Climate change drove the expansion of the Tupi people in South America

By Krista Charles

The Tupi people, who originated in what is now Brazil, probably spread out from this ancestral location following climatic change.

The language they speak, also called Tupi, is one of the most widespread language families among the Indigenous peoples of South America, and emerged about 5000 years ago in the south-west Amazon.

Jonas Gregorio de Souza at the Pompeu Fabra University in Spain and his colleagues explored just how it came to be so widespread by simulating different scenarios for human expansion in South …