Inca boy sacrificed on mountaintop reveals rare DNA
Posted On: Dec 20th, 2015 at 13:43
Argentina (Peru, Chile, Bolivia)
A boy sacrificed by the Inca on a mountaintop in Argentina around 500 years ago has had his complete mitochondrial DNA sequenced and this maternal DNA is from an extremely rare genome.
One section of the DNA can be traced through the Paleoindian genome all the way to 18,000 years ago, but the rare DNA, which has only been found in a few individuals in modern-day Peru and Bolivia, was most likely unique to the Andes around 14,000 years ago and has since been diluted and almost disappeared.
This rare DNA, known as C1bi, comes from a population that has never been identified, but it was likely a common genome prior to the arrival of those horrible Europeans.
