The “Llullaillaco Maiden” – a teenage girl whose mummified body was found atop a cold volcano in Argentina – was believed to have been sacrificed centuries ago. Inca. Now, a new analysis of plant remains found in her burial is helping archaeologists pinpoint the historical events that led to her death half a millennium ago.
In 1999, archaeologists discovered the remains of three mummified Inca children – a teenage girl, and a boy and girl of about 7 years old, just below the summit of the Llullaillaco volcano in Argentina near its border with Chile. Analysis of mummies over the past two decades has shown that the children were satiated with delicious food And messed around with alcohol and coca (a plant from which cocaine is obtained) Before they were taken to an underground temple on a cool, windy summit and left for dead.
Even though these mummies, called the “Children of Llullaillaco”, are incredibly well preserved, the exact date of their sacrifice remains unclear. A radiocarbon analysis In 2007, testing of hair samples from the mummies revealed that they died between 1430 and 1520. To constrain this date and link it to known political and climatic events, an international team of researchers radiocarbon-dated the botanical remains found in the burial. They published their results on June 5 in the journal archaeometry.
The Llullaillaco Maiden, also known as La Doncella, is the name given to the mother of a teenage girl. Due to the large number of offerings made at her funeral, archaeologists believe that she may have been the main sacrificer and that she was accompanied by two small children as attendants at the time of her death. The offerings to the Llullaillaco Maiden included maize (Zia Mess), cassava (Manihot Esculenta) and coca leaves (erythroxylum coca), whose seeds were carbon-dated to reveal a more accurate chronology than the mummies themselves.
The botanical remains found by archaeologists narrowed the possible date of death of the children to between 1462 and 1507, with the most likely date being around 1499, during the reign of Huayna Capac, one of the last Inca emperors.
The Inca Empire reached its greatest extent under Huayna Capac, who ruled from 1493 to about 1525, when he died of smallpox introduced by the Spanish. From the empire’s capital of Cuzco in southern Peru, the emperor’s father, Tupac Inca, expanded Inca territory south to Chile, while Huayna Capac extended the empire north to present-day Ecuador and Colombia. In 1499, the area around Llullaillaco may have recently been incorporated into the Inca Empire.
“Considering this context, it is plausible that the sacrifice at Llullaillaco would have been carried out as part of such a state-sanctioned campaign [of sacrifices]”The evidence may have served to religiously establish the Inca presence in this region or to celebrate an important political event,” the researchers wrote in the study. That is, the sacrifice of Llullaillaco’s three children was probably part of Huayna Capac’s effort to maintain cultural harmony across the vast, diverse Inca Empire.
The researchers write that colonial-era chronicles mention that Huayna Capac traveled to the southern part of his empire, including what is now northwestern Argentina, and made bountiful offerings to the gods in the form of child sacrifices.
Although it is not possible to definitively link the historical record to the Llullaillaco sacrifice, “placing the event in this historical context not only links it to a specific political time frame but also invites more thorough reflection on the possible motives behind such a state-sanctioned event,” the researchers wrote.
According to researchers, the Inca practice of child sacrifice as early as the 16th century affirmed royal authority or sought to maintain cosmic balance during a period of perceived instability just before the arrival of Europeans.
To learn more about broader patterns of ritual sacrifice and political power in the Inca Empire, the researchers noted in the study that similar analyzes should be conducted on other child sacrifices.
Cieszkowska-Jasina, D., Recagno Browning, G., Bernaski, M., Zygran, F., Jedrzejowski, M., Pawlita, J., Rakowski, A., Reinhard, J., Manning, SW (2026). Sacred Time: A Multi-Phase Chronological Framework for Llullaillaco Inca Burials. archaeometry. https://doi.org/10.1111/arcm.70172
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