The three Inca children were left to freeze to death as a sacrifice to the gods, anthropologist Johan Reinhard said.

"[They] weren't being sacrificed to feed the gods," Reinhard told National Geographic News in 2005. "They were being sacrificed to enter into the realm of the gods. It was considered a great honor.

"These children didn't die in the sense that we think: They went to live in a paradise with the gods. … It was a transition into a better life, one that these children were greatly honored [to have]."

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