacrifice, so i decided to look into it in more detail. I found a website linked at the top.

Although the Incas were not as violent as the Aztecs, they still believed in human sacrifice. Children were considered pure, and were made as sacrifices. Their sacrifice guaranteed eternal life of the spirits in the divine world, who controlled not only the weather, but the fertility of livestock and crops. Archeologists discovered tombs, proving that there was human sacrifice, at Mount Llullaillaco, a volcano between Argentina and Chile, at an altitude of 22,500 ft. Incas picked children between the ages of 6 and 15. The children were fattened up for a year then sent on a sacrifice pilgrimage. Their diet usually consisted of mostly potatoes, but during their last year of life before their sacrifice, they were given corn and dried llama meat, foods of the Incan elite. They received haircuts one year, then six months before their sacrifice. Three to four months before they were sacrificed, children began their pilgrimage to the heights of the Andes, starting from Cuzco accompanied by priests. during the journey dances and rituals were performed. Because of exhaustion, altitude sickness, and drugs they were given (corn beer and cocoa leaves) during the journey, the children were only semiconscious during their sacrifice. Some were simply left their to die from the cold and from starvation and dehydration. But others died awful deaths. Vomit and diarrhea was found on their clothing containing the hallucinogenic drug achiote. They were likely to have been asphyxiated, their bodies crushed by their clothes so badly that their pelvis and ribs were all broken. Their bodies were mummified by the dryness and coolness of the Andes, some of the best naturally cold preserved mummies.