Word: ampato
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...helped pay for the expedition that found her, high up in the Peruvian Andes. The body screamed "human sacrifice" from the start. Earthen tomb. Religious offerings--statuettes, coca leaves, corn. Typical sacrifice MO for the Inca, which is what she was. The location fits too: a volcano called Ampato. The Inca worshipped it as a god. Funny thing is, it was Ampato's eruption in 1995 that melted the glacier. Almost as if the god wanted to come clean about its guilty past...
...JUST ABOUT THE TIME COLUMBUS was sailing into the Caribbean, a young Inca girl, almost a woman, was trudging up the steep slopes of Mount Ampato (elev. 20,700 ft.), in what is now southern Peru, knowing that her life would come to an end at the summit. Her sacrifice, considered the greatest honor her people could bestow, would appease the mountain god--the source of good fortune (in the form of rain to bless the crops) and terror (snowstorms, earthquakes and avalanches) to Inca culture. Did she march bravely to the center of the ceremonial platform...
Juanita might have rested undisturbed for centuries more had it not been for the rumblings of a nearby volcano. For the past five years it has spewed ash over Mount Ampato, melting its snowcap and causing the ground to shift. The movement caused Juanita's ceremonial platform to collapse, and she literally tumbled off. Zarate had to rappel down a ravine to retrieve gold and silver statues, festooned with feathers, that were part of the traditional offering to the gods. Reinhard had scaled dozens of Andean peaks over the past 15 years searching for just such a treasure...
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