Chinchorros, Europe and their tetanus strain...

A paper published in Nature in Sept. 2023, reported about different Clostridium tetanus (tetanus) strains found in ancient archaeological remains, some of which included Chinchorro mummies. Their findings are interesting and may shed some light on the European DNA found in Chinchorro remains.

The authors studied the Clostridium tetani a microbe which produces a potent neurotixin that causes tetanus or "lockjaw" disease (the tetanus neurotoxin or TeNT). They identifed TeNT variants in South American archaeological remains, and one TeNT variant, extracted from a 6000-year-old Chinchorro mummy was still active, and provoked paralysis in mice.

Their data included samples from Japanese (3000 BP), Egyptian (3900 BP), Chinchorro remains (5900 BP). And modern samples too.

Normally you'd expect more divergence to be associated with older lineages, that evolved separately from others, over longer periods of time. The study reported "five strains (Sanganji-A2-Tooth, Chinchorro-Mummy-Bone, SLC-France-Tooth, Karolva-Tooth, Chincha-UC12-24-Tooth) were identified ... as possessing higher estimated levels of strain variation."

They measured the DNA damage in the bacteria samples to use it as an indicator of antiquity (more damage implies an older sample which has had more time to degrade), this also affects the human DNA and mtDNA.

But the researchers noticed that bacterial DNA had less damage than the mtDNA in the human tissue they came from. The authors interpreted this by assuming that less damage meant less age, implying that the tetanus and the humans carrying them were not contemporary: "damage rates were generally lower than the corresponding human mtDNA rates, especially for some samples (e.g., Tenerife-004, Tenerife-013, Chinchorro-Mummy-Bone), which may suggest that a subset of the archeological samples have been colonized by C. tetani at later dates." Notice it includes two samples from the Canary Islands, and the Chinchorro bone sample.

Phylogenetic Tree. From the paper

The ancient lineages are highlighted in bold font. And as expected, certain lineages cluster together, the "1H" lineage is found in ancient American samples while "2" lineages were Old World ones, and the "X" clade was found exclusively in Europe. We marked the Chinchorro samples with red arrows in the image above.

The authors point out that "Notably... the Sanganji, Tenerife, Chinchorro, and Chincha samples do not show evidence of branch shortening in the tree indicative of ancient genomes, and instead cluster with modern strains. These... tend to have higher rates of strain variation, which could affect branch lengths, or low damage rates potentially indicative of a more recent origin."

When they focused on the "tent" gene sequences they found that "The largest number of unique substitutions occurred in tent/Chinchorro... which is the oldest sample in our dataset [with] 18 unique substitutions not found in modern tent, and 12 of these are shared with tent/El-Yaral and 10 with tent/Chiribaya. The three associated acBins also cluster as neighbors in the phylogenomic tree ... and the three associated archeological samples originate from a similar geographic region in Peru and Chile ... suggest[ing] a common evolutionary origin for these C. tetani strains and their unique neurotoxin genes and highlight tent subgroup 3 as a distinct group of tent variants exclusive to ancient samples."

This is, in my opinon, proof of an ancient origin (hichly diverse, unique), and associated with variants that are found in ancient samples from the same geographical region in Peru and Chile.

However, the authors suspect that the tetanus varieties found in these samples are recent and came from the researchers who handled the remains or from the soil that was in contact with them. It is a good point:

"...a variety of environmental factors and mechanisms may account for the presence of toxigenic clostridia in aDNA samples. These include the possibility of their introduction by human handling of archeological samples by researchers, their introduction from human handlers during ancient mummy preparation practices, or post-mortem colonization by environmental (e.g., soil) clostridia. Regarding our identification of C. tetani in numerous mummy samples, it is worth mentioning that although today mummies are manipulated taking in consideration cross-contamination, during the 1990s when some of these mummies were first discovered, fieldwork procedures were different. Thus, it is notable that the Chinchorro mummy sample from which we identified the TeNT/Chinchorro toxin, was not always handled by researchers using nitrile gloves during digging; also, these mummies have been manipulated by many researchers since their initial discovery (B. Arriaza, Personal communication)."

But, how could have the samples from El Yaral and Chiribaya have a similar strain? Were the same researchers handling all of these bones? And, why aren't these strains of tetanus found in modern samples in the countries from which these researchers of the 1990s came from?

This 1H strain is a singularity, and the authors find it strange they note that only one modern sample (you can see it in the tree, in gray, as 2017.061) clusters with the American strains of Chichorro. It was found in France. How could an ancient Amerindian tetanus microbe appear in France?

The scientists explain this incongruity as follows: (aDNA = ancient DNA)

"Lineage 1H in particular has undergone the greatest expansion through the newly identified aDNA-associated C. tetani genomes, from one known sample derived from a patient in France in 2016 10, to 9 additional draft genomes assembled from ancient DNA. This suggests that a broader diversity of 1H strains may exist in undersampled environments. Interestingly, these newly identified lineage 1H strains share a common pattern of originating from the Americas, which suggests that a lineage 1H C. tetani strain specific to (or abundant within) this region may have colonized these samples at some point in the past."

Nevertheless, the ancient Amerindian samples "revealed novel variants and lineages of TeNT, including the newly identified “subgroup 3” toxins: TeNT/Chinchorro, TeNT/El-Yaral toxins, and TeNT/Chiribaya-Alta. Not only do these toxins share a similar mutational profile, but they are derived from a similar geographic area (regions of Peru and Chile in South America) and their associated C. tetani genomes also cluster phylogenetically as the closest neighbors... the tent/Chinchorro gene also happened to be most divergent from modern tent sequences by possessing the greatest number of unique substitutions. Despite being the most divergent tent, [it]... did not show strong patterns of DNA damage, and the damage level was weaker than that for human mtDNA. This indicates that, despite originating from the oldest sample in our dataset and possessing a unique tent variant, it is possible that the Chinchorro mummy-associated C. tetani strain may be a relatively “newer” strain that colonized the sample post-mortem."

Another paper, the one that identified the H1 variant in France, includes a tree (see its Figure 1), as can be seen, the only H1 sample detected is located on a separate branch that is distinct from all other branches A to G in Clade 1. This means an ancient origin, close to the root from which all these tetanus variants originated.

A recent paper, published this year studying botulism and tetanus, also reported "DNA damage patterns" and also found "that human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) exhibited significant damage ... consistent with expectations for degraded ancient DNA. However, the majority of toxin genes displayed minimal damage... This discrepancy suggests that most toxin genes in our dataset have undergone less degradation than the endogenous host DNA. "

They say that human handling, scavengers or soil contamination could have included younger bacteria into the samples, but also add a new suggestion: that the bacteria are more resistant to degradation. They stat that: "This may be due to differential DNA preservation (Clostridium spores may be more resistant to environmental degradation, leading to better long-term DNA preservation)." They suggest ways by which further studies could prove which factor causes this different degradation.

This 2025 study also indicates that TeNT "was also identified in aDNA from horses, wild bears, gorillas, and chimpanzees." However, I must add, that these animals were not found in Pre-Hispanic America, so they couldn't act as natural sources..

Let's hope that further research clarifies the degradation issue, and more information is gathered on the 1H variant and its distribution around the world.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Chango - Chinchorro boat people

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.

Chinchorro mummy. Source

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.

Chango sea wolf skin raft. Source

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.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall © 

The Kofkeche

My previous post explored the genetics of Southern Patagonia. It mentions final migratory wave that finalized around 2,000 years ago. I mentioned evidence supporting the movement of people of Amazonian origin into what is now Argentina, and then, across the Andes into Chile.

I also mentioned the possibility that the Mapuche people were latecomers to the region.

In today's post I will mention the people that the Mapuche displaced.

Kofkeche, the bread people

It is an interesting fact that the island of Chiloé and the Arauco region, home of the Trauco dwarf, were also the home of a branch of the Mapuche people, the “Huilliche” group (southern people).

Before the arrival of the Spaniards, pushed by the other Mapuche groups in Central Chile, these Huilliche left their homeland in the Arauco and invaded Chiloé, where they displaced and absorbed the original Chono “boat people” who lived there.

They also brought along their beliefs, among which was the devilish Trauco. American naturalist, Dillman Samuel Bullock Lytle (1878-1971), excavated the Huilliche’s Arauco homeland during the mid-twentieth century and uncovered funerary urns that were different from those used by the Huilliche and whose size indicated a small race. An adult’s mummy, five hundred years old, recently found in Angol was barely 1.30 m tall (4 ft. .2 in.)

Kofkeche funerary urns. Source

These findings led Bullock to believe that the Mapuche (including the Huilliche) were not the area’s original inhabitants. He assumed that they had originated in the Argentine Pampas and then migrated to Chile. When they arrived there, they came across a race of “small people,” which he named Kofkeche.

Bullock’s archaeological proof and conjectures received corroboration from oral tradition; he uncovered a Mapuche legend that mentioned “small people” or “Kofkeche.” The Mapuche words kofke and che mean “bread” and “people.” They got that name because they were small like country loaves. Bullock also mentioned a story told by an old Mapuche woman named Cayetey Anteu, whose grandmother had told her that “when the first Mapuche arrived, there were people very different from them […] they were short and thick, somewhat fat, and the Mapuche called them Kofkeche.” (Source)

"Land of the Kofkeche" (Tierra de los Kofkeches). Source

Mapuche cosmogony also mentions the Kofkeche; they are evil, dwarfish creatures from an underworld that interact with ours. The Mapuche conceive the universe as a series of platforms piled upon each other in space; below our platform, where the humans live, is another level, the land of the dwarves. It is named Kofkeche Mapu or Laftrache Mapu (land of the tiny people).

Maybe the Kofkeche were related to the other groups of “small” (short statured) people inhabiting the Pacific Ocean coast northwards, into Perú (like the Chinchorro-Chango people), and lived in peace until their destruction by the invading Mapuche groups who migrated to Chile later on.

Argentine historian Rodolfo Casamiquela suspected that the Mapuche of the Arauco area were alluding to the Chono boat people “who are short,” and mentioned that in 1975 they still considered the Chubut natives as “short people, one meter tall [3 ft], who speak another language.”

In other words, the arrival of the Mapuche around 2000 years ago displaced and replaced the Kofkeche, Poya, and Chono people from the Lake District area in Chile's northern Patagonia, between the Bio Bio River and the Gulf of Ancud.

Poyas

The mysterious Poya people are mentioned by different early explorers, but little is known about them. They used canose, and lived by the lakes of this area, and may have been related to the Chonos. I will write about them in a future post.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Chono mummies of Patagonia

Chilean naval officer Enrique Simpson Baeza (1835-1901) conducted four expeditions, exploring the Patagonian coast, and its rivers in the 1870s. In those days, the sources of these rivers, and the geography of the inland region was unknown. Simpson had a great career, and eventually attained the rank of Admiral.

He recorded his expeditions in meticulous journals. In them, he mentions the Chono mummies.

Chonos

The Chono people were canoe people, they lived nomadic life, boating in their three-plank canoes (dalcas) in the Pacifc Ocean south of Chiloé Island, in the islands north of Taitao Peninsula.

They fished, collected shellfish, and hunted sea wolves, sea lions, gathered seaweed (kelp), and also bred long-haired dogs with which they wove crude blankets.

Their lifestyle was similar to the Fuegian canoe people, the Yagans and Alakaluf, but being closer to the Spanish colony in Chiloe, they were soon affected by European disease, raids, forced relocation (with the good intention of civilizing them, a labor conducted by Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries). This led to the loss of their culture. They died out or were absorbed by the "Chilote" mestizo population in Chiloe by the mid 1700s.

Simpson wrote about them, the remains he saw of their huts and burials. During his third expedition (1871-72) he recorded the folloiwng (source):

"Their homes were caves, and sometimes circular huts whose pegs I have seen. Sometimes they buried their dead close to these homes; but usually they preferred to place them in caves, covering them with branches. In many of them, the naval pilot, in the past, found mummies placed in coffins of cypress bark, shaped like eggs, but they have all been removed or destroyed."

During his fourth expedidion (1872-73) he added more information (source):

"In this channel there is an inlet that I have named Mummies, because it has, in a cliff, about two meters above the water [6.1 ft.] some small caves where remains of the Chono Indians race have been found. Now only some bone fragments can be seen, because the skeletons have been extracted perfectly, years ago, by sealers and sold to museums."

Chono mummies were reported in Victorian magazines and one entry in F. Ratzel's The History of Mankind: The cultured races of America, published in 1897 mentions caves with mummies and stone tools had been found on the Guaitecas Islands.

Report on a Mummy

An article about a Patagonian Mummy. Source

The Smithsonian Institute's annual report of 1862-63 contained an article about a mummy (pictured above) found at "Refujio Bay", 44°S on the Coast of Chile, in a cave, one-hundred feet above the water level. There were many skeletons there with different degrees of preservation. It states that two skeletons were sent to the National Museum in Santiago, Chile, one to the Ratisbon Museum in Bavaria, and the fourth, to the Smithsonian. It was found in a sitting position, and, surprisingly it wasn't of average to small size as the usual Chono native. Instead it had "a height of something like five feet eight inches, thus almost justifying the somewhat poetical epithet of "gigantic", as applied to the Patagonians in general."

I can't help but recall the mummy discovered in 1877 by Francisco Moreno at Gualicho Cave, close to the modern town of El Calafate, and the Perito Moreno Glacier, on the shores of Lake Argentino. Also found in a sitting position.

There is a sketch of a Chono mummy, drawn by a German artist, Carl Alexander Simon (1805-1852), who visited Chile in 1850, and did many drawings in Chiloe in 1852 shortly before his death. On the Island of Quehi, he drew a mummy, painted in situ, in a cave. The mummy is gone, but a replica has been created. (Source).

The sketch can be seen at the Ancud Museum in Chiloe. It is a watercolor with pencil, on paper. The text is in sepia-colored ink reads "Momias Chiloe", some illegible text and numbers (the size of the body?), his name and date "A Simon Quehuy, 18 marz 1852". The image is shown below.

Quehi Mummy. A. Simon, 1852, Source

The amazing part is that the Chilean Patagonian coast is buffeted by rain most of the year, it is damp, cold and wet. How did they manage to mummify their dead?

Further north, in the Atacama Desert region of Chile, the Chinchorro culture, who were also a seafaring people, mummified their dead in the arid and extremely dry desert climate. These are the oldest deliberately mummified remains in the world, dating back to 9,000 years ago. Far older than any Egyptian mummy.

In a future post we will explore the Chinchorro people, the Chango people, who probably descend from them, and if there are links between the coastal people of the Americas with the first peopling wave into the continent.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©