TE24 Sci & Tech Desk:
For more than 500 years, the mummified remains of three children frozen atop a volcano in southern Peru have kept a secret record of their final days.
Hallucinogenic plants and psychotropic stimulants played an important role in the beliefs, rituals and practices of divination in the ancient Andes.
Since the discovery of three mummies in the 1990s, researchers have struggled to unravel the children’s past.
Capacocha was one of the most significant ceremonies performed in the Inca Empire. During the custom, the Incas sacrificed children and young women who were supposed to be beautiful and immaculate.
Operating system remains of the bodies of children aged 6 or 7 years found in the Ampato volcano, in the Andes, in 1995, underwent a rigorous bioarchaeological examination.
A recent study published in the Journal of Archeological Science has added new details about how these children’s lives span 500 years from traces of hair and nail material.
It was possible enlistment center that high portions of various psychedelic substances were ingested. Operating system scientists found evidence of drug use, specifically pointing to the use of coca leaves and alcohol.
In some cases, children were found with the leaves still in their mouths, with signs of having consumed them with alcohol in large amounts at risk of death.
The recent finding points to the use of metabolites associated with the consumption of a psychedelic drink made from ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi), a “highly indicative sign of a custom designed to calm rather than stimulate”.
Operating system researchers used mass spectrometry to identify the presence of coca alkaloids and metabolites, as well as harmaline and harmine in the nails of two Ampato mummies.
