Smallpox DNA extracted from Inca mummies in northern Chile

Researchers have recovered the DNA of the smallpox virus (variola) from two mummified bodies belonging to an early Inca community in northern Chile. The findings, published in *Science*, represent the first direct molecular evidence that smallpox was present in the New World during the early colonial period.

Genomic analysis shows the recovered virus belongs to an extinct lineage that sits evolutionarily between the strains that caused medieval European epidemics and those that dominated later centuries. The study was led by geneticist Bruno Romero González of Trinity College Dublin, with co‑author Sigeki Nakagome, who explained that the virus “was one of the deadliest infectious diseases in human history.”

Historical context notes that Spanish colonists arrived in the Americas in 1492, bringing smallpox and other Old‑World pathogens that devastated Indigenous populations, killing up to 90 % in many regions and facilitating the conquest of empires such as the Aztecs.