The bodies of sacrificed children have been found across the Incan Empire – and now a chilling detail about their final moments has been revealed.

A toxicological analysis of the mummified remains showed that they had been fed cocaine, alcohol, and ayahuasca before being killed.

Strikingly, all eight of the mummies tested were found to contain the chemical traces of cocaine.

This strongly suggests that chewing coca leaves in the months leading up to their death was a key part of the ritual.

Although coca leaves played an important role in Incan religious beliefs as offerings to the gods, they may have also had a more practical role.

With some of the sacrifices taking place on desolate mountaintops over 19,685ft (6,000m) high, the coca leaves could have helped reduce altitude sickness and fatigue during the gruelling final journey.

Meanwhile, four of the eight mummies were found to have been plied with alcohol in the form of a maize beer called Chicha.

According to the researchers, this would have been used to dull the children’s senses and keep them calm during the ritual’s deadly conclusion.

n the early 15th century, during the height of the Incan Empire’s power, a ritual practice of child sacrifice known as ‘capacocha’ started to emerge.

Children from around the empire were chosen for their perceived purity and exceptional beauty and taken to Cuzco, the political and religious heart of the empire.

From there, they would be taken out on long, elaborate pilgrimages that eventually led to remote mountaintop shrines.

After being bludgeoned to death with a club, the child would be mummified and entombed in the shrine, serving as a conduit between the living world and the gods.

Their shrine would typically become the centre of religious cults, often led by their own family members, who treated the mummified bodies as oracles.

Previous studies and historical records suggest the Incans used psychoactive plants; little is known about how these were used during the capacocha ritual.

Luckily, the incredibly dry and cold mountain air means that these mummies are in exceptionally good states of preservation.

In this new study, published in the journal Antiquity, the researchers took samples of hair and fingernail material from eight mountaintop mummies.

Read More: The drugs of death: Inca child sacrifices were given cocaine, alcohol and ayahuasca before being killed on mountaintops