New research challenges hunter-gatherer narrative in the ancient Andes

 

 

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THE WILAMAYA PATJXA ARCHEOLOGICAL SITE IN PERU PRODUCED HUMAN REMAINS SHOWING THAT THE DIETS OF EARLY PEOPLE OF THE ANDES WERE PRIMARILY COMPOSED OF PLANT MATERIALS.

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CREDIT: RANDY HAAS

The oft-used description of early humans as “hunter-gatherers” should be changed to “gatherer-hunters,” at least in the Andes of South America, according to groundbreaking research led by a University of Wyoming archaeologist.

Archaeologists long thought that early human diets were meat based. However, Assistant Professor Randy Haas’ analysis of the remains of 24 individuals from the Wilamaya Patjxa and Soro Mik'aya Patjxa burial sites in Peru shows that early human diets in the Andes Mountains were composed of 80 percent plant matter and 20 percent meat.

The study, titled "Stable isotope chemistry reveals plant-dominant diet among early foragers on the Andean Altiplano," has been published by the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE. It applies methods in isotope chemistry and statistical modeling to unveil a surprising twist in early Andean societies and traditional hunter-gatherer narratives.

“Conventional wisdom holds that early human economies focused on hunting -- an idea that has led to a number of high-protein dietary fads such as the Paleodiet,” Haas says. “Our analysis shows that the diets were composed of 80 percent plant matter and 20 percent meat.”

For these early humans of the Andes, spanning from 9,000 to 6,500 years ago, there is indeed evidence that hunting of large mammals provided some of their diets. But the new analysis of the isotopic composition of the human bones shows that plant foods made up the majority of individual diets, with meat playing a secondary role.

Additionally, burnt plant remains from the sites and distinct dental-wear patterns on the individuals’ upper incisors indicate that tubers -- or plants that grow underground, such as potatoes -- likely were the most prominent subsistence resource.

“Our combination of isotope chemistry, paleoethnobotanical and zooarchaeological methods offers the clearest and most accurate picture of early Andean diets to date,” Haas says. “These findings update our understanding of earliest forager economies and the pathway to agricultural economies in the Andean highlands.”

Joining Haas in the study were researchers from Penn State University, the University of California-Merced, the University of California-Davis, Binghamton University, the University of Arizona and the National Register of Peruvian Archaeologists.

Undergraduate students also had the opportunity to conduct research during the initial 2018 excavations at the Wilamaya Patjxa burial site.

Currently a Ph.D. student in anthropology at Penn State University, Jennifer Chen, the journal article’s lead author and a former undergraduate student in Haas' research lab, performed the isotope lab work and much of the isotope analysis following the excavations.

“Food is incredibly important and crucial for survival, especially in high-altitude environments like the Andes,” Chen says. “A lot of archaeological frameworks on hunter-gatherers, or foragers, center on hunting and meat-heavy diets -- but we are finding that early hunter-gatherers in the Andes were mostly eating plant foods like wild tubers."

Haas notes that archaeologists now have the tools to understand early human diets, and their results are not what they anticipated. This case study demonstrates for the first time that early human economies, in at least one part of the world, were plant based.

“Given that archaeological biases have long misled archaeologists -- myself included -- in the Andes, it is likely that future isotopic research in other parts of the world will similarly show that archaeologists have also gotten it wrong elsewhere,” he says.

Haas investigates human behavior in forager societies of the past to better understand human behavior in the present. He leads archaeological excavations and survey projects in the Andes and mountain regions of western North America. To learn more about his research, email Haas at whaas@uwyo.edu.

DNA from preserved feces reveals ancient Japanese gut environment

 

 

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PHYLOGENETIC TREES OF DETECTED GUT BACTERIA. THE TREE INDICATES PHYLOGENETIC RELATIONSHIPS OF 4,616 BACTERIAL SPECIES.

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CREDIT: NISHIMURA ET AL., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

DNA from ancient feces can offer archaeologists new clues about the life and health of Japanese people who lived thousands of years ago, according to a study published January 24, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Luca Nishimura and Ituro Inoue from the National Institute of Genetics, Japan, Hiroki Oota from The University of Tokyo, Mayumi Ajimoto from Wakasa History Museum, and colleagues.

Fossilized feces, also known as coprolites, can preserve an array of genetic material from the digestive tracts of ancient people. This includes the DNA of the microbes and viruses that lived in their digestive system—all of which could help archaeologists understand more details about their culture and lifestyle. In this study, researchers analyzed the genetic traces left behind in four coprolites collected at Japan’s Torihama shell-mound archaeological site to assess what details of the ancient people’s lives could be ascertained from these samples.

The fecal samples were between 5,500 and 7,000 years old, dating back to the island chain’s Early Jomon period. The researchers collectively sampled all of the genetic material from the coprolites and compared the DNA they found with known genetic sequences. Within the fecal samples, they found DNA fragments of the viruses which are homology with human betaherpesvirus 5 and human adenovirus F.

DNA breaks down over time, so the genomes represented in the coprolites were often highly fragmented. But despite this degradation, the researchers were still able to assess what kinds of microbes and viruses may have been present in people’s digestive systems thousands of years ago. In addition, the authors suggest that the coprolites’ preservation of both viral and bacterial genetic material could help scientists explore how bacteria and the viruses that infect those bacteria have co-evolved over time.

The freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0295924

China’s medieval Tang dynasty had a surprising level of social mobility

 

In studying social mobility in today’s industrialized nations, researchers typically rely on data from the World Economic Forum or, in the United States, the General Social Survey. But examining the same phenomena from past centuries is a more daunting task because relevant statistics are harder to come by. 

However, a social science research team has now discovered a way to examine professional advancement in medieval China (618-907 CE) by drawing from the tomb epitaphs during the Tang Dynasty. These epitaphs contain the ancestral lineages, names, and office titles (e.g., Minister of Personnel, Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, and Palace Deputy Imperial Censor) of the deceased’s father and grandfather as well as the deceased’s career history and educational credentials—ample data points for measuring social mobility across generations. 

Notably, their analysis shows that education during this period was a catalyst for social mobility.

“Epitaphs written in medieval China, including the Tang Dynasty, tend to be highly detailed descriptions of an individual’s life with stylized prose and poems, and they contain granular information about the ancestral origins, family background, and career history of each deceased individual,” says Fangqi Wen, an assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University. 

“This information, to some extent, mirrors what would have been included in a contemporary social mobility survey,” adds Erik H. Wang, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of Politics.

Wang studies historical political economy while Wen examines social mobility in contemporary societies. After recognizing the high level of data quality embedded in these epitaphs, they realized that the artifacts were a vessel that merged their scholarly interests. Later they recruited the NYU professor of sociology Michael Hout, Wen’s dissertation advisor and a leading scholar on social stratification and mobility, to join the project.

Their findings, which appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), show that the patterns of relationships of social origins, education, and adult achievement somewhat resemble the patterns in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. In drawing from 3,640 epitaphs of males as well as other data from reliable historical sources, such as dynastic records and third-party compiled genealogies, the researchers’ analysis revealed a decline of Chinese medieval aristocracy and the rise of meritocracy 1300 years ago.

The researchers discovered a specific reason for this development: whether or not the deceased passed the Keju, or the Imperial Exam, which was developed during this period for the purposes of selecting officials for civil service posts. They found that the Keju, which was administered until the early 20th century, served as a catalyst for social mobility—much as higher education has done in the U.S. since at least the 1960s.

“Our statistical analysis shows that coming from a prominent ancient great house or ‘branch’

mattered less for career success in the bureaucratic system after roughly 650 CE while passing the Keju came to matter more,” the authors write. “Furthermore, passing the competitive exam may have even equalized chances of subsequent success, as a father’s status was not a factor in the bureaucratic rank of men who passed the Keju.”

“Education is central to our understanding of intergenerational mobility,” observes Hout. “Many think it was a 20th-century development. But, as we can see from centuries-old data, there are phenomena linking origin, education, and careers very much like contemporary patterns.”

Poor Mesolithic oral health

Members of a hunter-gatherer group that lived in south-western Scandinavia during the Mesolithic era — approximately 10,000 years ago — may have been affected by tooth decay and gum disease, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.

Emrah Kırdök, Anders Götherström and colleagues sequenced the DNA found on three pieces of birch tar — a substance made from heated birch bark — that were excavated in the 1990s from Huseby Klev, Sweden and have been dated to between 9,890 and 9,540 years old. They created profiles of the microbial, plant, and animal species DNA found on each sample and compared these to those previously reported for modern human samples, ancient human dental plaque, and a 6,000 year old chewed birch tar sample

The authors found that the microbial profiles of the birch tar samples were most similar to microbes found in the modern human mouth, in ancient human dental plaque, and in a 6,000 year old chewed birch tar sample. This suggests that the samples from Huseby Klev were chewed by humans. They also found that they contained an increased abundance of several bacteria that are commonly associated with gum disease — such as Treponema denticola, Streptococcus anginosus, and Slackia exigua — and tooth decay — such as Streptococcus sobrinus and Parascardovia denticolens. Based on the relative abundance of microbial species in the birch tar samples and using machine learning models, the authors estimate that the probability that members of the hunter-gatherer group were affected by gum disease is between 70 and 80%. The authors suggest that the wider use of teeth to perform tasks involving gripping, cutting and tearing in ancient hunter-gatherer societies may have increased their risk of coming into contact with microbial species that cause gum disease.

In addition to microbial DNA, the authors identified DNA sequences consistent with those from a range of plant and animal species, including hazelnut, apple, mistletoe, red fox, grey wolf, mallard, limpet, and brown trout. These could reflect the materials that members of the hunter-gatherer group chewed prior to the birch tar samples. The authors speculate that these materials could have included food sources, furs, and bone tools.

The findings highlight the poor oral health of a group of Mesolithic Scandinavian hunter-gatherers and provide insight into their diet, material use, and local environment.

Ancient chewing gum reveals stone age diet

 

What did people eat on the west coast of Scandinavia 10 000 years ago? A new study of the DNA in a chewing gum shows that deer, trout and hazelnuts were on the diet. It also shows that one of the individuals had severe problems with her teeth.

Some 9 700 years ago, a group of people were camping on the west coast of Scandinavia, north of what is today Göteborg. They had been fishing, hunting and collecting resources for food. And some teenagers, both boys and girls, were chewing resin to produce glue, just after munching on trout and deer, as well as on hazelnuts. Due to a bad case of periodontitis (severe gum infection that can lead to tooth loss and bone loss), one of the teenagers had problems eating the chewy deer-meat, as well as preparing the resin by chewing it.

We know this because an international research team has been working with the chewed resin from Huseby Klev for some time. “There is a richness of DNA sequences in the chewed mastic from Huseby-Klev, and in it we find both the bacteria that we know are related to periodontitis, and DNA from plants and animals that they had chewed before”, says Dr. Emrah Kırdök, from Mersin University Department of Biotechnology, who coordinated the metagenomic work on the Mesolithic chewing gum. Emrah Kırdök started to analyse the material when he was a postdoc at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Stockholm University, but the study has grown much since then.

The site Huseby Klev on the island Orust was excavated 30 years ago. Chewed resin was found together with remains of stone tools in a context dated to c. 9700 years ago. The stone material also indicated a Mesolithic chronology. The chewed material from Huseby Klev has already generated a study on the human genetic data from three individuals, and the DNA in the material that was not of human origin has also been analysed and published.

Identifying the different species present in the kind of mix of DNA that was present in the Mesolithic chewing gum was challenging. Dr Andrés Aravena, from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Istanbul University spent much time on the computer analysing the data together with Dr. Emrah Kırdök. “We had to apply several computational heavy analytical tools to single out the different species and organisms. All the tools we needed were not ready to be applied to ancient DNA; but much of our time was spent on adjusting them so that we could apply them”, concludes Andrés Aravena. Metagenomics on ancient DNA is an expanding area, but there have yet only been a few studies on this type of chewed material.

Professor Anders Götherström, at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, a collaboration between Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History, is the head of the project where this study was conducted. “This provides a snapshot of the life of a small group of hunter-gatherers on the Scandinavian west coast. I think it is amazing, there are other well established methods to work out what nutrition and diet relates to the Stone Age, but here we know that these teenagers were eating deer, trout, and hazelnuts 9 700 years ago on the west coast of Scandinavia, while at least one of them had severe problems with his teeth.”

The study is published in Scientific Reports. Read article: Metagenomic analysis of Mesolithic chewed pitch reveals poor oral health among stone age individuals

Woolly mammoth movements tied to earliest Alaska hunting camps

 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS

 

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ARTWORK SHOWS THREE MAMMOTHS BEING WATCHED BY A FAMILY OF ANCIENT ALASKANS FROM THE DUNES NEAR THE SWAN POINT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE, A SEASONAL HUNTING CAMP OCCUPIED 14,000 YEARS AGO.

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CREDIT: IMAGE BY JULIUS CSOSTONYI

Researchers have linked the travels of a 14,000-year-old woolly mammoth with the oldest known human settlements in Alaska, providing clues about the relationship between the iconic species and some of the earliest people to travel across the Bering Land Bridge.

Scientists made those connections by using isotope analysis to study the life of a female mammoth, named Élmayųujey'eh, by the Healy Lake Village Council. A tusk from Elma was discovered at the Swan Point archaeological site in Interior Alaska. Samples from the tusk revealed details about Elma and the roughly 1,000-kilometer journey she took through Alaska and northwestern Canada during her lifetime.

Isotopic data, along with DNA from other mammoths at the site and archaeological evidence, indicates that early Alaskans likely structured their settlements to overlap with areas where mammoths congregated. Those findings, highlighted in the new issue of the journal Science Advances, provide evidence that mammoths and early hunter-gatherers shared habitat in the region. The long-term predictable presence of woolly mammoths would have attracted humans to the area.

“She wandered around the densest region of archaeological sites in Alaska,” said Audrey Rowe, a University of Alaska Fairbanks Ph.D. student and lead author of the paper. “It looks like these early people were establishing hunting camps in areas that were frequented by mammoths.”

The mammoth tusk was excavated and identified in 2009 by Charles Holmes, affiliate research professor of anthropology at UAF, and François Lanoë, research associate in archaeology at the University of Alaska Museum of the North. They found Elma’s tusk and the remains of two related juvenile mammoths, along with evidence of campfires, the use of stone tools, and butchered remains of other game. All of this “indicates a pattern consistent with human hunting of mammoths,” said Ben Potter, an archaeologist and professor of anthropology at UAF.

Researchers at UAF’s Alaska Stable Isotope Facility then analyzed thousands of samples from Elma’s tusk to recreate her life and travels. Isotopes provide chemical markers of an animal’s diet and location. The markers are then recorded in the bones and tissues of animals and remain even after they die. 

Mammoth tusks are well-suited to isotopic study because they grew throughout the ancient animals’ lives, with clearly visible layers appearing when split lengthwise. Those growth bands give researchers a way to collect a chronological record of a mammoth’s life by studying isotopes in samples along the tusk.

Much of Elma’s journey overlapped with that of a previously studied male mammoth who lived 3,000 years earlier, demonstrating long-term movement patterns by mammoths over several millennia. In Elma’s case, they also indicated she was a healthy 20-year-old female.

“She was a young adult in the prime of life. Her isotopes showed she was not malnourished and that she died in the same season as the seasonal hunting camp at Swan Point where her tusk was found,” said senior author Matthew Wooller, who is director of the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility and a professor at UAF’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

The era in which Elma lived may have compounded the challenges posed by the relatively recent appearance of humans. The grass- and shrub-dominated steppe landscape that had been common in Interior Alaska was beginning to shift toward more forested terrain.

“Climate change at the end of the ice age fragmented mammoths’ preferred open habitat, potentially decreasing movement and making them more vulnerable to human predation,” Potter said.

Ancient cities in the Anthropocene

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE OF GEOANTHROPOLOGY

 

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MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY PROVIDE A WEALTH OF INFORMATION ABOUT HOW CITIES SHAPE, AND ARE SHAPED BY, THEIR ENVIRONMENT.

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CREDIT: MICHELLE O'REILLY

Cities play a key role in climate change and biodiversity and are one of the most recognizable features of the Anthropocene. They also accelerate innovation and shape social networks, while perpetuating and intensifying inequalities. Today over half of all humanity lives in cities, a threshold which will rise to nearly 70% by the mid-21st century. Yet despite their importance for the Anthropocene, cities are not a recent phenomenon.

In a new study, an interdisciplinary team of authors from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology argue that the history of urbanism provides an important resource for understanding where our contemporary urban challenges come from, as well as how we might begin to address them. The paper highlights the ways in which new methodologies are changing our understanding of past cities and providing a reference for urban societies navigating the intensifying climatic extremes of the 21st century.

These methods range from remote sensing techniques like LiDAR, which are documenting cities in places where urban life was once considered impossible, to biomolecular approaches like isotope analysis, which can provide insights into how cities have shaped different organisms and influenced human mobility and connectivity through time. Meanwhile, the study of sediment cores and historical data can show how cities have placed adaptive pressures on different landscapes and human societies – as they still do today.

As understanding of humanity’s influence on the Earth system grows, urbanism is increasingly considered one of the most impactful forms of land use. In this new study, the authors also highlight how multidisciplinary approaches, including Earth system modelling, are revealing the impacts that ancient and historical forms of urbanism had on land use, and, critically, how they compare to the impacts of urban areas today.

Throughout, the authors emphasize that the past does not just provide anecdotal insights, but rather numerical datasets of things like road lengths, building types, population sizes, economic output, environmental impacts, and more. With advances in computational archaeology, this opens up the possibility of quantifying similarities and differences in urban pathways across space and time, directly linking the past to the present.

By reviewing diverse examples from around the world ranging from medieval Constantinople (now Istanbul) to 9th century Bagdad, from Great Zimbabwe to Greater Angkor in Cambodia, this new study highlights the potential of new methodological approaches to reveal historical legacies and predict trajectories of urbanism in the Anthropocene epoch.

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