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A mummy’s bones answered a 500-year-old question: smallpox came from Europe
Smallpox virus DNA has been recovered from the bones of two mummified people in northern Chile. Their viral lineage sits between medieval European strains and later modern smallpox.
This is the first direct genetic evidence that smallpox entered the Americas through European colonization. It does not identify the first carrier or the exact route.
Thirteen bone samples, two infections
Researchers analyzed 13 bone samples from the Camarones 9 archaeological site in Chile’s Arica y Parinacota region. Smallpox DNA appeared in one adult woman and one young man.
The two people probably died between 1492 and 1631. Their viruses were nearly identical, suggesting they may have been infected during the same outbreak.
Why the virus points back to Europe
Both genomes belonged to a now-extinct lineage. On the viral family tree, it falls between early medieval European smallpox and the modern strains that spread in later centuries.
The lineage was estimated to have split around 1296. That pattern fits an Old World introduction better than a separate smallpox population already living in the Americas.
It had already reached a community missing from the records
Both people had Indigenous ancestry with no detected European admixture. The finding shows the virus was moving within local communities, not only infecting people in direct contact with Europeans.
No written smallpox outbreak was known at Camarones 9. The researchers suggest that existing networks in the Inca sphere may have carried the disease south.
The virus changed alongside human history
The genomes also preserve a pattern of genes becoming inactive as smallpox specialized as a human-only pathogen.
That process continued until the late 16th century, slowed for a period, and appears to have accelerated again around the spread of vaccination in the 19th century. Human movement and immunity may have changed the pressure on the virus.
What remains unknown
Two people from one site cannot reveal the first infected person or the exact route. Possible paths include different European arrivals and movement through Africa and the slave trade.
The estimated date also spans 139 years. The firm result is narrower: early colonial smallpox in the Americas was genetically connected to Old World strains.
Official primary sources
Primary source: Science original research paper