The Inca sacrificed children to their deities to maintain harmony within the world and prevent natural disasters. According to new research published in the journal Antiquity, those kids were probably not having a great time, as they were drugged with psychedelic substances, either to alleviate some of their existential dread knowing they were about to die, or out of the belief that the mind-expanding drugs would help them communicate with the gods.
It was a massive honor for the child’s family, but it seemed like the kid really got the short end of the stick — going on a likely awful psychedelic trip, getting killed, and then spending your afterlife having to negotiate the fine details of droughts and famines with celestial beings.
A New Study Reveals What Inca Children Were Given Before Being Sacrificed to the Gods
Lead researcher Dagmara Socha and her team at the University of Warsaw analyzed the hair and fingernails of eight frozen mummies, mostly young girls aged 6 to 14. Every single child tested positive for cocaine from chewing sacred coca leaves, which suppressed hunger, fought off extreme altitude sickness, and kept energy up during grueling climbs. Half of them were spiked with chicha, a fermented corn beer used to dull their panic as the fatal blow or live burial drew near.
The researchers even found harmine, an antidepressant alkaloid pulled straight from Amazonian ayahuasca vines, in the nails of a girl known as the “Lady of Ampato.” The Inca hauled Amazonian vines hundreds of miles through ancient trade networks just to keep their young sacrificial messengers of the gods from having a meltdown as they trekked up the mountain.
We may never know exactly how the children reacted to this supposed honor, but given that their systems were loaded with a drug cocktail that would be suspicious to see in a person’s body today, we can probably assume that at least some of those kids were not having a great time.
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