DNA study on mummies suggests climate instability drove ancient Peruvians to migrate
Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - 09:30
in Paleontology & Archaeology
(Phys.org) —An international team of researchers has concluded that migrations by pre-Columbian Andean societies were due to climatic changes, rather than growth in the Wari empire, as was previously suggested. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes how they conducted mitochondrial DNA analysis on mummies from the period combined with a Bayesian modeling approach to trace the migration activities of the people that lived in Peru between 840 BC and 1450 AD.