Peru’s Hidden Genetic Legacy links to Ancient Moche Populations
The northern coast of Peru is a region known for its rich archaeological heritage, but its people’s history is still underexplored. An international team of geneticists and linguists investigated the deep genetic roots and historical continuity of the region, in a new study published in Scientific Reports.
By the NCCR Evolving Language
Much of South America’s history from before the Spanish conquest remains unknown. The absence of written records from many ancient cultures, coupled with an historical focus on the colonial period, has left significant gaps in our understanding of the continent’s past. The Central Andes are home to some of the continent’s earliest and most complex societies. Research has focused on the Inca and Tiwanaku civilizations of the southern highlands, but the northern coast of Peru was just as significant. There, the Moche culture emerged around 2000 years ago. They built monumental pyramids and created striking ceramics that captured their daily life in great detail.
To bridge the past and the present of the region and rebalance the narrative of the region, an international group of researchers from the University of Zurich, the University of Cagliari and the Universidad de San Martín de Porres (USMP) in Lima used genetical analysis to explore the lineages of the inhabitants of the North Coast of Peru, reaching back to thousands of years.
Genetic testing in local populations
The researchers collected saliva samples from voluntary participants from various villages of the North Coast of Peru, including small fishing communities where the now-extinct Mochica language was once spoken. From these anonymous donors, the researchers extracted their genetic data. With this, they aimed to reconstruct the history of these people.
“We used mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA, which are widely used markers for genetic studies, particularly suitable to reconstruct genealogies,” says lead author Chiara Barbieri, geneticist from the University of Zurich and the University of Cagliari. Y chromosome DNA has the particularity of only being passed by the father to male children, while mitochondrial DNA is only transmitted by the mother, to both male and female children. The team was able to track genetic lineages that can be found only in the North Coast of Peru and not in the rest of the continent, together with genetic lineages that are related to other Peruvian and Ecuadorian groups.
Bridging the past and the present
To bridge modern genetic patterns with the deep history of the region, the team of scientists compared the newly collected genetic data to ancient DNA extracted from human remains found in archeological sites in the same region, such as La Galgada (ca. 4000 years ago), El Brujo (ca. 1600 years ago), and Huaca Prieta (ca. 1400 years ago).
“We’re showing that people living today on the North Coast are related to populations that shaped some of the continent’s most remarkable prehispanic cultures,” says Barbieri. According to their results, the local lineages are deeply rooted in the region: some of today’s Northern Coast inhabitants are genetically very close to ancient individuals that lived there. This provides genetic evidence of continuity across millennia. The researchers also found a divide between the north and the south of the region in genetic patterns, which aligns with known cultural and linguistic boundaries from the time of the Moche civilization.
Linguistics, archaeology and genetics
The genetic results support archaeological reconstructions of the continent’s history, but the researchers also incorporated linguistics to better understand the past of this region. For example, the Peruvian North Coast region was once home to diverse languages that are no longer spoken, but known thanks to historical documentation starting from the Colonial period, as well as local toponyms, surnames and subtle traces in the Spanish spoken today. “These languages were unrelated to the language families of the Andes and Amazonia and must have developed independently for millennia,” adds Matthias Urban, linguist from the CNRS who participated in the study.
This signature of local cultural development can now be matched with the region’s distinctive genetic lineages. “It allows us to look at the living heirs of cultures that have been around 5,000 years, and just the last 500 have written records” explains co-author Ricardo Fujita, geneticist at the Centro de Genética y Biología Molecular at USMP Lima. “Genetics is offering a new line of evidence to complement the work of archaeologists and linguists unveiling the ancestral connections among contemporary Coastal, Andean and Amazonian populations,” concludes co-author José Sandoval of USMP Lima.
