Most of what we have been told about huacas came from the
Jesuit Priest Bernabe Cobo, who wrote a hundred years after the conquest.
Each of the shrines was attended by a family. Every huaca had prescribed
sacrifices to be made on specific days. Most of the sacrifices were not
human, but Cobo claimed that 32 of the shrines required human sacrifice,
usually of children. This is questioned by many who see in his statistics
a rationalization for the conquest, which was, after all , a mission to
bring the true religion to the heathens.
Photo by Kurt Bennett