Teen Sacrificed To Please Inca Gods Body Displayed After Being Frozen For 500 Years

The teenager, wearing the finest clothes, went with Inca priests to a mountaintop where her skull was crushed in a ritual to appease the gods. Discovered still frozen in an icy pit after 500 years, she is now the best preserved pre-Columbian body ever found.

Called Juanita or the Ampato Maiden by Peruvian scientists, the body of the young girl was found in September near the top of 20,700-foot Mount Ampato in Peru.

Kept in freezers since it was brought down from the mountain by American archaeologist Johan Reinhard, the remains went on display Tuesday at the National Geographic Society building in Washington.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore earlier put the body through a CT scan and concluded the girl died of a powerful blow to the head.

“The cause of death was intercranial bleeding,” said Dr. Elliot Fishman, head of the Hopkins team that examined the body.

Fishman said the body was that of a well-nourished, healthy 12- to 14-year-old of something over 4 feet in height.

“She had the best set of teeth that I’ve seen in many years,” said Fishman.

The girl probably never regained consciousness after being struck on the head, he said, and would have died within hours.

At a news conference, Reinhard said his discovery of the body was pure chance.

“I had no expectation of finding anything at all,” he said. “I went up there mostly for the view.”

Reinhard was in Peru doing research and decided to climb Mount Ampato to get a view of an ash cloud spewing from Sabancaya, a nearby volcano. When he arrived with his companions at the top of Ampato, he said, they found that volcanic ash had caused the ice at the peak to melt and a ridge at the peak had broken away.

The body, apparently fallen from the peak, was found down a slope, still encased in ice.

Reinhard carried the body down the mountain and caught a nighttime bus to Arequipa where it was placed in a freezer at Catholic University.

“It still had ice on the cloth, so it never thawed,” he said. “The fact that it is a frozen body is what makes it so unique.”

Since then, special freezer cabinets have been designed to protect the body while it is studied and while it is on display at the National Geographic.

Jose Antonio Chavez, a Peruvian archaeologist, said it is now believed that Ampato was considered a sacred mountain by the Incas. It was used as a place of sacrifice and burial of young children, a practice that the Incas thought would persuade the gods to prevent bad things from happening.

Chavez said through an interpreter that the Ampato Maiden probably went through a period of fasting and was then given narcotics. She was dressed in fine clothing, including a silver pin, and taken to the mountain top where she was made to kneel. A priest then struck her from behind with a club.

She was buried in a sitting position, in a shallow pit, along with jewelry, pots and other artifacts.

Reinhard said the Ampato Maiden and other sacrificial victims will help scientists learn more about Inca religion and should help researchers unravel mysteries about other Incan sites in the Andes Mountains.

The Inca empire lasted only 90 years, but it once stretched from Colombia to central Chile, a distance of 2,500 miles. The empire ended with the Spanish conquest in 1532.