Archaeologists have revealed evidence of a never-before-seen sacrifice of family members belonging to the ancient Andean Moche culture, revealing new insights into their social world, customs, burial practices, and the role of kinship.
The Moche culture – who lived along Peru’s North Coast between 300 and 950 CE – is known to have created sophisticated urban complexes containing pyramid-like temples where their dead were buried (known as huacas), irrigation networks, and ceramic and metal art pieces. Their culture had a complex structure, relying on a social hierarchy with political and religious elites who also impersonated deities in complex rituals.
Although there is much we do not know about the Moche culture, as they did not leave any written records, there is sufficient iconographic and archaeological evidence to suggest these people practiced human sacrifice as part of their rituals.
In 2005, archaeologists discovered a burial group consisting of six people in four tombs in Huaca Cao Viejo. Among those buried here was a high-status woman who has been named “Señora de Cao” (Lady of Cao), as well as three men and two adolescents. These two young people appear to have been strangled with ropes.
“The Señora burial is significant as the best-preserved elite burial found in Peru to date”, the authors of the study wrote, “and using the archaeological dictum that the amount of energy expenditure in tomb construction and offerings indicates relative social rank, the Señora had the highest status among the other burials, although all the main burials were of high status given that they were interred in the temple.”
For a long time, researchers assumed the burial group were all part of the same family, but that the two sacrificed individuals were not – but this team has now conducted a genetic analysis of the bodies that shows that this was a family unit.
It seems two of the men were Señora de Cao’s brothers, while the other, who may have died about 40 years earlier, may have been her grandfather. More surprisingly, one of the adolescents was likely the son of one of the Señora’s brothers, and the other was her niece.
“Collectively, the results indicate that the six individuals share a close degree of biological relatedness”, the team wrote.
It is still unclear whether the strangled teens were sacrificed through choice or whether they were forced into it. Regardless, this is an unprecedented find and suggests that the boy had been sacrificed to his own father.
“There are other high status burial contexts associated with the Moche where sacrifice by strangulation has been postulated,” study co-author Fehren-Schmitz told Live Science. “The idea is that this is a more private and dignified form of ritual killing probably reserved for individuals of higher societal or religious/spiritual status.”
Moche art depicts females in specific roles as goddesses and priestesses, and early Spanish accounts from the 16th century also attest to women along the North Coast as having great authority. Señora de Cao is a clear example of this status and she appears to predate other known examples.
The Moche were not the only ancient society in the Andes region – the archaeological record is filled with temples, cities, shrines, and other ruins scattered across the ancient landscape, each with rich material records that shine light on complex relationships between the peoples of the time. This latest example offers a gruesome but fascinating window into one such context.
The paper is published in the journal PNAS.
