The research also looks again at the manners of their deaths and found that none of three children in the Inca ritual, known as Capacocha, died in the ways that scientists previously thought.
But some other experts, while welcoming the study, are cautious about some of its details.
An aerial view of Cerro El Plomo in the Andes of Chile, where El Plomo Boy was sacrificed in about 1480. (Image credit: dreamextreme via Getty Images)
It was long thought that the El Plomo boy had died from hypothermia, or exposure to freezing temperatures, on the high peak, and that the Cerro Esmeralda girls were killed by strangulation. But the new study, published July 15 in the journal Science Advances, rejects those ideas.
It "demonstrates that previously investigated contexts can continue to provide crucial information when revisited using new technologies, minimally invasive methods, and an ethical perspective," Silva-Pinto said.
A new study finds that El Plomo Boy — whose mummy is shown here being weighed — didn't die from exposure to the cold, but from blunt force trauma to the head. (Image credit: FPG via Getty Images)
Silva-Pinto said the forensic examination should be considered within the Andean worldview, which didn't see death as the end of existence.
Sacred pilgrimage
The researchers carried out chemical studies on tiny samples of hair from the mummies by looking at isotopes, or different versions of the same element that have varying numbers of neutrons in their nuclei. The isotopes from food and water people consume are incorporated into their hair, shedding light on where they've lived. The team also examined samples of fractured bones for radiocarbon dating.
Silva-Pinto said the pilgrimages connected outlying regions with the high mountains and other sites where the ceremonies culminated. "Along the routes, local communities would have received the pilgrims and participated in ceremonies involving the sharing of food and beverages," she said. The routes thereby became sacred landscapes, and the central Inca state used this to consolidate its presence in incorporated territories, she said.
Bioarchaeologist Dagmara Socha from the University of Warsaw in Poland, who studies the Capacocha mummies but who was not involved in this particular examination, cautioned that the conclusions drawn from the isotope analysis might be flawed. "Isotopic analyses alone do not allow us to reconstruct the potential route taken during the journey," she told Live Science in an email. "In several cases, the observed isotopic changes were not statistically significant and may also reflect seasonal variation in diet."
Related storiesThe study is "interesting and potentially valuable, but some of the interpretations go beyond what can be reliably concluded from the available evidence," she told Live Science in an email.
But earlier studies showed that Capacocha individuals sometimes started their trek in Inca regions, not only at the capital: '''Cuzco as the sole engine of conquest' is an interpretive choice that neither this study nor the broader body of comparative evidence on Capacocha unequivocally supports," Mignone said.
How much do you know about the first people to reach the Americas? Find out with our First Americans quiz!
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