Last month, the National Geographic and other news sites released reports and details about an archaeological discovery in northern Peru. More than 140 children and 200 young llamas appear to have been ritually sacrificed in an event that took place some 550 years ago on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, in the shadow of what was then the capital of the Chimú Empire.
Scientists believe the sacrifice might have been carried out in an attempt to stop a major environmental event, such as catastrophic flooding, which might have disrupted local food supplies.
Based on carbon dating of the clothing fragments, archaeologists determined that the mass ritual sacrifice took place between 1400 and 1450, just several decades before the Chimú civilisation was conquered by the Incas.
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