She was young, pure and beautiful - for all these qualities she was deemed worthy to be sacrificed to the Gods. Here, in just few words you have the story of the Llullaillaco Maiden, an Inca girl who died some 500 years ago and whose perfectly preserved body was discovered high up in the mountains in Argentina. The 15-year old girl's mummy is currently on display at the High Mountain Archaeological Museum in Argentina.

According to experts who have studied DNA samples of La Doncela (Spanish for Maiden), she was probably born somewhere in the Cuzco region (in present day Peru).
Inca rulers demanded that all the provinces of their empire select children between the ages of 4 and 16, healthy and of perfect physical appearance, to be used as human sacrifices in the capacocha ritual, performed on important occasions, like the death of an emperor or the birth of a royal child. The children sacrified were thought to go to a better world and their role was to serve as means of communication between the religious leaders and the realm of the Gods.

The children were forced to travel for hundred of miles, but the Inca took good care of them and actually fattened them prior to the sacrifice. The Llullaillaco Maiden's final journey must have been very difficult, as the place where she was found is some 22,000ft above sea level. She had to endure icy winds and the lack of oxygen in the final stage of the journey. It is believed she was drugged and left to die from exposure, as there are no obvious wounds on her body.
The remanis of two smaller children, a boy and a girl, were also discovered in the same burial chamber, but their mummies are not on display.

Savagery?

I have written before about my fascination with the old Inca civilization, as well as with the Maya or the Aztecs. For all those who, like me, are passionate about these ancient civilizations and their many mysteries, human sacrifices practiced by all of them is a delicate issue. The violence of these civilizations was the topic of many news articles only a few weeks ago, following the discovery of a skull tower in Mexico City. Why would anyone be fascinated by a bunch of savages after all?
No one seems to remember that 500 years ago, roughly at the time of La Doncela's death, the good people of Europe and North America were busy with the terrible witch hunts, that made up to 200,000 victims, mostly women, some as young as the Inca Maiden, hanged or burnt alive. They were killed because God and his church demanded so, just as the Inca Gods demanded human sacrifices. The witch hunts ended sometime around 1750, long after the destruction of all the ancient South American civilizations.