Want to make nice with the neighbors? Try sacrificing a few llamas

Some 500 years ago, four elaborately adorned llamas looked out over a low, grassy plain in the Acari Valley near the southern coast of what is now Peru for the last time. The animals, whose mummified remains were found in 2018, were ritually sacrificed and buried beneath the floor of a building. Now, researchers think they know why: They were a “getting to know you” present from the Inca Empire to their recently conquered neighbors.

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