Hair from one of the oldest mummies studied at the Coyo East site, near San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. Based on this funerary trousseau, scientists believe the mummy lived around 400 to 1000 AD, during the Middle Period.
Credit: IIAM-Catholic University of the North (UCN), San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Several anthropological studies show that, just like other pre-Hispanic natives, those who inhabited the desert in northern Chile faced periods of food shortages, severe weather conditions, crippling diseases and violence. However, a new analysis of a stress hormone in hair samples from 19 mummies of people who lived between 500 and 1,500 years ago suggests that perhaps not all of them had as stressful an existence as previously thought.

This interpretation “is different from what […]