The Tupi people, an ethnic group indigenous to what is now Brazil, probably spread out from their ancestral location following climatic change.
Tupi is one of the most widespread language families among the Indigenous peoples of South America, originating 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 America. The team discovered that …