Despite a long history of human sacrifice, people in Peru's Lambayeque Valley had surprisingly low levels of everyday violence, a new study of their remains finds, Live Science reported. Sacrifice occurred in the valley over thousands of years. Researchers think at least some mass offerings were attempts to appease the gods after El Niño events, which can bring intense rain and flooding in Peru. "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," co-author Haagen Klaus, an anthropology professor at George Mason University, told Live Science. Other findings include more than 200 children found near Huanchaco who were sacrificed sometime between 600 and 800 years ago, possibly during an El Niño.
Those ritual deaths stand in contrast to the rest of the skeletal record. Klaus and co-author Thomas Snyder, a bioarchaeologist at New York University, analyzed remains of 1,519 people from the valley who lived between roughly 1500 B.C. and A.D. 1800, and whose bones were preserved well enough to show violent trauma. "Only 25 (1.6%) exhibited traumatic lesions consistent with interpersonal conflict, and 77 exhibited post-cranial traumatic lesions consistent with accidental trauma (5.1%)," they wrote in a paper published Nov. 8 in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, titled "Pax Lambayeque?" The team found no link between a person's sex and violence. The question the paper leaves is why everyday conflict was so uncommon in a place that also practiced sacrifice.
"Ritual violence may have alleviated non-ritual violence by creating spaces where social tensions could get worked out in a few different ways," Klaus said. He also cautioned that other parts of Peru practiced sacrifice without the same low levels of interpersonal violence. Societies that originated in the highlands, such as the Tiwanaku, Wari, and Inca, had to deal with poorer soils and cold temperatures, which the authors said may have been a factor. "Evidence of sub-lethal and lethal violence forceful enough to break bone is significantly higher in some areas of Peru's highlands," Klaus said. People in the Lambayeque Valley may have had better access to marine and river resources, including seafood and irrigation, which could have eased conflict by providing more food.
Researchers not involved in the study offered other readings. Elizabeth Arkush, an anthropology professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said environmental conditions may have reduced conflict, or there could be "really unusual cultural practices in this region of avoiding or mediating conflict." Constanza Ceruti, an anthropologist and National Geographic Society explorer, praised the large sample and noted that sacrifice is "primarily associated [with] the manipulation and concentration of power by elites." Jordi Rivera Prince of Tulane University said the findings fit her excavations in the region, where she has "found little evidence of violent trauma during the Salinar (400-200 BCE)." Weston McCool of Cal Poly called the paper additional evidence for "a sharp break in patterns of violence between the Andean coast and highlands," while saying the nature of coastal resilience "remains an important question." The verified result is a low rate of everyday trauma in a large coastal sample, not a simple claim that sacrifice kept the peace.