Ghosts, global warming and hunter-gatherers
A recently published paper co-authored by ºÚÁϳԹÏ’s Fernando Villanea offers new insights into what happened to the populations of Central Mexico a millennium ago
Between 1,100 and 900 years ago in modern-day Mexico, a series of droughts spurred on by global warming forced the nomadic hunter-gatherers of Aridoamerica to migrate south into the more verdant Mesoamerica, geographical home of the Aztecs and Mayans.Ìý
Until recently, archaeologists assumed that, over time, these hunter-gatherers replaced their agricultural neighbors to the south. Yet that assumption was rooted solely in archaeo