The capacocha—the Inca’s main sacrificial ritual—wasn’t just meant as an offering to appease higher beings. Rather, they believed the sacrificed, typically children, would ascend to become a messenger between humans and the gods. And to make the “ascension” less painful, the Inca would offer coca and alcohol to the sacrifice—the methods for which seem to be more diverse than previously believed.

In a study published today in Antiquity, researchers report results from the analysis of hair and nail samples from eight Inca mummies, discovered on volcanoes in Peru and Argentina. Although scientists already knew the Inca gave psychoactive plants to sacrificed individuals, it was less clear what specific plants they received. From a toxicological analysis of the keratin structures in the mummies’ hair and nails, the team identified cocaine—from coca leaves, a holy plant to the Inca—in all the mummies studied. Half of the mummies showed signs of alcohol consumption. The researchers theorize this was to help calm the children during the sacrificial rites.

“What is interesting is that, although coca appears to have been a common element of the capacocha ritual, the use of other psychoactive substances varied between individuals and locations,” Dagmara Socha, the study’s first author and a bioarchaeologist at the University of Warsaw, Poland, told Gizmodo. “This suggests that the preparation of children for sacrifice was not uniform across the Inca Empire.”

As Peruvian archaeologist Lidio Valdez previously told Gizmodo , the Inca believed they lived on land owned by divine beings and, ideally, that they should act to keep the gods happy.

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