Читать книгу World History For Dummies - Peter Haugen - Страница 30

The 500-year-old bodies of Inca children in the Argentine Andes, discovered atop Mount Llullaillaco in the 1990s by archaeologist Johan Reinhard and a team from the National Geographic Society, are among the best-preserved mummies ever found. Apparently killed as a religious ritual sacrifice, the boy and two girls — aged between 8 and 15 — were so perfectly frozen that the scientist said they looked as though they had just drawn their last breaths.

The Argentine discoveries are more than fascinating and informative; they’re also terribly sad. The idea of killing an 8-year-old makes me recoil in horror. What could possibly possess a culture to worship gods that must have the blood of innocents? Yet that’s another reason why the three preserved bodies are so compelling: They draw you into the past as you struggle to comprehend how these people, who were so startlingly similar to modern people in some ways, could have understood the world so differently.