Members of New Mexico’s Picuris Pueblo Tribal Nation have long told stories about having descended from ancient North American ancestors.
Genetic evidence now backs up what Picuris people — but not archaeologists — knew all along and fleshes out lost pieces of the tribe’s past. The new results, published April 30 in Nature, came out of a collaborative study between Picuris Pueblo representatives and scientists.
Traditional knowledge keepers at Picuris Pueblo describe ancestral and cultural connections to ancient pueblo sites in northwestern New Mexico. Oral histories emphasize ties to Chaco Canyon society, a regional network of over 200 Great House communities that flourished from about 850 to 1150. Chaco