Why Child Sacrifice Is Easy to Imagine

By Audie Cockings

Yesterday I read a shocking article by National Geographic detailing the methodical sacrificial killing of 140 children ages five to fourteen. The broken child remains were recently discovered and unearthed near Chan Chan, an archeological complex in coastal Peru. The event is estimated to be five hundred years old.

Young ones were donated by parents to be held down, sternums severed in half, and rib cages broken open so that the undersized hearts could be cut out of the bodies. The article does not state whether the children were still alive during that procedure, but that all were killed at the same time –which tells me that there were at least 140 community members who systematically killed at once. The researchers also mentioned that there were few “false starts” in the cutting, indicating that ritual members were skilled with the procedure and ceremonial blades.