 Studies of precolonial Canarian society illustrate both agricultural and pastoral ways of life in the Canaries.A 2003 genetics research article by Nicole Maca-Meyer et al.published in the European Journal of Human Genetics compared mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA, inherited matrilineally) from aboriginal Guanche (collected from Canarian archaeological sites) to mtDNA of today's Canarians and concluded that, "despite the continuous changes suffered by the population (Spanish colonisation, slave trade), aboriginal mtDNA lineages constitute a considerable proportion [42 – 73%] of the Canarian gene pool.