The remains of six young women, sacrificed in a ritual in about A.D. 850 were found under the floor of a mudbrick temple complex in Pucalá, near the city of Chiclayo (Peru). The women show no signs of disease and had been wrenched into odd positions. Four lay atop each other in a single grave, and two others rested a few feet away, accompanied by a baby llama. Most are missing rib bones, indicating that their remains were left exposed and that their organs had been eaten by vultures after death, a “purification rite” that the bodies of male sacrifice victims were also subjected to.

Archaeologists from Royal Tombs of Sipán Museum found also ceramics accompanying the women, suggesting that the women and the society that buried them originated in the mountains and came to the coast by invasion or migration as the artefacts came from the Andes region and the heads of the bodies were directed toward the Andes Mountains to the East.

(after Archaeology)