Here we report the results of excavation and interdisciplinary study of the largest child and camelid sacrifice known from the New World. Stratigraphy, associated artifacts, and radiocarbon dating indicate that it was a single mass killing of more than 140 children and over 200 camelids directed by the Chimú state, c. AD 1450. Preliminary DNA analysis indicates that both boys and girls were chosen for sacrifice. Variability in forms of cranial modification (head shaping) and stable isotope analysis of carbon and nitrogen suggest that the children were a heterogeneous sample drawn from multiple regions and ethnic groups throughout the Chimú state. The Huanchaquito-Las Llamas mass sacrifice opens a new window on a previously unknown sacrificial ritual from fifteenth century northern coastal Peru. While the motivation for such a massive sacrifice is a subject for further research, there is archaeological evidence that it was associated with a climatic event (heavy rainfall and flooding) that could have impacted the economic, political and ideological stability of one of the most powerful states in the New World during the fifteenth century A.D.

Copyright: © 2019 Prieto et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

During the Chimú occupation of the Moche Valley, complete camelids were deposited alone or together with humans in tombs and in storage facilities at the Huaca de la Luna and at Chan Chan [ 49 , 22 ]. However, the early discovery by Donnan and Foote in the late 1960’s and the present case described here suggest that Huanchaco served as a particular focus of child and camelid sacrificial offerings.

Camelids were the principal animals used for sacrifices in the Central Andean region during Prehispanic times. Although some ritual deposits of camelids are known from as early as the Late Preceramic (prior to 1800 BC) at the Temple of Crossed Hands at Kotosh [ 47 ], the sacrifice of camelids dramatically increased during the Early Intermediate Period (c. 100–600 AD), particularly in the Moche culture of northern Peru [ 8 – 10 ]. The most common pattern is the inclusion of whole camelids or body parts (preferentially skull and leg extremities) as funerary offerings. In tombs, they played both alimentary and symbolic functions. Mass sacrifices of camelids are rare; usually restricted to less than ten animals. However, a few examples of mass burials are known. At the site of Cahuachi in the Nazca valley in the Southern Coast of Peru, 64 whole camelids were discovered in a single context [ 48 ] and at least 88 camelid skulls were found in a Moche context at the site of San Jose de Moro, Jequetepeque Valley, on the North Coast of Peru [ 9 ].

Archaeological discoveries of retainer and dedicatory burials and sacrificed captives have been made at multiple sites on the north coast [ 2 , 6 , 45 ], as well as sacrificial offerings that include a mix of children, adolescents, and adults [ 15 ], but until recently only one possible example a sacrifice containing only children and camelids was known. In 1969, excavations in the seaside town of Huanchaco by archaeologist Christopher Donnan encountered the remains of seventeen children and twenty camelids buried together in simple pits without funerary offerings [ 46 ]. Although osteological analysis was not done to determine possible cause of death, on the basis of their archaeological context, demographic profile, and atypical burial pattern, Donnan concluded that the burials probably were sacrificial offerings. A radiocarbon date placed the event at circa AD 1400 (UCLA-1879), during the Chimú domination of the North Coast [ 46 ]. No other reports of child sacrifices in the region were made until the discovery at Huanchaquito-Las Llamas, leaving this early find as an intriguing, but isolated case.

Until the Huanchaquito-Las Llamas discovery there was very little archaeological evidence of human sacrifices on the north coast of Peru that included only [ 15 ]. Ethnohistoric sources likewise are limited to an account by the Spanish Friar Antonio de la Calancha, who claimed that child sacrifices were made by the Chimú in the Jequetepeque river valley during lunar eclipses, along with offerings of fruits, maize beer and colored cottons. Calancha also told the story of a local healer named “Mollep” near the Jequetepeque valley who sacrificed children to sacred places or “guacas” [ 44 ].

In Andean South America, sacrifices of children are known to have been made by the Inca and by some societies that came before them. Although no archaeological evidence has been found to confirm ethnohistoric accounts claiming that large numbers of children were sacrificed by the Inca on particular occasions, such as the death or coronation of an Inca ruler [ 39 ], a small number of child sacrifices have been recovered on high mountaintops in recent decades in excavations conducted by international research teams [ 38 , 40 ]. Examples of Inca child sacrifices also have been reported from the Cuzco region and north coast of Peru [ 13 ]. These discoveries have provided an opportunity to directly compare archaeological evidence to ethnohistoric accounts of the Inca practice of “Capacocha” mountain sacrifices, and some innovative analytical methods have been employed to examine questions such as the geographic origin and life histories of the children and the source of offerings buried with them [ 41 – 43 ].

The motivations for human sacrifice and the choice of sacrificial victims varied among ancient societies, but anthropologists have noted that children’s bodies frequently are considered as hybrid entities [ 37 ], and thus may have been viewed as particularly appropriate as messengers or gifts to the gods [ 38 ].

Infant and child sacrifice is claimed to have been practiced by many ancient societies, although archaeological evidence of intentional killing is often lacking, making these interpretations subject to debate. Old World archaeological evidence of child sacrifice is less than convincing in many cases [ 29 – 32 ], and in North America and Mesoamerica the evidence is frequently ambiguous as well [ 33 ], although there are a growing number of convincing examples from the Maya area [ 34 – 35 ]. The most well-documented archaeological evidence of child sacrifice in the New World is known from Offering 48 at the Templo Mayor in the Mexica city of Tenochtitlan [ 36 ].

The Chimú state flourished between the 11th and 15th centuries AD, dominating a broad expanse of the Peruvian coast. At its apogee, it controlled coastal valleys as far north as the present-day border of Peru and Ecuador and to the south as far as the present day Peruvian capital of Lima, encompassing more than 1000 kilometers of the Peruvian coastline ( Fig 1 ). There is increasing evidence that Chimú territorial control extended into the neighboring highlands. The abundance of macaw and other tropical bird feathers in the ritual paraphernalia of the Chimú elite as well as the presence of toxic seeds from the same region (Nectandra sp and Tevethia peruviana), suggest that the Chimú exchange network reached as far eastward as the cloud forest and eastern slopes of the Andes [ 24 ]. Chimú hegemony was supported by intensive agriculture, with fields fed by a sophisticated web of hydraulic canals managed by an efficient bureaucracy. Crops and sumptuary goods were transported to well-organized storage facilities in cities and provincial administrative centers [ 24 – 28 ].Chan Chan is the name given today to the ancient capital of the Chimú state. It is located in the northern margin of the Moche valley, only a few miles away from the modern city of Trujillo. Chan Chan was one of the largest urban settlements of the Americas, and includes large palaces built by the successive kings, as well as administrative compounds, plazas, cemeteries, gardens, and temples linked by a network of internal roads [ 24 ]. Although today the surviving ruins of Chan Chan cover approximately 14 square kilometers, the city was once substantially larger; approximately six square kilometers of the site has been destroyed by modern agricultural and urban expansion. Additional shrines, satellite settlements and other structures were located on the outskirts of the city as well [ 23 ]. The strategic location of Chan Chan between the Pacific Ocean, wetlands, agricultural fields, desert and mountains, suggest that its builders envisioned it as dynamically interacting with the landscape, integrating these elements into the rituals performed within and around the city’s walls [ 28 ].

The Late Intermediate Period (LIP, c. 900–1500 A.D.) was an unstable time in Peruvian North Coast prehistory marked by warfare and massacres as emergent polities fought for political, economic and religious control of the region. Archaeological evidence of conflict and subjugation includes a massacre at Punta Lobos in the Casma littoral of the Peruvian North Coast, where as many as 200 victims (children, adults and elderly) were executed during the military expansion of the Chimú state into the southern Casma region around AD 1350 [ 21 ]. Excavations at the Chimú capital of Chan Chan in the 1970s encountered the remains of hundreds of young women who were sacrificed to accompany their kings in royal burial platforms located in the palaces of Chan Chan [ 22 – 23 ]. Recent archaeological research at various archaeological sites north of the Casma and Moche valleys also has documented a growing number of human sacrifices dating between the 11 th and 15 th centuries AD in the Lambayeque region, at monumental sites and in isolated locations such as hilltops [ 16 , 14 , 15 ].

Human and animal sacrifices were made by various societies in ancient world. In Prehispanic Peru, individuals were killed and placed in tombs to accompany important persons in the afterlife, buried as dedicatory offerings in monumental architecture, and sacrificed in various contexts as gifts to the gods [ 1 – 4 ]. Captives were taken in small-scale raiding and organized warfare, and killed in both formal rituals and impromptu reprisals [ 5 – 7 ]. Camelids also were sacrificed and deposited in burials as grave goods, buried as foundation or votive offerings and in other propitiatory contexts [ 8 – 12 ]. In recent years, human and animal sacrifice has become an active area of research for bioarchaeologists and zooarchaeologists working in the Andean region [ 13 – 20 ]. The results of recent excavations at the Huanchaquito-Las Llamas site (also known as “Gramalote A”) provide evidence of a previously unknown ritual involving a massive sacrifice of children and camelids by the Chimú State, c. AD 1450.

Materials and methods

The archaeological materials described in this paper (specimen inventory numbers for human bones: E01 to E140, camelids: CA01 to CA200 and artifacts: Ce01, Ce02, Ot01 and Ot02) are currently housed at the deposits of the Chan Chan Museum and Huaca El Dragon storage facilities, both managed by the Ministry of Culture in Trujillo (Peru). The permits to conduct archaeological excavations at Huanchaquito Las Llamas and to export archaeological materials to conduct specialized analysis were granted by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture (RD-022-DGPC-VMPCIC/MC, June 13th, 2011; RD-009-2012-VMPCIC/MC, February 24th, 2012; RD-146-2014-DGPA-VMPCIC/MC, April 1st, 2014; RD-111-2014-VMPCIC/MC, October 22nd, 2014 and RD-092 2016-DGPA-VMPCIC/MC. March 14th, 2016). The archaeological specimens are publicly deposited at the Site Museum of Chan Chan and the Storage Facility located in the Huaca del Dragon Archaeological Site both managed by the Ministry of Culture in Trujillo (Peru) and accessible to the scientific team members and to any authorized researcher.

Associated ceramics and wood implements Although no offerings were found directly associated with the child and camelids deposits, a pair of ceramic jars and wooden paddles were found buried at the northern margin of the sacrificial site, accompanied by a single camelid. One jar was a black reduction-fired vessel decorated on its neck with a human face and two Spondylus shells. The jar appears to have been broken intentionally prior to burial, as it was found in numerous small pieces. The second jar, an undecorated oxidation-fired vessel was found next to the first. It was complete, with a sedge rope tied around its neck. The two wooden paddles were found near the ceramic vessels. Their function has been identified through Chimú art and through the contexts in which they have been found at other Chimú sites. A Chimú wooden architectural model depicting a funerary procession includes a depiction of individuals preparing a beverage on large ceramic vessels using wooden paddles, and at a contemporaneous site located in the northern Jequetepeque Valley, a Chimú brewery where ceramic vessels were carefully buried with wooden paddles on top of them was found by Prieto [50]. The ceramic vessels and wooden paddles found at HLL thus appear to be associated with the production and perhaps consumption of maize beer or chicha as part of the sacrificial ritual, after which the vessels and paddles were buried on site.

Contemporaneity of the sacrificial event One of the objectives of the excavations was to determine whether this massive concentration of sacrificed children and camelids represents a single event or a series of smaller events. Stratigraphic analysis indicates that all the humans and animals were buried in the same layer of clean sand. Almost all bodies were buried at the same depth and in close proximity to one another, and no examples were found of burial pits that cut into others. Only two bodies located on the northern sector of the site were found at a significantly greater depth. The discovery of human and camelid foot prints made in wet mud suggest that the victims circulated near the area where they were finally buried. These data, along with our observations on burial position and spatial clustering suggest that a) the children and the camelids were sacrificed at this location (rather than their bodies being brought from elsewhere) and that b) the final disposition of the human and animal bodies followed a consistent sacrificial program planned and organized, perhaps, by Chimú priests and officials.

Dating the event Twenty AMS radiocarbon determinations were made by two independent laboratories. The samples were drawn from different sectors of the excavations, and all are based on short-lived plant remains (sedge ropes associated with the camelids and cotton threads from children’s burial shrouds). Four C14 dates out of 21 are slightly earlier than the others, and they may have been the result of using different materials (for example human hair, collagen or camelid excrement) or simply standard errors in a large sample (Table 1). All in all, the results cluster around CAL AD 1400–1450 (Table 1). Using one or two sigma calibrations, the results indicate that the sacrificial event can be dated relatively precisely to this range of dates, placing it in the late Chimú period. Stratigraphic evidence suggests that the sacrifice was made following a heavy rain/flood event that deposited a layer of mud on top of the clean sand in which the children and camelids were buried. The mud appears to have been deposited as sheet wash during a major rainfall event (or series of events), and is probably associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon or a similar climate alteration (“El Niño Costero” for instance) that periodically brings coastal flooding and elevated sea temperatures that disrupt the marine food chain in northern and central Peru. It is possible that the sacrifices were made in response to the heavy rains, as burial pits were dug through the mud layer and in a few cases some children and camelids were left on top of the wet mud.

Osteological analysis of the sacrificed children In the field laboratory a detailed dental, skeletal, and photographic record was produced for each individual. Age at death was estimated based on dental calcification and eruption, long bone length and epiphyseal fusion. The three adults were aged based on epiphyseal fusion and pubic symphysis morphology [51–52]. Skeletal and dental pathology, including developmental defects, infectious disease, trauma, and oral pathology was recorded by visual examination following standard guidelines [51–53]. The presence, absence, and form of cranial modification was also recorded. Finally, observations were made on perimortem injury and probable cause of death. With the exception of three adult burials (two females and one male), all the human skeletal remains were of children, ranging in age from approximately five to fourteen years, with the majority falling in the range of eight to twelve years of age. Laboratory examination suggests (to the degree possible from skeletal and dental observations) that the children were in good health, with low frequencies and only mild expression of nutritional stress indicators commonly used as measures of childhood health [54–55]. Frequencies of porotic hyperostosis (14.1%), cribra orbitalia (16.5%), enamel hypoplasias (less than 10%) and periosteal reactions on long bones(10.6%) are all low compared to other skeletal samples from LIP and LH coastal Peruvian sites [56–58]. Dental caries and periapical abscesses were observed on some deciduous teeth, but no individuals showed notable oral pathology. These low frequencies do not suggest that marginalized or low social status children were preferentially selected for sacrifice at Huanchaquito, as appears to have been the case for some other north coast Peruvian sacrifices [15].

aDNA preliminary analysis Short hair and remains of loincloths worn by some individuals are suggestive of male sex, but skeletal morphology cannot distinguish males and females at this young age. However, preliminary analysis of dental samples using gonosomalDNA markers indicates that both boys and girls are present in the sample (Table 2). In a preliminary study, sex chromosomal markers were successfully analyzed for 28 individuals using a multiplex quantitative PCR (qPCR) assay amplifying three short intergenic sequences on both gonosomes: two y-chromosomal (44 and 47 bp), one x-chromosomal (44 bp) target [59]. For 20 of those individuals the presence of both X- and Y-chromosomal markers could be determined, while for eight individuals the analyses only revealed the presence of X-chromosomal markers in several replications, suggesting that these individuals were female. Because of the degraded nature of the DNA isolated from the specimens, alleleic dropout must be considered as a potential explanation for this lack of y-chromosomal signals from these eight individuals, but the consistent results found in at least four replications for each sample strongly support the accuracy of the results. We further confirmed the qPCR based genetic sex determinations for 7 individuals by exploring the ratio of X- to Y-chromosomal reads [60] from low coverage shotgun sequencing data. We build double-stranded, partially UDG treated sequencing libraries [61] from the DNA extracts, and sequenced those for ~300,000 reads on a Illumina MiSeq Next Generation Sequencer (NGS) (see Table 3– NGS sequencing statistics). After demultiplexing, resulting sequencing reads were processed using the in-house computational pipeline developed for aDNA described in (Fehren-Schmitz et al. [62], which includes the assessment of DNA damage patterns and mitochondrial contamination rations [63–64]. We confirmed the Native American ancestry of the individuals by determining their mitochondrial haplogroups (Tables 2 and 3) using a multiplex single-base extension PCR assay [65]. Further, genome wide sequencing analyses are currently in progress in order to explore the population genetic affinities of the sacrificed individuals. PPT PowerPoint slide

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larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 2. Genetic sexing results for the ancient huanchaquito las llamas samples and mitochondrial haplogroups. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211691.t002 PPT PowerPoint slide

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larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 3. Sequencing statistics. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211691.t003

Variability in cranial modification Variation in styles of cranial modification indicates that the children buried at HLL are a heterogeneous sample, perhaps drawn from distinct ethnic groups and geographic regions (Fig 7). Of 130 crania sufficiently complete enough to be evaluated, 85.4% (111/130) show no cranial modification. Surprisingly, only 8.5% (11/130) show the form of occipital flattening typical of prehistoric populations of the north coast of Peru: tabular erect [66] or fronto-occipital (anteroposterior) deformation [67], which is considered to be the result of cradle boarding in infancy [67–69]. Eight crania (6.2%) show a distinct form of cranial modification known as annular [66] or circumferential [67]. With the exception of a single well-contextualized burial from an early LIP context at the site of El Brujo in the Chicama Valley (who we interpret as a highland woman who migrated to the coast) and seven individuals in a Chimú mass killing in the Huarmey Valley [also interpreted as possibly non-local [21] to our knowledge no other examples of annular deformation have been published from north coast Peruvian sites of any time period. Likewise, fronto-occipital cradleboard deformation has not been reported in the northern highlands, where both unmodified crania and crania with annular deformation have been documented archaeologically [67–69], suggesting that some of the Huanchaquito-Las Llamas children—particularly those with annular deformation—are of highland rather than coastal origin. While annular deformation was practiced in more distant regions, such as the southern highlands and south coast of Peru highland Bolivia and northern Chile, these areas lie far beyond the recognized boundaries of the Chimú state, and we consider these as unlikely places of origin for any of the HLL sacrificial victims. PPT PowerPoint slide

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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 7. Comparison of variation in cranial shape reflecting distinct forms of cranial modification. On left, annular deformation; at center, unmodified; and at right, occipital flattening. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211691.g007 Unfortunately, there is very little archaeologically excavated human skeletal material from the site of Chan Chan to which the HLL children can be compared. The cemeteries and burial platforms of Chan Chan have been intensively looted since the early Colonial Period (Moseley and Day 1982) and only a limited number of burials have been excavated and studied by biological anthropologists despite extensive fieldwork at the site. To date the largest known sample for which cranial deformation has been recorded is a collection of looted burials surrounding the principal tomb in the burial platform at the Las Avispas compound, excavated by Thomas Pozorski and subsequently re-examined by Andrew Nelson [70]. Nelson’s examination of the Las Avispas crania found that more than half showed fronto-occipital deformation. No examples of annular deformation have been identified at Las Avispas or elsewhere at Chan Chan. Ongoing excavations at Chan Chan may eventually produce skeletal samples sufficient for comparison with the Huanchaquito-Las Llamas children. For now, we must rely on data from other Late Intermediate Period sites in north coast valleys that were under the control of the Chimú state which can serve as general proxies for deformation practices on the north coast of Peru during the period of Chimú hegemony. Table 4 presents data on cranial deformation frequencies from three Late Intermediate Period sites in coastal valleys to the north of Chan Chan and one from the Huarmey Valley south of Chan Chan. All show a predominance of fronto-occipital deformation, ranging from 63–82%. Compared with these contemporaneous north coast collections the HLL children, with only 8.5% showing fronto-occipital deformation and 6.2% showing annular deformation, stand out as an anomalous sample, supporting the hypothesis that they were drawn from diverse groups and not from a single local population. In contrast, the three sacrificed adults found at HLL (described below) show fronto-occipital deformation typical of northern coastal Peru during the Late Intermediate Period. PPT PowerPoint slide

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larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 4. Cranial deformation frequency and form at various north coast LIP sites. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211691.t004

Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis Stable isotope analysis (SIA) in human and animal remains found in archaeological contexts serves as a valuable source of information about their dietary history. Information on stable isotopic analysis of the camelids from Huanchaquito Las Llamas is summarized below and in detail in two recent publications [71]. Preliminary data on the sacrificed children is presented here and compared to data from other northern and central coastal Peru Late Intermediate Period and Late Horizon samples [72, 73].