Inca children sacrificed on Andean peaks were given coca, alcohol and possibly an ayahuasca ingredient
Five centuries ago, Inca priests led children up some of the highest mountains in the Andes to die in a sacred ritual. A new study suggests those children did not climb unaided. Chemical tests on eight frozen mummies show that every one of them had chewed coca leaves, that four had drunk alcohol, and that one, the famous Juanita, had a compound linked to a plant used in ayahuasca.
The ritual and the mummies
The Inca called the ritual capacocha. Chosen children and young people travelled from across the empire, then climbed to high shrines on sacred peaks, where they died and were buried. The cold and thin air preserved some of the bodies so well that scientists can still study them today.
Dagmara Socha of the University of Warsaw and colleagues tested hair and nail samples from eight of these frozen mummies. They came from several mountains in Peru and Argentina. The team published the work in the journal Antiquity under the title “Toxicological studies on the Inca frozen mummies from volcanoes in Peru and Argentina.”
What the hair and nails revealed
Hair and nails grow slowly and lock in traces of what a person has taken, so they work like a diary of the weeks before death. The researchers found cocaine and benzoylecgonine, a breakdown product, in every hair sample. That pattern indicates that all eight children chewed coca leaves. Coca mattered to the Inca in two ways. People offered it to the gods, and it may also have eased altitude sickness and fatigue on the steep climbs.
Four of the eight mummies showed signs of alcohol. Two of them, Chuscha and one child from Llullaillaco, also carried cocaethylene, a compound the body makes when a person uses cocaine and alcohol together. The alcohol most likely came from chicha, a maize beer. Colonial-era records say Inca priests gave chicha to children to calm them.
Juanita and the ayahuasca clue
The most surprising result came from Juanita, the Lady of Ampato in Peru, often called the Ice Maiden. Her nails contained harmine, an alkaloid from Banisteriopsis plants and a main ingredient in ayahuasca. None of the other seven mummies showed it. The authors suggest that a plant drink played a special role at Ampato, though the study cannot say exactly what she drank or how.
The mix of substances also differed from child to child, with no clear pattern. The authors argue that each case needs its own interpretation, because communities adapted the capacocha to local cults rather than following one fixed script.
Calming, not dazzling
The substances the team found lift mood or ease stress. Strong hallucinogens appear to have been avoided. That fits the researchers’ view that the Inca wanted the children calm and steady on a hard journey, since powerful visions could have made them frightened or unsafe on the mountain. The finding adds to earlier work, including CT scans and other studies of the Llullaillaco children, that portrays the ritual as carefully managed.
Earlier chemical tests on these mummies were negative or looked mainly at coca. This study gives a fuller picture than before, and it shows that the preparation of the children was more varied than researchers had assumed.
What we still do not know
The authors stress several limits. Hair and nails miss single events, and some compounds never enter keratin, so other substances may have gone undetected. The children may also have received other drugs on the trail or during a final ceremony. Any rituals after the sacrifice at the shrines remain speculation. Better laboratory methods could reveal more in the future.
Harmine in one mummy also falls short of proof that she drank ayahuasca itself. It shows exposure to a related plant ingredient, and the exact brew is still an open question.
For now, the mountains have given us a rare chemical record of the final days of these children, and it suggests that the Inca tried to ease their path with coca, chicha and, in at least one case, a plant from the Amazon side of their world.