View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by CONICET Digital Advances in Anthropology 2013. Vol.3, No.4, 210-215 Published Online November 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/aa) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/aa.2013.34030 Valley to Valley: The Biological Connection between Prehispanic Residents of Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Azapa, Chile* Héctor H. Varela1#, José A. Cocilovo1, Tyler G. O’Brien2 1Departamento de Ciencias Naturales, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físico-Química y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto, Río Cuarto, Argentina 2Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology, University of Northern Iowa, Baker 356, Cedar Falls, Iowa Email: #
[email protected] Received July 11th, 2013; revised August 14th, 2013; accepted September 12th, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Héctor H. Varela et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. One of the most interesting problems facing the interpretation of south central Andean prehistory is to de- cipher the genetic relationships among ancient groups that inhabited this region. This study evaluates the biological relationships between the ancient inhabitants of the coast and interior valleys of the Azapa re- gion in northern Chile and the Cochabamba valleys of Bolivia, with reference to highland Tiwanaku groups. Craniometric data (N = 299) were statistically evaluated to compute group means using Maha- lanobis (D2) values. Results demonstrate that there is a notable difference between coastal and interior valley populations of the Azapa region; whereas a close biological association exists between groups from the Cochabamba valleys and the interior Azapa valleys, especially for those associated with the Formative and Tiwanaku Periods.