A 500-year-old frozen Incan girl known as ‘The Maiden’ has been found in Argentina. She was sacrificed on the Argentinian volcano Llullaillaco, 22,100 feet above sea level.
‘The doctors have been shaking their heads and saying they sure don’t look 500 years old but as if they’d died a few weeks ago,’ said U.S. archaeologist and expedition member Johan Reinhard at the time.
‘And a chill went down my spine the first time I saw her hands because they look like those of a person who is alive.’
It’s thought that the children were chosen by the Incas for their beauty and sacrificed in a ceremony called a capacocha.
‘The Incas didn’t do this very often,’ according to Reinhard. ‘The sacrifices were children because they were considered to be the most pure.’
They were not sacrificed to feed or appease the gods but, rather:
‘to enter the realm of the gods and live in paradise with them. It was considered a great honour, a transition to a better life from which they would be expected to remain in contact with the community through shamans (holy men)’.
