Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Monday 30 april 2018
Archaeologists find ancient mass child sacrifice in Peru

By FRANKLIN BRICENO “Reports of very large sac- But the mass sacrifice of
Associated Press rifices are known from oth- children is something that
LIMA, Peru (AP) — Archae- er parts of the world, but has rarely been docu-
ologists in northern Peru it is difficult to know if the mented.
say they have found evi- numbers are exaggerated The Las Llamas site is lo-
dence of what could be or not,” Quilter wrote. cated in a shantytown,
the world’s largest single Quilter is heading a team and has been fenced off
case of child sacrifice. of scientists who will ana- to stop illegal developers
The pre-Columbian burial lyze DNA samples from the from building homes on it.
site, known as Las Llamas, children’s remains to see if Prieto says the site shows
contains the skeletons of they were related and fig- how in Peru history can be
140 children who were be- ure out which areas of the just around the corner.
tween the ages of five and Chimu empire the sacri- “This site surrounded by
14 when they were ritually ficed youth came from. houses in a working class
sacrificed during a cer- Several ancient cultures neighborhood can tell us
emony about 550 years in the Americas practiced a lot about a macabre
ago, experts who led the human sacrifices including event that is perhaps one
excavation told The Asso- This April 22, 2011 handout photo provided by National the Mayans, the Aztecs of the darkest moments in
ciated Press on Friday. Geographic shows more than a dozen bodies preserved in dry and the Incas, who con- our history,” Prieto said.
The site, located near the sand for more than 500 years, at the Huanchaquito-Las Llamas quered the Chimu empire “But this is also part of our
modern day city of Tru- site near Trujillo, Peru. in the late 15th century. cultural heritage.”q
jillo, also contained the re- Associated Press
mains of 200 young llamas was first published on
graphic, which helped fi- Scientists find lots of gorillas
apparently sacrificed on Thursday by National Geo-
the same day.
The burial site was appar- nance the investigation.
ently built by the ancient Prieto said that besides the in census, also see decline
Chimu empire. It is thought bones, researchers also
the children were sacri- found footprints that have
ficed as floods caused by survived rain and erosion. at 362,000 gorillas. That’s
the El Nino weather pat- The small footprints indi- considerably more than
tern ravaged the Peruvian cate the children were the 150,000-to-250,000 esti-
coastline. marched to their deaths mate from the organization
“They were possibly offer- from Chan Chan, an an- that determines how en-
ing the gods the most im- cient city a mile away dangered species are, the
portant thing they had as from Las Llamas, he said. International Union for the
a society, and the most Verano said the children’s Conservation of Nature.
important thing is children skeletons contained le- The population still qualifies
because they represent sions on their breastbones, for the IUCN critically en-
the future,” said Gabriel which were probably dangered red list because
Prieto, an archaeology made by a ceremonial the animals are on pace to
professor at Peru’s Nation- knife. lose more than 80 percent
al University of Trujillo, who Dislocated ribcages sug- of their population in three
has led the excavation, gest that whoever was This undated photo shows Buka, a silverback gorilla in a park in gorilla generations, which is
along with John Verano of performing the sacrifices the Republic of Congo. a key threshold, said study
Tulane University. may have been trying Associated Press author Fiona Maisels of the
“Llamas were also very to extract the children’s By SETH BORENSTEIN through an area of forest Wildlife Conservation So-
important because these hearts. AP Science Writer that’s about the size of the ciety and the University of
people had no other Jeffrey Quilter, the director WASHINGTON (AP) — A state of Washington — or Stirling in Scotland. At the
beasts of burden, they of the Peabody Museum first-of-its-kind intensive Ireland and Scotland com- current rate, 80 percent
were a fundamental part of Archaeology & Ethnol- count of western Africa go- bined — looking for low- or more of the gorillas will
of the economy,” Prieto ogy at Harvard University, rillas found far more of the land gorillas, chimpanzees be gone by end of the
said, adding that the chil- described it as a “remark- apes than conservationists and nests in what scientists century, said University of
dren were buried facing able discovery.” previously thought. said is the most accurate Illinois primate expert Paul
the sea, while the llamas In an email, Quilter told Maybe not for long: The count for the apes in this Garber, who wasn’t part of
faced the Andes Moun- the AP the site provides same study found a 19 primary region where they the study but praised it. He
tains to the east. “concrete evidence” that percent plunge in that live, according to a study said in the five years since
Excavation work at the large scale sacrifices of gorilla population in just in Wednesday’s journal the 2013 count, the loss has
burial site started in 2011, children occurred in an- eight years. Researchers Science Advances . They likely accelerated. “That is
but news of the findings cient Peru. spent a decade trudging put the 2013 population a doomsday scenario, and
we need to reverse this im-
mediately,” Garber said in
an email. Gorillas are hunt-
ed as food, and Maisels
blames that for much of
the population drop. Four
out of five gorillas live in an
area not protected from
hunting, the paper found.
Maisels also said forest
loss could be huge in the
future.q