Early farmers in the Atacama desert were brutally violent

摘要

WHEN coastal hunter-gatherers settled inland to begin farming about 3000 years ago in the Atacama desert, their violence grew more gruesome, according to human remains from the time. Vivien Standen at the University of Tarapaca in Chile and her colleagues studied the remains of 194 adults buried between 2800 and 1400 years ago in a coastal desert valley of northern Chile. The team found that 40 individuals were subjected to brutal levels of violence, 20 of whom died from their injuries.