John Roach, The National Geographic

Human-sacrifice chamber discovered in Peru :

A Site to die for

Found in Peru within a chamber used for an ancient human-sacrifice rite called the presentation, this woman was likely an offering to the site, archaeologists say. Announced last week, the 197-foot-long (60-meter-long) sacrificial chamber or passageway at the Huaca Bandera archaeological site belonged to the Moche culture, a pre-Columbian agricultural civilization that flourished on the north coast of Peru from about 100 B.C. to AD 800.

The several burials found in the sacrifice chamber “are from a time apparently after the site had been abandoned but nevertheless continued to receive offerings to maintain the status of the elite sanctuary,” archaeologist Carlos Wester La Torre, leader of the excavation, said in an email translated from Spanish.

Sacrificial Altar

Faint remains of a mural linger above the main altar in the newfound chamber, where the sacrificial rite is believed to have been carried out near the present-day town of Illimo, Peru.

“The ceremony, known as the presentation, was a ritual where naked and rope-bound prisoners were subjected to a ritual sacrifice,” said Wester, who is also director of the Heinrich Brüning National Museum of Archeology and Ethnography in the nearby city of Lambayeque. As the prisoners, most likely apprehended during battle, were cut, priests and priestesses caught the spilling blood in cups, which were offered to the Gods, he said.

Chamber of Horrors

More than a thousand years ago, prisoners of war, naked and bound, were marched down this ceremonial passage to their deaths at the Moche site of Huaca Bandera in Peru, archaeologists announced last week. Lined with altars, the corridor leads to a ramp that accesses a pyramid in the distance.

Photograph courtesy

National Archaeological Museum of Brüning, Peru