The incredibly preserved mummified body of a teenage girl ritualistically killed an estimated 500 years ago goes by many names in modern culture: Inca Maiden, La Doncella, and Llullaillaco Maiden to name but a few. Just as her story has stood the test of archaeological time, photos of her intact remains have permeated corners of the internet since her discovery in 1999.
A post shared on Reddit in September 2022, for example, claimed to show a 15-year-old girl who lived and was sacrificed 500 years ago during the Incan Empire.
Pictured in these outlets is one of three Children, or Mummies, of Llullaillaco, a trio of individuals entombed in Argentina during the Incan Empire a half-millennia ago. They were left there as part of what is believed to have been a ritualistic killing, though the exact circumstances are unknown. The Inca Maiden was discovered in 1999 with her hair, skin, and clothing still intact at the 22,000-foot summit of a South American stratovolcano .
We therefore rated this claim as "True."
Though Snopes was unable to determine where and when the photograph shown in the Reddit post was taken, National Geographic shared a similar scene in a 2009 YouTube video, which described how researchers studied hair samples taken from the mummy.
The footage noted that researchers from the University of Bradford, England, also sampled the Inca Maiden's hair in 2003 and analyzed it for changes that would indicate what she ate in the months leading up to her death. It was determined that her diet shifted from consisting primarily of vegetables and potatoes to the "food of the elite" —maize and animal protein.
The Inca Maiden, believed to be between 12 and 15 years old, was found within the chambers of a stone-built ceremonial platform alongside two other children believed to be between four and five years old: a boy dubbed "Llullaillaco Boy" and a young girl nicknamed "Lightning Girl."
It's unsure if the three were part of the same ceremony , but both Lightning Girl and Llullaillaco Boy were less well-kept than the Inca Maiden, suggesting they may have been from a different socioeconomic class.
Though "child sacrifice" has been used to describe the circumstances of their death, researchers noted that understanding of "life" and "death" was different during the Incan civilization. Killing within a ritualized context took many forms in Andean South America and may have been perceived as a way to ascend in the afterlife.
Regardless, researchers agreed the three did not die accidentally but were commissioned as a central and probably defining element of a capacocha ritual , the ceremonial and intentional deaths of children in Incan society.
Anthropologist Johan Reinhard discovered the Inca Maiden as she was laid to rest a half-millennia ago. Surrounded by a shrine of elite artifacts, she was found sitting cross-legged with her head slumped forward, arms resting loosely on her lap and her head adorned in a feather headdress.
In addition to a shift in her diet in the year before her death, scientists also found evidence of coca and alcohol consumption that indicated she was heavily sedated or recently dead by the time of her interment.
"We're afraid at some level we might wake this mummy because she seemed just so alive," researchers told the Smithsonian Channel in 2015.
Why the three Llullaillaco Children were killed remains unknown as of this writing, but some speculated their deaths were connected to the extension of social control over newly acquired territories. "Donated" children were offered to show allegiance to a new regime or may have been associated with events like the death of an emperor, drought, or natural disasters.
Similar ritualistic killings of children, now-turned mummies, have also been discovered at South American sites like Ampato , Aconcagua , and Picchu Picchu .
The Inca Maiden is not to be confused with the Ice Maiden, another preserved mummy Reinhard discovered in 1995 and the first female to have been found in the Andes, according to a 2015 publication by the National Endowment for the Humanities . As TIME magazine reported at the time, the Ice Maiden was revealed after ash from a nearby volcano melted the snowcap on Mount Ampato, causing her ceremonial platform to collapse, and "she literally tumbled off." Reinhard and his assistant were said to have carried the 90-pound corpse, stuffed in a backpack, down the mountain.
Socha, Dagmara M., et al. "Inca Human Sacrifices from the Ampato and Pichu Pichu Volcanoes, Peru: New Results from a Bio-Anthropological Analysis." Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, vol. 13, no. 6, May 2021, p. 94. Springer Link, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-021-01332-1 .
Wilson, Andrew S., et al. "Archaeological, Radiological, and Biological Evidence Offer Insight into Inca Child Sacrifice." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 110, no. 33, Aug. 2013, pp. 13322–27. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1305117110 .
---. "Archaeological, Radiological, and Biological Evidence Offer Insight into Inca Child Sacrifice." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 110, no. 33, Aug. 2013, pp. 13322–27. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1305117110 .
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