Summary

Young children selected to be sacrificed as part of elaborate Inca rituals were given psychedelic and intoxicating substances, possibly to relieve the terror of their imminent death or in the belief that the drugs would help them communicate with the gods. “We cannot reconstruct the children’s emotions or determine precisely how they experienced these events,” says Dagmara Socha at the University of Warsaw, Poland. “However, we should not assume that being selected for a prestigious religious ceremony necessarily meant that the experience was not frightening or traumatic.”

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