The Chinchorro people lived along the arid coast of the Atacama Desert between Antofagasta in Chile, and Ilo in Peru between 9,000 and 2,500 years BP.
They didn't have ceramics yet they developed a complex mummification technology for their dead.
They obtained freshwater from springs that were common at that time (now the region is much more arid), and were sedentary fishermen. They built small settlements and cemeteries (where they buried their mummified dead), these are the world's oldest mummies, far older than the Egyptian ones.
They also hunted llamas and birds, gathered plants like quinoa and junquillo. Using reeds to build ropes and bedding.
They made fish hooks with thorns, and used darts, harpoons and spears to hunt. They also collected mussels and hunted seals.
They were named after a beach, Chinchorro. The word is Spanish and can mean either "small rowing boat" or "tiny fishing net."
Around 2000 BP, a new group of people, from the Peruvian and Bolivian Highlands arrived, they cultivated corn, and also manufactured ceramics. The Chinchorro way of life vanished.
Changos
However, there was a group of people that lived in the Chinchorro home territory during historic times. The Spaniards met them there in the 1500s. Were they related to the Chinchorro people?
The Spaniards called them "camanchacos" (from the aymara word for mist), "camanchangos", and "changos". They were fishermen living between Camaná and Coquimbo. They were also known as coastal Uros, after the Uro people of Lake Titicaca (Peru and Bolivia), who were also fishermen.
They lived in small communities, fished and gathered eggs of the guano birds, and mussels. They were primitive and the Spanish noted their faded fair-colored hair and red skin (stained with sea lion-sea wolf blood that they also drank, in lieu of water). Lizárraga described them in the late 1500s as follows (see chap. 68)"they dress in sea wolf hides, and in many parts along this coast they drink the blood of these wolves due to lack of water, they don't have or eat maize, their food is only fish and mussels. These Indians are called Camanchacas, because their faces and body skin has become like a red crust, very hard. They say it comes frmo the blood of sea wolves, that they drink, and for this color they are well known"
They finally disappeared in the 1890s, absorbed by modern culture.
In the early 1900s, Boman suggested that these people were the last of the Chinchorro lineage. And he was right.
Chango and Chinchorro are linked by DNA
A paper by Rothammer, Moraca, Santoro, and Arriaza, published in 2010 found "scientific support, using molecular methodology, to the alleged biological links that joined the descendants of proto historic Chango fishermen from Puposo cove, a place located 15 kilometers north of Taltal, with prehistoric fishermen from Chinchorro culture, that developed in Northern Chile and Southern Peru between 7900 and 4000 BC"
Amédée Frézier included an engraving of the Changos with their sea wolf skin rafts, he met them during his expedition to Chile and Peru (1712-1714). See below.
They originally made reed boats like thos of the Uros, but later, c.200 AD, developed more were sofisticated craft. They were made with inflated seal skins, that were sewn together, caulked and air was blown into them to provide buoyancy. A wood frame was fixed on top of two floats, resulting in a seaworthy raft.
Europeaan DNA in the Chinchorro people?
A paper (that is not peer-reviewed) titled "European admixture in Chinchorro DNA" by Robert Smith puts forward the theory that Chinchorro people somehow admixed with Europeans in Pre-Hispanic times. Suggesting a transatlantic link (See Solutrean Hypothesis). I will quote it below to be fair, but I am highly skeptical:
"Conclusions
The above qpAdm, principal component, and ADMIXTURE analyses of 23 ancient American samples reveal that one of them, taken from a Chinchorro mummy of northern Chile dated to 3972–3806 BC, contains 30–40% European admixture. That the non-Amerindian admixture present in the Chinchorro sample is more closely related to Europeans than to Middle Easterners is demonstrated by both the principal component and ADMIXTURE analyses.
The ADMIXTURE analyses further shed light on exactly which European population the non-Amerindian admixture in the Chinchorro sample might be from: only the pre-LGM Europeans show a pattern of non-Amerindian components similar to that seen in the Chinchorro sample, which strongly suggests that the pre-LGM Aurignacians or Gravettians, or possibly the LGM Solutreans, were the source of the admixture.
The Solutreans seem like a particularly likely source population, in light of the ample archeological evidence for their presence in the Americas. A complicating factor in identifying the exact source of the European admixture in the Chinchorro sample is the amount of divergent genetic drift that would have occurred between the arrival of the European source population in the Americas and the time of the Chinchorro individual analyzed.
If the Solutreans were the source, and if they arrived in the Americas around 26,000 years ago, then around 20,000 years of divergent genetic drift would have accumulated in their American descendants by the time of the Chinchorro individual.
This drift might account for the differences in the exact proportions of the non-Amerindian components in the Chinchorro and pre-LGM European samples, but it could also conceivably result in a somewhat later European population, such as the Magdalenians, not being correctly identified as the true source population.
Regardless of the exact source of the European admixture in the Chinchorro sample, the fact that such admixture exists is the first ancient DNA proof of pre-Norse transatlantic contact."
There are posts (see A, and B, C) that discuss this finding, which you can read, and this is the blog of the author with the related posts on the Chinchorros.
Personally, I guess that the samples were contaminate by some European who handled them without preserving their integrity. Sweat, or skin cells of this European were the ones that gave the "Euro" origin to the Chinchorro remains.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall ©
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