The Inca boy was killed as part of a ritual of child sacrifice called capacocha. Researchers extracted mitochondrial DNA from lung tissue (inset) pulled from the mummy. PHOTO REPRODUCED FROM SCIENTIFIC REPORTS WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CUYO PUBLISHER (ARGENTINA)Ancient mitochondrial DNA from a 7-year-old boy who was sacrificed in an Incan ritual 500 years ago is yielding surprising clues about the genetic makeup of Native Americans. Researchers led by geneticist Antonio Salas of Spain’s University of Santiago de Compostela sequenced the mitochondrial genome of the so-called Aconcagua boy and identified a novel genetic subgroup that likely arose in the Andes more than 14,000 years ago. The team published its findings last week (November 12) in Scientific Reports.
“It’s only one individual, but it’s a specific sub-lineage in a restricted geographic area,” Lars Fehren-Schmitz, a geneticist and anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved with the study, told The Guardian. The findings, he added, suggest that “people came to the Americas quite rapidly and then groups stopped in isolated places, creating their own demographic complexities.”
The researchers targeted mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the boy’s lung, as it was a tissue that was unlikely to have suffered contamination since the body was discovered in 1985 by hikers climbing Argentina’s Aconcagua mountain. The corpse had been essentially mummified by the site’s dry air and cold temperatures. “You assume . . . no one has touched the lung with their own ...
