The Three Children of Llullaillaco: Buried alive as an offering to the Inca Empire

In March 1999, a team of archaeologists climbed to the summit of Llullaillaco volcano, on the border between Argentina and Chile, at 6,739 meters above sea level. Beneath a stone platform, they found three children. They had been there for approximately five hundred years. They didn't die there by accident. They had been selected from different corners of the Inca Empire, brought to Cusco with full honors, and carried to the summit as part of the capacocha: one of the most complex and best-documented state ceremonies in the Andean world. Biomolecular analysis, CT scans, and DNA studies conducted in the decades since have allowed scientists to reconstruct their lives with a precision unprecedented in world archaeology. We know what they ate in their final months, where they came from, what they were wearing. What we will never know is their names. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🏺 DOCTORS OF THE PAST Your daily dose of history and archaeology ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #incas #ancienthistory #archaeology Chapters: 0.00 Intro 0:40 The Empire and the Mountain 1:55 The Capacocha 4:53 The ascent 8:32 The three children 9:54 The offerings 10.46 Outro