LONDON, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The Tsimane, a society of Bolivian hunter-gatherers living a hunting and farming life, have some of the healthiest hearts in the world, a new study said on Friday.

They have the lowest-ever recorded levels of clogged arteries among any population studied, said the research led by Dr. Randall Thompson, a cardiologist at St. Luke's Health System in Kansas City, Missouri.

For years, the research team has been tracking the Tsimane, a group of 16,000 people living along a tributary of the Amazon.

In the study, the 705 participants were asked to spend a day paddling in their canoes and then hopped a six-hour Jeep ride to the nearest city so doctors could measure their weight, heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.

The results were compared to a sample of more than 6,800 Americans, who were five times likelier to have heart disease than the tribal people. About nine in 10 Tsimane had no risk of heart disease.