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DNA analysis offers new insights into A Yale-led research team has conducted the first genome-wide study of retainers who lived and worked at Machu Picchu.
A genetic analysis suggests that the servants and retainers who lived, worked, and died at Machu Picchu, the renowned 15
th century Inca palace in southern Peru, were a diverse community representing many different ethnic groups from across the Inca empire.
The genomic data, described in a new study in Science Advances, is the first investigation of the genomic diversity of individuals buried at Machu Picchu and adjacent places around Cusco, the Inca capital. It builds upon previous archeological and bio-archaeological research, including a 2021 Yale-led study which found that
Machu Picchu (AD 1420-1530) is older than was previously believed.
"The DNA analysis not only
confirms the historical accounts that retainers were drawn from many different ethnic groups under Inca control, but it also demonstrates a much greater diversity of origins than had been suspected with individuals being brought from the entire empire," said archaeologist Richard Burger, the Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and lead researcher for the Machu Picchu project.
Comment: And this isn't the first item that has been found to have been fashioned from a meteorite; and some researchers speculate this spate of raining meteors of the period not only contributed to the downfall of civilisations, but also may have been a catalyst for metallurgy: