Exclusive: Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice May Be World's Largest

Local residents alerted archaeologist Gabriel Prieto to the sacrificial site in 2011, noting that human bones were eroding from the dunes around their homes.

Many of the 200 sacrificial llamas are so well preserved that after 500 years, researchers could recover the ropes they were bound with, stomach contents, and plant remains caught in their fur.

Many children show evidence of having their faces smeared with red pigment before death. DNA analysis indicates that both boys and girls were sacrificed.

A young llama (left) and shrouded child were buried in the same pit—a common phenomenon at Las Llamas, but a generally unusual find in the pre-Columbian Andes.

A child seems to hold a hand in its mouth as the remains of a llama curl around its skull.

Many of the cotton shrouds that wrapped the victims are well preserved. They have been carbon dated to between A.D. 1400 and 1450.

Both children and llamas were brought to the coast from far-flung corners of the Chimú Empire to be sacrificed, according to preliminary isotopic studies and analysis of skull modification.