Holy Mountains: Sacrifice and Mountain Worship in the Andes. Dustin Dye. ANTH 508 Ancient American Civilizations: The Central Andes.

Transcription

1 Holy Mountains: Sacrifice and Mountain Worship in the Andes Dustin Dye ANTH 508 Ancient American Civilizations: The Central Andes December 7, 2007 ABSTRACT The presence of sacrificial sites in high altitudes and atop mountains suggests that mountains figured heavily in Inca cosmology and had roots in pre-inca Andean civilizations. In this paper I will describe how mountains fit into Inca and Andean cosmologies and the necessity to make sacrifices to mountain deities. I suggest that human sacrifices, especially of children, were a part of this cosmology.

2 2 Introduction Inca ritual sites constitute the world s highest known archeological sites. At an altitude of 6,723 meters (22,057 feet), the ruins on the summit of Llullaillaco are the highest known of these sites (Reinhard 1985:301, figure 1). Sacrifices of llamas, Spondylus shells, and even humans are associated with these high-altitude ruins. In the following pages I will discuss the importance of the mountain both in terms of cosmology and ecology, and explain the necessity of making sacrifices to mountain deities. I will also raise the question of why the particular form of sacrifice of human children was adopted. My thesis is the Incas used the existing belief in mountain deities to justify child sacrifice. Their motive was to assert their power over the diverse ethnic groups in their empire. My research was based primarily on Johan Reinhard s work. Reinhard is an Explorer-in- Residence at the National Geographic Society and has been studying in the Andes since He was also the discoverer of the ice mummy dubbed Juanita, which I will discuss below. Other researchers I relied heavily upon are David J. Wilson, a proponent of the ecological perspective for interpreting cultures, and Michael Winkelman, who critically interpreted existing explanations for human sacrifice. Inca cosmology and the importance of mountains To the Incas the sun was the most important deity. The Inca emperor (Sapa Inca) was not only the head of state, but also the religious leader. The Sapa Inca claimed to be a direct descendent of the sun and represented himself as Inti, the sun god. In religious terms, the Sapa Inca s main wife, the Coya, was on equal footing with the Sapa Inca. The Coya played a complementary role to the Sapa Inca as Quilla, the moon goddess (Wilson 1999:422).

3 3 The Inca world and the Inca cosmos were both divided into four parts. The Inca world, Tahuantinsuyu, was divided into four quarters (suyu): Antisuyu, Collasuyu, Cuntisuyu and Chinchaysuyu. The division of the cosmos was a little more complex. The heavens and the earth were created by Viracocha. The earth and the sky are two elements of the cosmos, and each was divided into male and female components, for a total of four divisions. The male sky was divided into Inti, the morning star and the Summer Pleiades. The male earth composed of lightning, rainbows, Pilcomayo River, the huacas (divine places), and the Colca Valley. The female half of the sky was Quilla, the evening star and the Winter Pleiades. The female earth composed of pumas, Mama Cocha (sea mother) and the Ancestral Tree. Humans occupied the center of the cosmos and were needed to link four parts together (Wilson 1999: ). As the Inca Empire expanded, new gods were added to their pantheon. Some of the commonly worshipped gods were Pachamama, the earth mother who controlled fertility and earthquakes; Illapa, the god of thunder and lightning; Pariacaca, the god of water; and Apu, the mountain god just to name a few. Because mountains in the Andes are a main factor in the climate, the ecosystem and meteorological events, mountain deities were treated as intermediaries to the gods of water and fertility. For this reason, the mountains were often the most important deities at the regional level. Unfortunately, historical records only treat mountain worship in broad terms (Reinhard 1985:306). Mountains were also important at the level of the Incas. Huanacauri, the most important mountain in the Valley of Cuzco, was said to be a brother of Manco Capac, the legendary first Inca king (McEwan, et al. 1992:368).

4 4 Mountains in Greater Andean cosmology and necessity for sacrifice Because the mountain is a source of water and the cause of climactic conditions, it is necessary to make sacrifices to the mountain to ensure fertility. The gods will only reciprocate with humans if they make sacrifices, and not necessarily even then. This conditional nature of worship is common to many indigenous Latin American religions and has carried over into Latin American Catholicism, in which the indigenous gods are often still worshiped under the name of a Catholic saint and prayer candles are lit for them as a condition for divine intervention. Mountain worship was a distinct feature of Inca cosmology, but it probably had origins in pre-inca cultures. The cosmologies of the Q eros Quechua and the Kallawaya, two tribes who occupied areas near the Incas but who were never incorporated into the Inca Empire, give windows into pre-inca mountain worship. The Kallawaya, a tribe on the Eastern slopes of the Andes, see the mountain as a metaphor for the body and the ayllu (village based on a kinship clan) and see the mountain as a deity. The puna (highlands, also called uma in Quechua) is seen as the head. The grass growing on the puna that the llamas and alpacas graze on is like the hair. The two large lakes on Mount Kaata are like the mountain s eyes. The central zone of the mountain is seen as where the viscera and vital organs are located. This is where tubers that provide vitality to the people grow underground. The strips of agricultural fields in the central zone are seen as layers of fat on the belly. The body metaphor is completed at the lower extremities of the mountain which are seen as legs (Wilson 1999: ). The mountain is also seen as a metaphor for a person s life course. Just as water flows from the head the mountain, people move down the mountain over during the course of their lives. In fact, the Aymara word for water is uma, same as the Quechua word for highlands. This may

5 5 be because the Aymara recognize water as flowing down from the highlands (Wilson 1999:322). Over the course of people s lives, they move up and down the mountain as the women marry into villages located at different zones. When the woman moves into another zone, resources from her original zone move with her, linking together villages on the mountainside. Thus the flow of water works both as a metaphor for the life course and for the flow of resources (Wilson 1999:322, 325). Kallawaya sacrificial rituals are held in the central zone, where the earth shrines are located. All three of the mountain s zones are integrated into the sacrificial rituals. Llama blood and fat are obtained from the upper zone, llama fat and fetuses from the central, and chicha beer from the lower. When these are offered at the earth shrines, the Kallawaya see it as feeding the mountain (Wilson 1999:327, ). The Q eros Quechua, an Amerindian tribe that has survived both the Inca expansion and Spanish conquest because of they occupy the most marginal terrains on the Eastern slopes of the Andes, still make sacrifices to mountain deities. Twice a year rituals are held to ensure the fertility of llama and alpaca herds. During these rituals, the Q eros pour libations of axa maize beer or cane alcohol on kuy a stones. Kuy a stones originate on the high mountain slopes of the Andes and are therefore linked to the Auki mountain deities (Wilson 1999:317). In the fertility ritual known as Axata Uxuchichis (literally our causing to drink maize beer ) llamas are forced to drink chicha (maize beer), which is believed to increase the fertility of the llamas as well as the alpacas and the agricultural fields (Cohen 1979). It is also common for Q eros to sacrifice llamas and alpacas. On the morning of a festival, one or more llamas or alpacas are spread out with the head aimed at the rising sun. Next, the spinal cord and the throat are cut and the blood is collected into a receptacle. The blood is then flicked in the direction of the Aukis, the mountain

6 6 deities. If the fields or the camelids have problems after the ritual, it is assumed that the ritual was done incorrectly. In particularly devastating years, when the Aukis send lightning or hail that destroys crops and herds, the Q eros ascend Wanaripa, the dominant peak at 5,140 meters (16,864 feet) and make offerings directly to it (Wilson 1999:317). I think the Q eros sacrifice of alcohol and camelids to the mountain deities relates to the Kallawaya metaphor of the mountain as a body. Because the mountain is a body, it needs things like beer and llama blood to survive, just as do humans. The importance of worshiping mountains becomes more obvious when one considers the link between mountains and the climate (figure 2). The connection between mountains, clouds and rain would have been recognized by the ancient Andeans (Reinhard 1985:307). Mountains must have been seen as a source of water as snow melt flowed off mountains and rivers flowed to the coast from mountain valleys. This link was strengthened when lakes were found on mountains or in craters on mountain summits. In fact many peaks containing ruins are ones with lakes at the summit. Mountains were seen as a link between the underground (ocean), the earth and the sky. The veins in the mountains were thought to be where the ancestors walked. Because the mountain controlled the source of water, it was assumed to be able to control other meteorological events like rain, hail, frost, thunder and lightning. Peruvians believed the mountain deity Wallallo made his presence known through storms. Mountain deities were both respected and feared because they controlled elements that had potential to be either beneficial or destructive. Because the mountain deities controlled the weather, they were also responsible for agricultural fertility. Friars noted human sacrifices taking place on mountains in the 16 th and 17 th centuries as offerings for rain (Reinhard 1985:307).

7 7 Having seen the link between mountains and agricultural fertility, it wasn t a far stretch for Andeans to associate mountain deities with human fertility. It was believed thunder alone could make women pregnant. Lightning also had similar supernatural power. Twins and children who were born feet first were thought to be the children of thunder and lightning. In northern Chile if an unmarried woman gave birth, the child was believed to be the offspring of natural forces and was sacrificed on the mountain Tata Jachura to obtain rain (Reinhard 1985). Because both the Q eros and Kallawayas both depend almost entirely on the mountain for their subsistence, it is understandable why mountains figure heavily in their cosmology. The sacrifice of camelids and alcohol to mountain deities were relatively mild compared to sacrifices demanded by the Incas. The Inca festival known as Capac Hucha (royal obligation), was a ritual that culminated in the sacrifice of human children. The Capac Hucha has been described by multiple chroniclers, including Cristóbal de Molina, Juan de Batanzos, and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala in his 1200-page letter to the king of Spain (figure 3). In the Capac Hucha festival, a pair of children, a male and a female, were sent to Cuzco along the Inca roads accompanied by a retinue of priests and village elders. The children sent to be sacrificed had to be beautiful and unblemished. In this sense, the Capac Hucha resembles Jewish sacrifices of lambs for forgiveness described in the Book of Exodus. The children usually ranged in age from 6 to 10. The children were prepared for the ritual at least a year in advance, according to recent research. Andrew Wilson of the University of Bradford in England, said the children were fattened up on a diet of corn and llama meat, as opposed to the normal diet of vegetables and potatoes, for a year before they were sacrificed. The children s hair was also symbolically cut. Changes in the hair samples indicate that the children would have left Cuzco for their mountain

8 8 provinces three to four months before they died (Associated Press 2007). Upon reaching Cuzco, the children were taken to the Temple of the Sun, where they were presented to the king. Next, the young couple would be married and given gifts of gold. These gifts were usually luxurious household items, practical gifts to give a newlywed couple. After the ceremony, the children were sent back to their homes, hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. On the trip home, the party was forbidden to walk the Inca roads and sang praise to the gods and the king on the way. Upon reaching their home, villagers had to divert their eyes from the child (McEwen, et al. 1992: ). I think the reason the children had to avoid Inca roads and villagers were not allowed to look at the children was out of fear of desecrating the sacred. After having met the king and being married in his presence, perhaps in a way mimicking the king and his wife, the sacrificial children had become divine like the king. If the purity of the children and the ritual was compromised by a commoner between the wedding ceremony and the sacrifice, then there may have been another ritual that had to be performed to restore the purity of the sacrifice. The Capac Hucha ended with the sacrifice of the children. Not all of the sacrifices were killed in the same way. In some cases, children were inebriated with chicha and then buried alive along with the goods given to them in Cuzco (McEwan, et al. 1992:362). These children probably died peacefully in their sleep with the help of the massive amount of chicha given. Priests also fed the children liquids through a tube for five days after they died (McEwan, et al. 1992:360). In other cases, children may have been strangled to death after the consumption of the chicha (Wilson 1999:423). Reinhard said that the children, after being given chicha and coca to numb the pain, died of exposure and were then lowered into their tombs (Moore 2007:54). In the 17 th century, Father Cobo said the children were liquored up and either strangled with a chord

9 9 or struck in the head with a club (Allingham 2003). The Capac Hucha rituals were considered unverifiable tales or folklore until 1954 when a local shoe repairer climbed high onto the slopes of Mt. Plomo in central Chile and discovered the remains of a boy at an elevation of 5,394 meters (17,697 feet) in a sacrificial site (Wilson 1999:423). Before the 1954 discovery, anthropologists dismissed the grisly tales of chroniclers like Father Cobo as stories invented by overzealous Spanish missionaries to depict the Incas as bloodthirsty heathens in need of Christianization (Allingham 2003). Another important find came in 1985 when a party of mountaineers on Cerro Aconcagua in Argentina stumbled upon the frozen mummy of a boy. The boy was wrapped in blankets of wool and cotton with representations of birds. The textiles were covered with yellow feathers, probably from an Amazonian parrot. The boy was buried with three figures representing human males. One of gold, one of solid silver-copper alloy, and one of Spondylus shell (McEwan, et al. 1992:363). I think the three figures, because they were made of different materials of differing value, may have represented the tri-tiered hierarchy of the Inca Empire. In Juan Schobinger s 1991 account (McEwan, et al. 1992), the gold item was listed first, suggesting which item Schobinger found the most valuable. But the Incas believed Spondylus shells were more valuable than gold, so the Spondylus shell figurine may have represented the Collana (Inca royalty), while the gold figurine represented the Payan (servants and retainers), and the silver-copper alloy figurine represented the Cayao (the rest of the population). Similar offerings were found in the southern Andes on the volcano Copiapó (McEwan, et al. 1992; Wilson 1999:428). However, the gold may have represented the Inca king because gold is the color of the sun and the king may have been representing himself as a sun god. Johan Reinhard made the most important child sacrifice find in He and his Peruvian

10 10 guide stumbled upon the body of a young girl they dubbed Juanita (figure 4). The mummy was found just below the 6,320-meter (20,735 feet) summit of Mt. Ampato in southern Peru. Juanita was found shortly after the eruption of Sabancaya, a nearby active volcano. The heat from the volcano caused the ice on Mt. Ampato to melt and Juanita s body slid dozens of meters down the side of the mountain, where it was spotted by Reinhard. Juanita was found with a female figurine of Spondylus shell (perhaps a representation of the Inca queen?), llama bones, sherds of Inca pottery and textiles. Juanita had been accompanied by the bodies of two children, a male and a female, who Wilson (1999) said had been sacrificed to the mountain deities. The bodies of the couple were charred from a lightning strike at some point after their burial. The fact that the couple had been buried together suggests that this had been the site of a Capac Hucha ritual. The Capac Hucha child sacrifices can be interpreted in several ways. McEwan and Van de Guchte (1992:367) suggest that they were ways of reinforcing and legitimizing Inca rule. The fact that the child sacrifices came from all four corners of Tahuantinsuyu suggests this was a way of connecting everyone in a similar ideology. I think it is similar to the mountain sacrifices of the Kallawaya, who gathered offerings from all three ecological zones of the mountains in their sacrifices at the earth shrines so that everyone participated and were bound together in the ritual. Children in the Capac Hucha ritual were sent from all four corners of the Inca world to be married in Cuzco and sent home to be sacrificed. In this way, everyone participated in the ritual and was bound to the Inca king. While I agree with McEwan and Van de Guchte that the Incas used the Capac Hucha to bound their empire and legitimate their rule, they don t satisfactorily answer the question of why someone would agree to give up their children to be killed. The authors claimed it was an honor to send a perfect child to be sacrificed. One girl who was about to be killed reportedly said, You

11 11 can finish me now because I could not be honored more than I have been already by the feasts that they celebrated for me in Cuzco (McEwan, et al. 1992:362). This doesn t satisfactorily answer the question of why someone would agree to human sacrifice. Was it not possible to be honored by the king without giving up a child? Was being honored by the king more important to a parent than their own child s life? David J. Wilson (1999), who sees the differing worldviews of societies as functioning seamlessly with their ecology in what he calls the ecological perspective, attributes a more pragmatic reason to why the citizenry went along with the Incas demands for child sacrifice. He sees child sacrifice both as strengthening local ties with Cuzco as well as for the purposes of fertility linked to mountain worship. He wrote: It was as if the state were saying to its citizenry: Are you anxious about the ability of your local subsistence system to sustain your population? Then send some children to Cuzco for the Capac Hucha, and we ll consecrate them and sacrifice them on your mountains to ensure that next year will be a good one for you! (Wilson 1999:423) Universal participation in the Capac Hucha ceremony was so important to the Incas they built sacrificial sites on top of mountains to facilitate mountain worship. Some of the high-mountain sites may be of pre-inca origin, but the majority were probably built by the Incas because the Incas were the ones most likely to have the infrastructure to build them. The Incas may have built these sacrificial sites on the location of sites that had been used previously for mountain worship (Reinhard 1985:301). Child sacrifices may have corresponded with the expansion of the Inca Empire and have been used to link newly acquired regions together. The sacrifices are often found at high east-west passages on the mountains. This may have been to ensure safe passage from the mountain deities through the mountains. It may have also been to appease the deities in the newly incorporated

12 12 regions of the Inca Empire (Allingham 2003). I think the Incas needed an extreme ceremony to bind its citizenry and legitimize its rule and used the pre-existing custom of mountain worship and the belief mountain deities were linked to fertility as a means of getting its citizens to participate in the Capac Hucha. By asking ayllus to give up their children for sacrifice, the Incas were reinforcing the idea that they had the legitimacy to ask for such an extreme offering as well as classifying the people who gave up children as others. As a means to introduce this type of exploitation, they must have used the familiar discourse of mountain worship to make the Capac Hucha seem acceptable, just as they used discourse of reciprocity (ayni) to exploit the labor tax (mit a). Why was human sacrifice necessary? The fact human sacrifice occurred among the Inca raises the question of why and how that particular type of sacrifice emerged. In the above section I discussed the functionality of human sacrifice both at the level of the Incas and at the level of the local ayllus. I presented several theories on why the Incas thought it was necessary and why the citizenry went along with it. But I did not raise the question of why it had to be a human who was sacrificed. Why couldn t ten llamas have served? In other words, why was the killing of human children legitimized in the Inca Empire? Above I wrote at the Inca level, human sacrifices served to legitimize their rule. However, the Incas had the massive military and infrastructure already that legitimized their rule. Human sacrifice at the ayllu level was linked to fertility and agriculture. But were the ayllus really in danger of famine? Andeans had highly efficient agricultural practices, like terracing mountains, which brought more land into production and prevented erosion. They also had large stores of

13 13 food and the know-how to freeze-dry potatoes (chuño) and meat (charqui) so that it would last for several seasons. Was the risk of famine really a legitimate concern? Michael Winkelman (1998), writing about the Aztecs, did a cross-cultural comparison of human sacrifice and the conditions in which it occurred and came to some conclusions that could apply to the Incas. Winkelman studied human sacrifice in seven societies: the Ovimbundu of Angola, the Ibo of Nigeria, the Kafa of Ethiopia, the Romans, the Marquesans of the Pacific Islands, the Atayal of Taiwan, and the Aztecs (Winkelman 1998:289). It is possible to apply to the Inca the same comparisons Winkelman drew between the above societies with human sacrifice. They are all societies in the middle range of social complexity, they all are sedentary and rely upon agriculture, all rely upon domesticated animals for food sources, but were not pastoral and didn t use milk products. All of the societies also had a mid-range of agricultural potential. All the above societies also produced a surplus of agricultural goods and had the capacity to store them, but there were annual fluctuations in the amount in the store (Winkelman 1998:290). Of all the societies in Winkelman s study, the Aztecs were the only one with a high risk of famine, but he determined the risk of famine was not significantly associated with human sacrifice (Winkelman 1998:291). This may have been because human sacrifice was practiced at the elite level and elites always had secure access to food and would not have been immediately concerned with famine. Winkelman eventually determined there was a somewhat small, positive correlation between human sacrifice and population pressure that led to competition for resources. There was also a positive correlation with polytheism and low religious cohesion (Winkelman 1998: ). I suggest population pressure was linked to human sacrifice not for competition for resources, but

14 14 rather for purposes of intimidating a massive population into obeying a small elite. The fact that low religious cohesion was positively correlated with human sacrifice corresponds with the hypothesis I made above that sacrifice may have been used to unite the four corners of Tahauntinsuyu into a common ideology when the main commonality between disparate Andean ethnic groups was mountain worship. I think a reason human sacrifice, rather than resource offerings, was necessary in unifying Tahauntinsuyu was because the various ethnic groups that existed in the Inca Empire varied more than the regional resources. Drawing again on my comparison of children coming from all four corners of Tahuantinsuyu to be sacrificed to the Kallawaya gathering offerings from all three ecological zones, I think because the children would have come to Cuzco wearing the regional clothing marking ethnicity that was required by the Incas, the children better represented the diversity of practitioners in the sacrifice than resources would. The Capac Hucha was like the Kallawaya sacrifices at the earth shrines on a large scale. I suggest more research be done to draw a stronger link between the diversity of children given up for Capac Hucha and the importance of universal practice in the Andean rituals. Human sacrifice was actually relatively rare in the Inca Empire. Sacrifices were usually limited to llamas and guinea pigs (McEwan, et al. 1992:360). Johan Reinhard stressed Inca human sacrifices were not practiced often, but only in extreme cases, like the death of an old king or the inauguration of a new one. To be sacrificed was seen as an honor. The children weren t sacrificed to feed the gods, as they were in the Aztec Empire, but rather to enter the realm of the gods. It was believed the children would still be able to communicate with their families through shamans, so death was really seen as the same spirit occupying a different location, or plane of existence (Hall 2005).

15 15 Winkelman rejected the notion human sacrifice was practiced because the societies in question were pathological (Winkelman 1998:296). But it is possible in a totalitarian state like the Inca Empire, it only took one pathological person at the top to begin the tradition. Once the king decided to implement child sacrifice, the populace would have had to comply. The Inca Empire ended with the execution of Atahualpa by the Spanish in 1532; however, human sacrifice in the Andes didn t end with the Spanish Conquest. In fact, it continued into recent times. In the years 1942 and 1945 child sacrifices occurred in Peru, with parental approval, in order to prevent a drought. The people claimed this was their normal custom. Another human sacrifice reportedly took place in 1958 on a mountain near Lake Titicaca. As recently as 1985 Reinhard wrote human sacrifices to the mountain gods occurred in Moya to prevent fatal accidents in public works construction (Reinhard 1985: ). In fact, it has been argued many pre-columbian Andean deities are still worshiped in the guise of Catholic saints. For example, the god of lightning, Illapa, has been compared to the Catholic saint, Santiago, which has led some to identify the god/saint as Santiago-Illapa (Silverblatt 1988). Conclusion In conclusion, I believe that child sacrifices were instituted by the Incas to assert their social authority and the legitimacy of their power. They may have used the pre-existing practices of mountain worship to justify the practice of human sacrifice. It was necessary to gather children from all parts of Tahuantinsuyu to universalize the practice of Capac Hucha and unite all four corners of the Inca Empire into a common cosmology. The institutionalization of human sacrifice makes it easy for some, especially colonizers, to characterize pre-conquest Amerindians as savages. However, details of the conquest prove that

16 16 Europeans were capable of far more acts of savagery than Native Americans. When the Spaniards arrived in the Andes, they encountered Atahualpa, the last sovereign king, celebrating his recent defeat of his brother, Huascar. The Spanish conquistadors captured Atahualpa and ransomed him for a room full of gold. After delivering the gold, the Spaniards strangled Atahualpa to death. The Spanish colonization of the Americas was accompanied by the largest genocide in the history of the world. So despite the fact that the Incas imposed human sacrifice and labor tax, the amount of killing and exploitation paled in compared to what the peoples of the Andes suffered under the Spaniards. Bibliography Allingham, Winnie 2003 The mystery of Inca child sacrifice. Electronic document, accessed December 6. Associated Press 2007 Inca sacrifices were fattened up first, October 1. Cohen, John 1979 Qeros: The Shape of Survival. New York, NY: Mystic Fire Video. Hall, Yancey 2005 Interview: Inca Mummy Man Johan Reinhard. Electronic document, accessed December 4. McEwan, Colin, and Maarten Van de Guchte 1992 Ancestral Time and Sacred Space in Inca State Ritual. In The Ancient Americas: Art From Sacred Landscapes. Richard F. Townsend, ed. Pp Chicago, IL: Art Institute of Chicago; Munich, Germany: Prestel Verlag. Moore, Victoria 2007 Ice Maiden of the Andes: Perfectly preserved, a girl of 15 sacrificed to the gods more than 500 years ago. Daily Mail (London), September 8:2 nd, 54.

17 17 Reinhard, Johan 1985 Sacred Mountains: An Ethno-Archaeological Study of High Andean Ruins. Mountain Research and Development 5(4): Silverblatt, Irene 1988 Political Memories and Colonizing Symbols: Santiago and the Mountain Gods in Colonial Peru. In Rethinking History and Myth. Jonathan Hill, ed. Pp Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Wilson, David J Indigenous South Americans of the Past and Present: And Ecological Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Winkelman, Michael 1998 Aztec Human Sacrifice: Cross-Cultural Assessments of the Ecological Hypothesis. Ethnology 37(3):

18 18 Figure 1. Ruins on the summit of Llullaillaco. Inca artifacts were associated with this site. An artificial platform where offerings were made was located where the man is standing in the photograph. Photo from Reinhard (1985).

19 19 Figure 2. An east-west profile of the central Andes showing climactic conditions. Image from Reinhard (1985).

20 20 Figure 3. A drawing of the capac hucha festival from El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno. Drawing by Guaman Poma (1613).

21 21 Figure 4. The ice mummy Juanita, found by Reinhard and his team in Image from Wilson (1999).