Despite engaging in human sacrifice, the people who lived in the Lambayeque Valley of northern Peru had low levels of violence, a new study of their remains finds.
Human sacrifice occurred in the valley over the millennia. It's thought that at least some of these mass sacrifices were attempts to appease the gods in the wake of El Niño, a periodic weather phenomenon that can lead to intense rains and flooding in Peru and droughts in other parts of South and Central America.
"We have one example at the site of Sicán where around [A.D.] 1050/1100, around 200 individuals were killed and ritualistically buried during an intense El Niño event," study co-author Haagen Klaus, an anthropology professor at George Mason University in Virginia, told Live Science in an email.
Other human sacrifice findings include more than 200 children found near the modern-day town of Huanchaco who were sacrificed sometime between 600 and 800 ye...
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