Here's How Peru's Ancient People Survived in the Treacherous Andes.

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Two graduate students and a local villager excavate a burial at Jiskairumoko, in Peru.
Credit: Mark Aldenderfer
▼ By about 7,000 years ago, ancient people who lived high in the Andes Mountains had developed bigger hearts and slightly higher blood pressure, among other adaptations, to better survive life at those treacherous heights, a new genetic analysis shows.
And those changes may have occurred soon after people began living permanently in the highlands.undefined
"Despite harsh environmental factors, the Andes were populated relatively early after entry into the [South American] continent," the researchers wrote in the study, published online yesterday (Nov. 8) in the journal  Science Advances. "The adaptive traits necessary for permanent occupation may have been selected for in a relatively short amount of time, on the order of a few thousand years."
High in the mountains
Archaeological findings indicate that hunter-gatherers began living in the Andean highlands at least 12,000 years ago, and permanent occupation began around 9,000 years ago. To learn more about the ancient people who lived around Lake Titicaca, the researchers analyzed the DNA from ancient and modern people in the region.
The scientific team collected DNA from the remains of seven ancient people found at sites from one of three different cultural periods: the Soro Mik'aya Patjxa, an 8,000- to 6,500-year-old site where hunters and  gathererslived; the Kaillachuro, an approximately 3,800-year-old site whose people transitioned from foraging to farming; and the Rio Uncallane, a series of cave-crevice tombs dating to about 1,800 years ago.
Then, the scientists compared this ancient DNA with DNA from ancient and modern South American populations inhabiting the lowlands as well as the highlands, and from other ancient Native American people who lived farther away. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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