Kristin Romey and photographer Robert Clark, in the February
2019 issue of National Geographic, present the narrative (paywall) of the Chimu people in
coastal Peru, who about five centuries ago created one of the largest human
sacrifices on record, apparently (according to anthropologists) of their most
gifted children. I saw this article today on a table at a car dealership, although I would have received it by mail months ago.
The sacrifices apparently came after a climate change – a lesson
– and were made to appease the gods. The
people would eventually be conquered by the Incas.
Of course, we may hear of other such narratives among groups
like the Maya, whose civilization was even more sophisticated than we had
thought.
But the event 500 years ago is particularly disturbing. This was a deliberate sacrifice of children
for the stability of the state. This was not even honorable in the sense of
young men who lost their lives in a necessary battle. This was sacrifice –
abnegation or erasure for its own sake, to prove that sometimes it happens –
pure fascism.
Some people might see the Vietnam war, with its draft
supported by student deferments for the privileged until 1969 as comparable. But
in this ancient history case, the kids were already privileged, and their destruction
seems to have been painful, graphic and brutal, even more so than suicide
bombers today.
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