Researchers at the northern coastal site of Chotuna-Chornancap – a seat of power for three cultures – are studying remains, including two footless children

Archaeologists in Peru have found more than a dozen tombs suggesting human sacrifice at sprawling ruins on the northern coast, a seat of power for three ancient cultures and the possible center of a pre-Inca legend.

At Chotuna-Chornancap, a coastal ruin complex in the arid valleys far north of Lima, archaeologists with Peru’s ministry of culture found more than 17 graves dating to at least the 15th century.

“There is at least one fairly high-status tomb,” said Haagen Klaus, a bioarchaeologist at George Mason University has worked at Chotuna-Chornancap before. Klaus told the Guardian that he hopes to analyze the new finds, discovered by the ruins of a temple, to confirm whether the victims were sacrificed.

“It’s not unusual that sacrifices are made to those individuals, sometimes during the funeral or even years or generations afterward,” he said. “But we can see that a number of the individuals that were buried were children – and that does fit into the larger pattern of ritual sacrifice.”

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Six children were found in paired graves to the north, east and west of the temple, and two were footless, as though amputated, the lead archaeologist, Carlos Wester, said in a statement. The placement led the researchers to speculate that the children had been sacrificed as ceremonial “guardians” of tombs. The other graves contained men and women buried supine, and some of the bones showed damage like that of other sacrifice victims from the era.

At the center of the tombs, the archaeologists found a grave with various offerings, including two clay pots, a sculpture of a smiling man and a vessel carved into the shape of a coquero – a person chewing coca leaves. Some of the offerings resembled objects in a large, colorful temple mural, perhaps 700 years old, where anthropomorphized bird warriors march with “what look like severed human heads and vegetable bundles”, Klaus said.

“We study sacrifice not for the gruesome details but because rituals like this tend to be reflections of culture, history, society,” he said. “They provide living windows into rituals that were entwined with economics and politics.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A gold vase decorated with the figure of Naymlap, first king of Lambayeque. Photograph: G. Dagli Orti/Rex/Shutterstock

So far, more than 50 sacrifice victims have been found at Chotuna-Chornancap, spanning hundreds of years and at least three civilizations.

The Moche people, who controlled coastal Peru for centuries until a dramatic collapse around 750AD, had a history of sacrificing captured warriors, Klaus said. The Sicán, who developed Chotuna-Chornancap around then, shared some of those practices.

When the Chimú conquered the area in 1375AD, they let the rituals continue, and the Inca, who wrested control about a century later, merely adjusted to their preferred victims and methods. At one site in the temple complex, the ancient people seem to have broken rib cages to reach victims’ hearts, Klaus said.

“Killings could be aimed to destroy the soul of your enemy or desecrate them in death,” Klaus said. “And then there’s ritualized killing that’s more about creating life in death, surrounded with metaphors of water and fertility and growth.”

The Chimú and Inca also had practical concerns. Klaus said they probably used religious customs to keep the workforce happy – and to keep the breadbasket region producing as “a boon to the treasuries”.

The site may have been legendary in its own day, as well, and some archaeologists have found hints that a centuries-old legend was centered there.

According to an oral tradition recorded by two colonial-era Spaniards, a king named Naymlap arrived somewhere on the coast, around 650AD, with a fleet of balsa rafts and nearly all his people. He built palaces and temples and reigned happily until his death, when his servants entombed him in secret to ensure his legend.

Naymlap’s successors didn’t fare so well. According to the tale, the last provoked a disastrous flood by giving in to temptation by the devil, ending the dynasty. Signs of a major flood were uncovered in the 1980s by archaeologist Christopher Donnan, who also dated Chotuna-Chornancap’s first buildings to about 650AD – “an uncanny correlation”, as he called it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Archaeologists work at Chotuna-Chornancap site. Photograph: STR New / Reuters/Reuters

“Nothing was found that indicated the legend doesn’t apply to Chotuna or Chornancap,” he said in 2012. “Of course, that doesn’t prove that the legend was real.”

Researchers continue to test the oral tradition, Klaus said, for more “tantalizing clues that could indicate this is the place of Naymlap, this semi-mythical, cultural hero”.

The site has at least kept surprising scientists in the decades since Dannon’s work. In recent years, Wester has found apparent tombs of a Sicán executioner and a ruling priestess who was buried with a scepter, a golden crown, silver jewelry and a variety of shell and ceramic offerings.

“Since the discovery of the priestess’s tomb, excavation hasn’t stopped revealing all the complexity of ceremonies and rituals that happened in the temple,” Wester said.

“The site itself is so huge, so big,” Klaus said, “that there’s at least 100 years of archaeological discovery for us and our descendants there.”