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<< Text Pages >> Llullaillaco Vault - Chambered Tomb in Argentina

Submitted by bat400 on Sunday, 07 October 2007  Page Views: 12331

Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Llullaillaco Vault
Country: Argentina
NOTE: This site is 45.905 km away from the location you searched for.

Type: Chambered Tomb
Nearest Town: Salta
Latitude: 24.702S  Longitude: 68.548W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
1 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
3

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Tomb in Argentina.
The highest archaeological site on earth. This stone tomb lies on the flank of the active Llullaillaco volcano, at over 22,000 feet above sea level. It consists of an undressed stone platform. Within it three children between the ages of 6 and 15 years were given corn alcohol, placed within and sealed there with carefully placed stones.

The ritual entombment of human sacrifices by Andean cultures was described to Spanish chroniclers in the colonial periods of what are now Peru, Chile, and Argentina. They wrote that it was considered an honor for the sacrifices and their relatives to have been chosen and the victims were usually from the nobility. But recent examination of the bodies may indicate that young peasants may have provided both a sacrifice to the gods and a brutal object lesson to conquered peoples.

In some cases the people (usually young women) were killed by garroting or blows prior to their being left in these mountain tombs, although the children at Llullaillaco have no sign of having been put to death prior to being entombed on the mountain side.

The site was excavated in 1999, and due to the modern methods of care taken with both the human remains and the associated finds, they are very possibly the most perfectly preserved remains from the pre-contact New World. The Children of LLullaillacco are now in the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in Salta, Argentina. Please NOTE: The further links include photographs of the remains.

The location given is for the summit of the volcano, and not specific for the tomb.

Note: Study of hair contradicts Inca informants of 16th century. Willing sacrifices from Inca nobility, or terrorized peasant children?
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"Llullaillaco Vault" | Login/Create an Account | 3 News and Comments
  
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Re: Inca sacrifice victims fattened up by Anonymous on Sunday, 28 August 2011
I wonder if the boy had tried to escape, since he was tied so cruelly. Poor little things all of them. He needn't have vomited and had diarrhea from fear necessarily, there was a drug in his vomit, so they had tried to drug him, but maybe they overdosed him. He may also have vomited etc. from sheer pain - I mean his ribs breaking and pelvis dislocating, that is extremely painful. Poor, poor children - we humans have got to stop being like this, it is sickening!
[ Reply to This ]

Inca sacrifice victims fattened up by bat400 on Sunday, 07 October 2007
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Submitted by coldrum ... same story as earlier comment, but a more informative article from the National Geographic ....

Children selected for Inca ritual sacrifice were "fattened up" with high-protein diets in the months leading up to their deaths, a new study has found.

Researcher Andrew Wilson and his team conducted DNA and chemical tests of hair samples taken from four child mummies found in the Andes mountains in the 1990s.

By studying the ratios of chemicals present in the hair, the team helped show how victims were prepared for death as far as a year in advance, sent on grueling highland journeys, and drugged before the sacrificial ceremonies.
"The findings offer insights into the preparatory stages leading to Inca ritual killing, as represented by the unique capacocha rite," the report reads, referring to the Inca tradition of mountaintop child sacrifice.
Hair logs a chemical record of what an individual consumes, and the information can stay intact in archaeological remains, the study authors point out. "It is chilling that the children themselves, through their own tissue, give us graphic details and evidence that they were not killed on a whim but were part of a complex process for which they were selected some considerable time before," said Wilson, a lecturer in archaeological sciences at the University of Bradford in Britain.

The study appears online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was funded by the U.K. charity the Wellcome Trust.

One extremely well preserved mummy—a 15-year-old girl known as "La Doncella" or the "Llullaillaco Maiden"—appears to have been selected for sacrifice a year in advance, Wilson said. Tests her hair - 9.8 inches (25 centimeters) long - representing more than two years' worth of growth—was raised mostly on a protein-poor "peasant diet" rich in potatoes.

"But 12 months before her death, her diet becomes protein rich," Wilson said, adding that she was likely fed "elite" food such as maize and llama meat. We can equate a change in diet of this magnitude with a change in her status, one that occurred as part of her final demise."

For more, see the National Geographic.
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Peasant victims fattened for sacrifice. by bat400 on Friday, 05 October 2007
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A different interpretation of Incan child sacrifice:

The girl is slumped like a stoned teenager in a doorway, head drooping, hands folded in her lap: she has been dead for more than 500 years, and a team of international archaeologists and scientists, led by Dr Andy Wilson of Bradford University, has just pieced together the appalling last months of her life.

Like other children found on some of the highest peaks of the Andes, the mummy nicknamed the Llullaillaco Maiden had literally been fattened up for death, fed a much better diet in her last year including maize and meat, the luxury foods of aristocrats.

She may indeed, the archaeologists hope, have been stupefied with drugs and alcohol. In her last weeks she was drugged with coca, and probably maize beer - perhaps to bring on merciful oblivion, possibly more pragmatically to combat altitude sickness so she could climb 6,739m to her own death, after walking hundreds of miles from the Inca capital, Cuzco.

The Maiden, aged about 15, is regarded as one of the most perfect naturally mummified figures from anywhere in the world. She was found in 1999 in a stone shrine on the summit of the volcano, on the borders of Argentina and Chile.

Nearby were two other children, Lightning Girl, aged about 6, whose body was scorched by a direct lightning strike some time after her death, and Llullaillaco Boy, perhaps the most pathetic victim. If the girls were drugged beyond caring, the seven-year-old clearly was not: his clothes were covered with vomit and faeces, evidence, the scientists believe, of his terror. He probably actually died of crushing, so tightly bound that the cloth dislocated his ribs and pelvis.

The precise cause of the other deaths remains uncertain: the bitter cold which preserved their bodies is the most likely explanation. The scientists, many with children of their own, struggled to maintain objectivity. "The mummies were so extraordinarily preserved, it was impossible not to feel fully engaged with them as human beings," Dr Wilson said.

The team believes the food, the clothes, the jewellery, the expensive pottery left with them, were all intended to raise the status of the children, possibly to make them a more acceptable offering, but possibly more pragmatically so that the Inca rulers could use snatched peasant children, sparing their own. Their deaths were the climax of a complex ritual lasting at least a year, when they were almost certainly brought to Cuzco - the source of the pottery found with them - and then walked enormous distances to the mountains, which must have taken months.

Their deaths were terrifying, and Dr Wilson believes they were meant to be. "The logistics of getting the children there needed imperial organisation," he said. "We believe there was some measure of the Incas demonstrating their power to the colonised: obey, or this is what will happen to you."


For more, see the Guardian link.
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