Archaeologists are piecing together the real-life tragedy of a 13-year-old

Archaeologists are piecing together the real-life tragedy of a 13-year-old girl chosen as a gift to the gods, who was killed more than five centuries ago on the summit of a sacred four-mile-high mountain in South America.

By pioneering a remarkable bio-chemical analytical process to extract data from her hair, British scientists have been able to trace the nature of her food and drink consumption over the final 24 months of her life.

Much of the key data was revealed in the US scientific journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), augmenting other data from the same research team, published six years ago.

"We have been able to quite literally unlock history from her hair, giving voice to a very personal account of what happened to her," said Dr. Andrew Wilson of the University of Bradford.

The hair analysis and other evidence reveals, for the first time, the treatment of human sacrificial victims from the moment of selection to the point of death. It reveals how the teenager was given a natural stimulant and substantial quantities of alcohol.

Her tragic story may well have begun not far from where she was ultimately sacrificed in what is today a mountainous area of north-west Argentina. It was an area that had been conquered by the Inca Empire in the second half of the 15 century.

The Incas and indeed some earlier South American civilisations believed that agricultural fertility - and prosperity and success in general - relied, at least in part, on ensuring divine help by making human sacrifices to the gods. It is thought that throughout Inca history tens of thousands of such sacrifices were carried out.

Periodically, substantial numbers of children were selected for imperial service by local Inca officials and sent to the empire's capital Cusco in what is now Peru.

There, further selection processes took place in which some, males as well as females, were allocated to the emperor as servants and retainers.

Many of the girls were given as wives to members of the Inca elite or were allocated to religious institutions as trainee priestesses. But others (boys as well as girls) - physically the most perfect individuals with no physical blemishes - were selected for sacrifice.

- The Independent