Researchers reveal new clues about H. erectus evolution

 

Scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have uncovered new information suggesting a potential connection between Homo erectus and modern humans, while also developing new, less invasive paleoproteomics methods of fossil research.

Homo erectus, or H. erectus, was the first species within the genus Homo to leave Africa, occupying a key position in human evolutionary history. However, due to the lack of molecular evidence from H. erectus, their genetic characteristics, population diversity, and especially their potential connections to modern humans remain unresolved. As a result, the role of H. erectus represents a major mystery and a focal point of debate in human evolution.

Molecular research on H. erectus remains has been limited because ancient human fossils are irreplaceable and a precious cultural heritage. For this reason, traditional destructive sampling methods are unacceptable and have long constrained the progress of relevant molecular research.

Now, however, the research team, led by FU Qiaomei from IVPP in collaboration with multiple institutions, has overcome this bottleneck by employing a micro-destructive sampling approach based on acid etching to recover molecular information from six Homo erectus teeth without damaging their morphology.

The team’s findings were published online in Nature on May 13.

The article was also accompanied by a concurrent commentary in Nature, which highlighted the role of enamel proteins from these six H. erectus teeth from China in providing “new insights into how ancient genetic material was eventually introduced into modern human populations.” 

The researchers identified two mutations from the fossil teeth, dating back to at least 400,000 years ago, from three different sites—Zhoukoudian (Peking Man), Hexian, and Sunjiadong. The mutations suggest genetic links between East Asian H. erectus and Denisovans, which themselves are linked to modern humans.

The first is the previously unknown AMBN-A253G mutation, which was identified as a potential molecular marker associated with these H. erectus populations. It provides the first evidence that H. erectus specimens from these three sites belonged to the same evolutionary population.

The second is the AMBN-M273V variant, previously thought to be specific to Denisovans. However, this study reveals that this variant is not unique to Denisovans but is shared by these H. erectus populations.

According to the researchers, the second variant may have entered the Denisovan lineage through admixture and was subsequently passed to some modern human populations (in Southeast Asia and Oceania) via Denisovan introgression. This provides the first insights into a possible connection between East Asian H. erectus (such as those from Zhoukoudian) and Denisovans, as well as the potential deep genetic links to some present-day modern humans.

Additionally, the study establishes a suite of new experimental and computational methodologies, including a sex determination method for ancient hominins based on the male-specific enamel protein AMELY, a cross-validation approach using tandem mass spectrometry and multiple data analysis pipelines, and DNA analysis methods linked to specific amino acid variants. Together, these tools provide a new framework for systematic paleoproteomics research.

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-026-10478-8 

Neanderthal dentists used stone drills to treat cavities nearly 60,000 years ago

 

A tooth from a Russian cave provides the oldest evidence of complex dental care

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

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Chagyrskaya 64 molar tooth and its macro-features: General view of the tooth in five projections.

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Credit: Zubova et al., 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Neanderthals had the know-how to identify a tooth infection and the motor skills to drill out the damage, according to a study published May 13, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Alisa Zubova of Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences (Kunstkamera), St. Petersburg, and colleagues.

Archaeological discoveries have shown that Neanderthals used toothpicks to remove food from their teeth and might also have used medicinal plants, but the extent of their medical capabilities is unclear. In this study, Zubova and colleagues describe a Neanderthal tooth which received physical alterations to treat infection.

This tooth is a single molar from Chagyrskaya Cave in Russia, around 59,000 years old. In the center of the tooth is a deep hole extending into the pulp cavity. The researchers conducted experiments on three modern human teeth to demonstrate that a hole of the same shape and same patterns of microscopic grooves can be created by drilling into the tooth with a stone point similar to tools that have been found within Chagyrskaya Cave. The hole in this damaged molar, as well as toothpick grooves along the side of the tooth, is an example of a caries lesion in the same population, which is rare among Neanderthals.

This procedure would have hurt, but it would also have ultimately alleviated the pain of a tooth infection by removing the damaged part of the tooth. These modifications provide evidence that Neanderthals had the capacity to identify the source of pain, to determine how to treat it, to apply the manual dexterity needed for an efficient operation, and to endure painful treatment to alleviate future discomfort. This is the first time such behavior has been demonstrated outside of Homo sapiens, and it is the oldest example of such behavior by more than 40,000 years.

The authors add: “This finding currently represents the world's oldest evidence of successful dental treatment. The damage documented on the Neanderthal tooth from Chagyrskaya Cave in Siberia points not only to intentional pulp removal but also to antemortem wear - wear that could only have developed if the individual kept using the tooth while alive. We also identified areas of demineralization where remnants of carious damage were preserved, further indicating that the concavity in the tooth was associated with treatment.”

Alisa Zubova adds: "We were intrigued by the unusual shape of the concavity on the tooth's chewing surface. It differed from the normal morphology of the pulp chamber and did not match the typical pattern of carious lesions seen in Homo sapiens. Moreover, distinctly visible scratches suggested that the concavity was not the result of natural damage but of intentional actions."

"Computed microtomography revealed changes in dentin mineralization consistent with severe caries. Human manipulation of carious lesions has already been documented for the Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and later periods. We therefore hypothesized that the damage we observed could also represent traces of such medical intervention - but from a significantly earlier period."

Lydia Zotkina adds: “To interpret the concavity on the occlusal surface of the tooth, we conducted experimental manual drilling on a series of specimens: a modern human tooth and two Homo sapiens teeth from a Holocene archaeological collection of uncertain temporal and cultural provenance. Comparison of the microscopic traces on the original Neanderthal specimen with those produced experimentally revealed a clear match. The findings demonstrate that drilling a carious lesion using a sharp, thin stone tool is entirely effective, permitting the rapid removal of damaged dental tissue.”

Ksenia Kolobova adds: “Neanderthals arrived in this region 70–60 thousand years ago during a migration from Central and Eastern Europe and inhabited it until at least 40–45 thousand years ago. Altai became a new and suitable home for them thanks to its biological diversity, climate similar to that of Europe, abundant raw materials for stone tool production, and their usual prey - wild bison and horses. Analysis of stone tool industries and paleogenetic studies have shown that the Neanderthals from Chagyrskaya Cave are very closely related to the bearers of the so-called Micoquian industry, who also lived in the Caucasus and Crimea.”

 

The freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/429tPn

Prehistoric Danish people continued to eat fish and hunt even after the rise of agriculture

 

Agriculture reached the coast of southern Denmark around 4000 BCE, but these prehistoric Scandinavians continued to fish and hunt too, according to a study published May 13, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Daniel Groß from the Museum Lolland-Falster, Denmark, Sofie Folsach Hellerøe from Aarhaus University, Denmark, and colleagues.

The coast of southern Denmark features archeological sites revealing a rich history of human habitation across millennia. In this study, the research team analyzed aquatic and land animal remains from the Syltholm Fjord on the island of Lolland, including samples dating back to the transition from the Mesolithic to the Early Neolithic (roughly 4500 - 3500 BCE), the Middle Neolithic (3500 - 2800 BCE), the Late Neolithic (2800 - 1800 BCE) and into the Bronze Age, from 1800 - 800 BCE. The samples spanned the introduction of agriculture into the region, around 4000 BCE.

Remains from domestic animals such as cattle were found in all of these eras, indicating an introduction of agricultural practices. However, remains from fish also showed up consistently, suggesting that fish were a part of the human diet during each of these periods. Flatfish like flounder made up a large proportion of the fish remains from all eras, as did eels, which were commonly found in all eras except the Late Neolithic, when settlement activity in the area may have been lower. The researchers suggest that fishers here targeted the same species for thousands of years — and that their fishing practices may have been sustainable for generations.

Land animal composition fluctuated a little more. Remains from deer were more common from around 3000 BCE, for example, potentially due to a resurgence of hunting amid cultural changes in Denmark around this time. The researchers also noted that species diversity declined between around 4000 and 3000 BCE, possibly as a result of increased human pressure on the ecosystem, before stabilizing.

The researchers believe that their findings challenge the notion of an abrupt Neolithic transition to eating domesticated animals, illustrating instead a more diverse dietary strategy integrating fishing and hunting alongside agricultural practices over millennia.

Dr. Daniel Groß adds: “Even though people were fishing in the fjord for millennia, their impact on the environment was not clearly traceable. This research indicates that Neolithic fishing was sustainable, to a degree.”

“The introduction of livestock is often considered a major change in subsistence strategies, yet we do not see any significant changes in other areas of food production – fish just continued to be a relevant food source.”

“At Syltholm Fjord, the introduction of Neolithic traditions did not alter the composition of food as much as earlier assumed, whereas the changing landscape does translate in the archaeological datasets.”

“Our analysis shows that it is important to incorporate different perspectives and datasets of different character into reconstructing the past.”

The freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/4n3bceo

The first domesticated horses: 6,000 years of a complex story

Horses were being ridden, worked, and traded long before anyone thought it possible. New research pushes back the accepted timeline of human use of horses by centuries, showing that humans used horses in organized ways as early as the 4th millennium BCE,

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image: 

Archaeological, osteo-zoological and ancient DNA evidence reveals that three distinct horse populations – DOM1, DOM2, and DOM3 – once ranged from western Siberia to Central Europe. Early taming efforts occurred independently across regions and populations around 3500–3000 BCE, if not centuries earlier. Shortly before 3000 BCE, Yamnaya people were already riding DOM2 horses and bringing these into the western regions. However, only horses from the DOM2 population were fully domesticated between 2200 and 2100 BCE. These horses, spread by mobile human groups, rapidly expanded across Eurasia and into the Middle East, becoming the ancestors of all modern domestic horses.

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Credit: Jani Närhi

Taming and domestication were not single events. They were a slow, stop-start process, full of setbacks, playing out over generations and across vast regions, before full domestication set in shortly before 2000 BCE.

"Horses were already being used in sophisticated, widespread ways before we could pin down full domestication. That gap reshapes how we understand human history," says
Professor Volker Heyd, co-lead author of the research.

“The role of horses in major historical developments is almost too vast to measure, hence the saying that the world was conquered on horseback,” Heyd says.

From the sweeping movements of Eurasian nomadic groups such as the Huns, Avars, Magyars, and the Mongol Empire, to their decisive use in warfare (well into World Wars I and II), horses have been central to human conflict and expansion. They also accompanied conquistadors over the Atlantic to the Americas and served as the primary means of transport across much of the world until the rise of industrialisation and motorisation.

The wheel, the horse, and the words we still speak

Today, truly wild horses no longer exist. Even Przewalski's horse, long held up as a living relic of the wild, is now known to descend from early domesticated populations, showing how deeply humans have shaped horse populations over time.

The timing matters. Around 3,500 to 3,000 BCE, steppe populations began pushing east and west across Eurasia. They brought the wheel with them. Cattle pulled the first wagons. Horses came at the same time. A rider could cover ground in hours that a wagon took days to cross but both were key innovations in mobility and transport, revolutionizing human society.

Researchers now link that leap in mobility to the spread of Proto-Indo-European languages. The horse carried people. And with them, words. The languages spoken across much of Europe and Asia today trace back to those early riders and wagon drivers.

“Today, horses are a source of attraction, companionship, and friendship for many people. Therefore, it is important to learn about the earliest stages of human–horse relationships and how this unique partnership first emerged,” Volker Heyd says.

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Journal

Science Advance

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ady7336 

Ice Age butcher’s tools are a sign of ancient humans’ creativity during hard times

 

Crystals inside a prehistoric bone rewrote scientists’ estimates of the age of the archaeological site, suggesting that the stone tools were made during a harsh ice age

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Field Museum

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Crystals growing inside a bone found at the Lingjing archaeological site; these crystals were used to date the site, and the tools found there, to an ice age 146,000 years ago. Photo by Zhanyang Li.

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Credit: Zhanyang Li.

In central China, scientists have spent over a decade excavating and studying an archaeological site where ancient humans butchered animals. Amidst bones, archaeologists found complex stone tools that would have required a level of intelligence and creativity to make. A new analysis, based on the crystals growing inside one of the bones, showed scientists the site dated back to an ice age 146,00 years ago— challenging long-held ideas about early humanity at this site becoming creative thanks to warmer times of plenty.

“People often imagine creativity as something that flourishes in good times,” says Yuchao Zhao, the assistant curator of East Asian archaeology at the Field Museum in Chicago and the lead author of a paper describing the findings in the Journal of Human Evolution. “Finding out that these stone tools were made during a harsh ice age tells a different story. Hard times can force us to adapt.”

Zhao and his colleagues, led by senior author Zhangyang Li, a professor at Shandong University in China, have been examining stone tools found at the Lingjing archaeological site in central China. Lingjing was occupied by early humans called Homo juluensis. They were cousins of modern humans (Homo sapiens), and our ancestors may have interacted with them. Homo juluensis show a striking mosaic of features, including very large brain size and traits seen in both eastern Asian archaic humans and Neanderthals in Europe.

Until recently, archaeologists had thought that the ancient humans in East Asia during the late Middle Pleistocene (300,000-120,000 years ago) hadn’t made many significant technological advances, in comparison to the early humans living in Europe and Africa. But the stone tools found at Lingjing tell a different story.

The disc-shaped stone cores at Lingjing might not look especially fancy at first glance, but Zhao and his colleagues’ analysis of them revealed that they were part of a painstaking and carefully organized tool-making process. The Homo juluensis people crafted them by hitting small stones against larger stone cores.

Some of the cores were worked fairly evenly on both sides. Others were more carefully structured: one side served mainly as the surface to strike from, while the other side was shaped to produce sharp flakes. These asymmetrical cores are especially important because they show that ancient humans were not just knocking pieces off a stone at random. They were managing the core as a three-dimensional object, giving different surfaces different roles and maintaining the right angles to keep producing useful flakes.

“This was not casual flake production, but a technology that required planning, precision, and a deep understanding of stone properties and fracture mechanics,” says Zhao. “The underlying logic of this system— and the cognitive abilities it reflects— shows important similarities to Middle Paleolithic technologies often associated with Neanderthals in Europe and with human ancestors in Africa, suggesting that advanced technological thinking was not limited to western Eurasia.”

So, the stone artifacts left behind by the Homo juluensis at Lingjing suggest that the people there were capable of complex thought and creativity. But the story is further complicated by recent studies that have adjusted scientists’ estimates of how long ago these tools were made.

Lingjing was a site where Homo juluensis came to butcher animals like deer, and these animals’ bones are found alongside the stone tools. One of these bones, a rib from a deer-like animal, contained glittering calcite crystals. Calcite crystals contain trace amounts of uranium, which slowly degrades into another element called thorium. By measuring the ratio of uranium to thorium present in a calcite crystal, scientists can tell how old the crystal is.

“The calcite crystals inside the bone acted like a natural clock, allowing us to refine the age of the site,” says Zhao.

Previously, researchers thought that the tools found in Lingjing were about 126,000 years old at most, but based on the presence of the crystals, they're about 20,000 years older— a small, but important difference.

“Even though these tools are just a little bit older than we’d previously thought, the entire story is changed,” says Zhao. “During the Pleistocene, Earth repeatedly shifted between colder ice-age periods and warmer intervals between them. We used to think these tools were made 126,000 years ago, during a warm interglacial period, but based on the new dates suggested by the crystals, some of these tools were actually produced 146,000 years ago, during a harsh, cold glacial period.”

The new age assigned to these stone artifacts calls into question the idea that creativity is a luxury for good times; instead, in this case, it seems to be an adaption for surviving hard times.  “Altogether, this research reveals a much richer story of innovation, intelligence, and human evolution in East Asia,” says Zhao.

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Cova 338 redefines Pyrenean prehistory

 Above 2,000 meters: Cova 338 redefines Pyrenean prehistory

• The site, located in the Núria Valley, documents recurrent human occupations spanning more than 5,000 years and provides some of the earliest evidence of copper-rich mineral exploitation in Western Europe
   
• The study, led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and IPHES-CERCA and published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, challenges the traditional view of high mountain areas as marginal

An international research team led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES-CERCA) has documented the highest-altitude prehistoric cave with evidence of intense human occupation known to date in the Pyrenees. The site, known as Cova 338, is located at 2,235 meters above sea level in the Núria Valley (Queralbs, Ripollès - Girona) and currently represents the most significant high-mountain prehistoric site documented in the range.

The results show that the cave was repeatedly occupied between the 5th millennium BCE and the end of the 1st millennium BCE, providing new evidence on the exploitation of high-mountain resources in prehistoric times and challenging the traditional idea that these areas were used only sporadically or marginally. Dating indicates that these occupations occurred in several distinct phases, separated by periods of abandonment, suggesting a planned and recurrent use of this space.

This is the main conclusion of the article published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, led by Carlos Tornero, professor in the Department of Prehistory at the UAB and researcher at IPHES-CERCA, with the participation of researchers from IPHES-CERCA, the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, the University of Granada, the Pompeu Fabra University, and the University of the Balearic Islands, among other institutions.

Intense and organized occupation in a high-mountain environment

For decades, archaeological research has interpreted areas above 2,000 meters in altitude as marginal territories, occupied only occasionally. Cova 338 breaks with this model.

Extensive excavations carried out between 2021 and 2023 have revealed “an exceptional archaeological sequence, including numerous combustion structures, faunal remains, ceramic fragments, and a remarkable assemblage of green minerals, likely malachite, a copper-rich mineral”, explains Carlos Tornero. “For the first time in the Pyrenees, high-mountain prehistoric occupations of significant intensity have been documented, characterized by repeated activities and the direct exploitation of mineral resources within the cave.”

Among the recovered materials are also two pendants: one made from a marine shell (Glycimeris) and another from a brown bear tooth, evidencing personal ornamentation practices. The former has parallels in other Catalan sites, while the latter is much rarer and possibly linked to a specific symbolic meaning.

“Cova 338 forces us to rethink the role of high mountain environments in Pyrenean prehistoric societies”, highlights Carlos Tornero. “For a long time, these spaces were assumed to be marginal. What we document here is recurrent occupation, with complex activities and a clear exploitation of mineral resources.”

The evidence suggests that mineral fragments were brought into the cave and subsequently fragmented or processed inside, indicating systematic exploitation of copper-rich minerals in a high-mountain environment throughout the Late Neolithic and the Bronze Age. These data place Cova 338 among the earliest known examples of this type of activity in Western Europe.

Spatial analysis of the site shows a clear internal organization of activities, with differentiated structures and areas. Researchers interpret the cave as a logistical site integrated within well-structured seasonal mobility systems, where human groups returned recurrently to carry out specific tasks.

“The mountain was not a barrier, but an active place within the economic and territorial organization of prehistoric communities”, notes Eudald Carbonell, researcher at IPHES-CERCA and co-author of the study.

A research project under extreme conditions

The research is part of the ARRELS project, a program promoted by the Ministry for Culture of the Government of Catalonia and led by the UAB and IPHES-CERCA, focused on studying the prehistoric roots of human mobility and occupation in the Upper Ripollès region.

Excavations at Cova 338 have posed a major logistical challenge, as access to the cave is only possible on foot from the Núria Valley, with no motorized support allowed. This has required all materials and sediments generated during the digs to be transported manually.

“Conducting an archaeological excavation to current scientific standards under these conditions is extraordinarily demanding”, explains Tornero. The work incorporated high-resolution methodologies, including 3D recording of all materials, systematic sediment sampling, and techniques such as washing and flotation, which allow even the smallest remains to be recovered and provide highly detailed information on the activities carried out in the cave.

Given its scientific importance and excellent state of preservation, the site has been protected and access restricted to ensure the conservation of the deposits and facilitate future research.

The work has also been made possible thanks to the logistical and institutional support of the Queralbs Town Council and the Ter and Freser Headwaters Natural Park, which have facilitated fieldwork in this high-mountain environment.

A key reference for European prehistory

Researchers consider Cova 338 to be a key reference for understanding human occupation of the Pyrenean high mountains and the exploitation of their resources during recent prehistory.

“This site demonstrates that the Pyrenees were not a marginal territory for prehistoric communities, but a space fully integrated into their mobility strategies and territorial exploitation”, concludes Carlos Tornero.

The results open new lines of research into the role of alpine environments in prehistoric societies and the earliest forms of mineral resource exploitation in high-mountain contexts.

Potatoes may have shaped genetic makeup of Indigenous Andeans

 

Study finds that natural selection favored those with high number of starch-digesting genes following the domestication of potatoes in the Andes

 The Indigenous people of the Andes were the first to domesticate the potato, making the starch-rich crop a dietary staple for this high-altitude population long before it spread to the rest of the world.

Today, their descendants in Peru carry the highest known numbers of genes involved in starch digestion of any population in the world.

This is no accident, according to a new study co-led by the University at Buffalo and UCLA and published today (May 5) in Nature Communications. 

Evolutionary biologists and anthropologists found that natural selection favored Indigenous Andeans who had an unusually high number of salivary amylase genes (AMY1) starting around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago — the same period when potatoes were first grown in the Andean highlands, 

People with a high number of AMY1 copies tend to produce more of the amylase enzyme in their saliva, which begins breaking down starch in the mouth, and, thus, are thought to digest starch more effectively.

“Biologists have long suspected that different groups of humans have evolved genetic adaptations in response to their diets, but there are very few cases where the evidence is this strong,” says the study’s co-corresponding author, Omer Gokcumen, PhD, professor of biological sciences in the UB College of Arts and Sciences.

The study collected DNA from Peruvian Andean Quechua speakers — data that was then compared with genomic databases containing thousands of DNA samples from dozens of modern human populations. 

It could open the door to wider research into the lives of people who live at high altitudes — populations that deal with limited foodstuffs and extreme exposure to cold temperatures and ultraviolet rays.

“The high altitude Andes region is known for being a very rich geographic region for understanding human evolutionary adaptation to hypoxia, where tissues do not get enough oxygen,” says co-corresponding author Abigail Bigham, PhD, associate professor of anthropology at UCLA, who studies populations in the Peruvian Andes and the Himalayas of Nepal. “But I think this research highlights how the Andes are very useful for understanding human evolutionary adaptation to other environmental selective pressures like diet adaptation.”

Evolution a sculptor, not a builder

The work builds on Gokcumen’s prior research showing that the initial duplication of AMY1 in humans occurred at least 800,000 years ago, as well as Bigham’s prior research showing evidence of selection in the starch digestion pathway among Peruvian Andeans that corresponds to the period of potato domestication.  

Ancestors of Indigenous Andeans likely already carried both the lower and higher copy numbers of AMY1 before they settled into the highlands and domesticated potatoes. However, when they did begin growing potatoes, those with higher copy numbers gained an evolutionary advantage. 

Starting after about 10,000 years ago, those with roughly 10 copies or more had a 1.24% survival or reproductive advantage per generation.

“Evolution is chiseling a sculpture, not constructing a building,” Gokcumen says. “It’s not as if Indigenous Andeans gained additional AMY1 copies once they started eating potatoes. Instead, those with lower copy numbers were eliminated from the population over time, perhaps because they had less number of offspring, and the ones with the higher copy numbers remained.” 

The result? Indigenous people living in Peru today carry an average of 10 AMY1 copies, approximately two to four more than any of 83 populations examined in the study. 

Did contact with Europeans play a role?

On average, Indigenous people in Peru carry more copies (10 vs. six) than the Maya — an Indigenous population in Mexico with shared evolutionary history but without a tradition of potato farming.

“This direct comparison is one of the major reasons why we think their high number of AMY1 copies in the Peruvians did not evolve just by chance but instead linked to their long history of eating potatoes,” says Luane Landau, a PhD student in Gokcumen’s lab and the joint first author of the study.

However, they still had to account for the dramatic decline in the Indigenous population of the Americas following contact with Europeans in the 15th century, which resulted in disease, famine, violence, conflict and a rapid loss of genetic diversity in a short period of time.

Was it possible that this population bottleneck — rather than natural selection — could have disproportionately removed individuals with lower AMY1 copy numbers? Disentangling the two factors was a major challenge.

In the end, state-of-the-art ultra-long DNA sequencing technologies, along with newly available comparative datasets, allowed the researchers to demonstrate that high numbers of copies of the gene rose in frequency in the Andes several thousand years before Europeans appeared on the scene.

“We saw that the signal of natural selection was also much older, leading us to distinguish it from the population bottleneck,” says the study’s other first author, Kendra Scheer, a PhD student in Gokcumen’s lab. 

The ultra-long DNA sequencing technologies also provided unprecedented resolution that made it possible to investigate the mutational mechanisms responsible for exceptionally high AMY1 copy numbers.

What does it mean now that we all eat french fries?

Better understanding our genome could inform our dietary choices. In the future, people with fewer AMY1 copies could avoid eating too many potatoes or prepare them in a different way. 

“There could come a day when our diets are personalized according to our DNA,” Gokcumen says.

It also raises questions about how humans will evolve from modern diets.

“For most of human history, people ate the same thing their ancestors had eaten for thousands of years. You quite literally needed to migrate across the world to change your diet. So what does it mean now that we eat food from all over the world?” Scheer says. “And now that we’ve demonstrated the natural selection forces at play from eating potatoes, what does it mean now that the whole world eats french fries?”

While some think humans are adapted to the Paleolithic environment and not suited to eat foods that came post domestication, Bigham says their research shows that human populations have responded and evolved to changing food conditions within the last 10,000 years.

“Our metabolic pathways are not simply a product of that Paleolithic past,” she says. 

Other collaborators on the research include the University of Kansas, Penn State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, Syracuse University, Cayetano Heredia University (Peru) and Bilkent University (Turkey).

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the Leakey Foundation.
 

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-71450-8