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Historic Disasters That Were Way Worse Than People Think

Khalid Elhassan April 6, 2020 33 min

Yellow River - 1887 Yellow River flood — 1887 Yellow River Flood. Hakai Magazine

8. Peru’s Human Sacrifice Volcano

50 miles from the city of Arequipa in Peru is Huaynaputina, an Andean Mountains volcano. The cliché of natives making human sacrifices to volcanoes is neither cliché or mythical when it comes to Huaynaputina: such sacrifices actually were made to this volcano. The Spanish put a halt to such practices after they conquered Peru and introduced Catholicism.

However, considering what happened not long after the sacrifices stopped, maybe the natives had been on to something. On February 19^th, 1600, Huaynaputina exploded in the biggest volcanic eruption ever experienced in South America during recorded history. The consequences were catastrophic locally, and produced negative impacts worldwide, including the killing of millions of Russians thousands of miles away. Naturally, the natives concluded that the end of the sacrifices had angered Supay, their god of death, who expressed his displeasure with the massive eruption.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.