The Chinchorro culture that inhabited Chile’s Atacama Desert from about 7,500 years ago is famous for its mummies, which predate those from Ancient Egypt by several millennia. Scanning the heads of these wrinkled corpses, researchers have now revealed that the average Chinchorro individual possessed a brain that was about 12 percent smaller than that of the typical modern Chilean, hinting at childhood malnutrition and poor standards of living. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

That the Chinchorro didn’t eat as well as present-day humans is perhaps not surprising, considering they chose one of the harshest environments on the planet for their home. Surviving until around 3,500 years ago, this ancient group of hunter-ga

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