Corn farming sustained large pre-colonial villages in the Brazilian savanna

 

For the first time, research reveals the food subsistence strategies of these communities, which involved sophisticated land use practices that incorporated various species

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo

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MAE-USP researcher Eliane Chim (with her back to the camera) examines a human skeleton found in a rock shelter in the municipality of Iuiu, Bahia 

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Credit: Adriano Espinola Filho

According to a study published in the journal Science Advances, corn cultivation was essential for the subsistence and development of large villages inhabiting the Cerrado – Brazil’s savanna biome – between the 9th and 17th centuries. The research, led by archaeologists from the University of São Paulo and supported by FAPESP, reveals the subsistence strategies of these densely populated communities for the first time. They employed sophisticated land-use practices involving the cultivation of various species (polyculture), with a special emphasis on corn. Previously, scientists considered these communities to be either predominantly mobile hunter-gatherers or monoculture farmers.

In addition to contributing to our understanding of the history of human influence on one of the most biodiverse tropical savannas on the planet, the study sheds light on the food production and land use strategies that shaped the landscapes of the Cerrado as we know them today.

The study also highlights the importance of the biome in understanding the biotechnological innovations used by pre-colonial indigenous Brazilian societies, such as adapting corn to the environmental conditions of the Brazilian savanna, which differ greatly from the plant’s place of origin. Previous research had already addressed the characterization and dispersal of corn in Latin America, showing that it arrived in Brazil via the southwestern Amazon rainforest at least 6,000 years ago. It originated in Mexico, where it first appeared 9,000 years ago, and was subsequently spread to other regions.

The conclusions of the study are based on the analysis of minute chemical variations preserved in human bones and teeth. This analysis made it possible to identify the types of plants and other foods consumed, providing a sort of “record” of diet throughout life.

“I often say that humans are what they eat, and that’s recorded in the chemical composition of their bones and teeth. Through that, we were able to identify corn consumption comparable to that of Mayan or Andean populations – something completely unexpected in this context. We also detected variability between two distinct societies, that is, archaeological traditions with markedly different diets, corroborating social and cultural diversity,” Eliane Chim, a researcher at the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (MAE-USP) and the lead author of the article, which is part of her doctoral dissertation, told Agência FAPESP.

“For over a century, Brazilian archaeology has debated the role of corn in pre-colonial societies, especially those with high population densities and more elaborate pottery. This is the first time that its central role in the subsistence of those populations has been demonstrated in Brazil. Just as in the Andes and Mesoamerica, corn cultivation here is associated with societies that had larger populations and left more evident marks on the landscape,” notes André Strauss, project coordinator and Chim’s advisor. Strauss is an archaeologist and a professor at MAE-USP and is one of the corresponding authors of the article, along with Patrick Roberts of the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

The researchers consider the study to be a milestone in Brazilian archaeology because it was published in a high-impact journal with Brazilian authors listed first and last. FAPESP funded the research through a Young Investigators grant awarded to Strauss, fellowships awarded to Chim and other group members (20/04402-0, 23/06749-5, 22/05420-7, and 20/06729-6 ), and two projects, including one that funded publication in the journal (19/15914-4 and 26/12048-8).

The “value” of bones

The scientists analyzed the stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in the teeth and bones of more than 100 individuals from 37 archaeological sites in the Cerrado, Caatinga (a semi-arid biome in northeastern Brazil), and the Atlantic Forest. The samples, which date from a period between 1,100 and 400 years ago, were obtained from excavations conducted by the research group and from archaeological collections assembled since the 1970s.

Isotopes are natural variants of each chemical element that differ in the number of neutrons they contain. In the case of carbon, they indicate which types of plants predominated in the diet. For example, they can distinguish corn from other fruits and plants typical of the Cerrado. Nitrogen helps estimate the amount of animal protein consumed and the individuals’ position in the food chain. Oxygen, on the other hand, provides data related to water consumption and environmental conditions.

Since different foods have distinct isotopic signatures, these signatures are “recorded” in body tissues and can be used to reconstruct the diets of ancient populations. This makes it possible to determine whether their diet was primarily based on corn or other foods and whether they consumed animal protein.

Additionally, the scientists performed radiocarbon dating on the collagen of approximately 40% of the bones that still contained protein. This technique determines the age of organic remains. The scientists also used paleoecological records to reconstruct the diets. These records consist of natural remains, such as seeds, sediments, and plant and animal remains, that provide insight into vegetation, climate, and the environment during different periods.

The samples come from the villages of two populations: the Aratu, who lived in the open, and the Una, one of the earliest pottery-making horticulturalists of the Cerrado, who frequented rock shelters, usually near riverbeds or ponds.

Among the Aratu populations, bone collagen and dental enamel from the oldest individuals revealed evidence of corn consumption. Additionally, other studies documented wear marks on ceramic vessels that are consistent with the fermentation of alcoholic beverages. This finding suggests a broader role for cultivated plants in the daily lives of these villages. These findings suggest that corn may have been a dietary staple and possibly used in communal or ritual practices.

“We don’t hear much about them, but these Aratu groups had a unique presence in the Cerrado,” Strauss points out. According to Strauss, Aratu villages had as many as 2,000 inhabitants, a population comparable to that of most European towns of the same era.

In contrast, the rock-shelter populations of the Una culture had a more diverse diet with lower corn intake. Since these groups occupied similar environments to those of the Aratu, the scientists conclude that the differences cannot be explained solely by ecology. Rather, they indicate that distinct cultural traditions and economic strategies coexisted within the biome. Both practiced polyculture, but corn was a primary source of subsistence for the more populous Aratu communities.

Collective effort

The project has been underway for more than ten years. It brought together 31 researchers from 10 Brazilian universities in collaboration with the Max Planck Society and institutions in Portugal, Poland, and the United States.

“Archaeology operates on a different timeline. You can’t accomplish much in six months. You have to go into the field, excavate, return to the lab, and curate the finds. Only then can the analytical phase of the work begin. We also use this as a mechanism for training personnel, and Eliane [Chim] is a prime example of that,” says Strauss.

For Chim, one of the challenges of conducting this type of study is preserving the archaeological material, especially when analyzing collagen. More than 270 artifacts were evaluated to obtain the sample used in the study.

“We intend to resume field research at those archaeological sites and try to locate the farmlands where people cultivated crops. We know the cemeteries, the urn fields, and the size of some villages, but we need to find the other areas occupied by those people,” Chim adds, outlining the future of the research.

 

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aef70 

What happened to population after the Kikai-Akahoya eruption in prehistoric Japan

 

How one of Earth’s worst volcanic disasters affected societies

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Lund University

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Kikai-Akahoya volcanic deposit in southern Kyushu. This is the “disaster layer” of volcanic ash that runs across the landscape. Archaeologists look at what life was like below this line and also above it to understand human impacts and responses.

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Credit: Lund University

A new international study led by Lund University examines what happened to population levels after the Kikai-Akahoya volcanic eruption in prehistoric Japan. The results paint a more complex picture than what has previously been believed. 

The Kikai-Akahoya eruption took place in Japan some 7,300 years ago.  At the time, Jomon foraging communities lived in Japan, surviving as hunter-gatherers.

”This eruption must have been devastating, exploding out of the sea bed with little warning. It battered the Japanese islands with powerful earthquakes and enormous tsunamis, and then blanketed the landscape with meters of volcanic ash,” explains senior author Peter Jordan, professor in archaeology at Lund University.

The consequences of the eruption have been widely debated by archaeologists for decades. Some argue that it was an ‘apocalypse’ in which all human life abruptly ended closest to the epicentre, while others have started to argue for a local population survival, even in areas quite close to the eruption. 

The research team found that both these versions  - total collapse or continuity - were too simplistic. 

On one hand, populations did decline, as ecosystems suffered and areas became uninhabitable. On the other hand, the researchers found evidence that humans were in fact resourceful in the face of dire circumstances. In some cases, the population actually increased in the period after the eruption.

”The disaster caused major loss of life. However, survivors migrated, forged new social relations, innovated new kinds of economy, and appear to have found creative ways to exist and later thrive in the new post-disaster conditions,” says lead author Enrico Crema, professor at Cambridge University.

According to Peter Jordan, the research demonstrates how unpredictable and complex the aftermath of a major disaster can be.

”This study helps in creating a deeper understanding of the contingent ways in which cultures and societies cope with sudden shocks and catastrophes. Even in the most impossible situations, survivors and communities have choices, however limited: they need to act and make decisions, they need to adjust, collaborate and find new connections and social networks,” he concludes.

Population patterns identified by the study:

- Jomon forager populations were already in decline in southern Kyushu long before the eruption, and so the disaster hit a region that was already sparsely populated and only being visited by highly mobile groups. 

- Populations were growing in northern Kyushu and this population growth trend actually continued right through the disaster and its aftermath, despite the massive and enduring damage to ecosystems. The authors suggest this resilient growth trend may be the result of ‘refugees’ moving out of the worst hit areas immediately after the disaster.

- Inland survivors appear to have moved away and clustered along northern coastlines, where marine ecosystems quickly recovered. Population growth may have been accelerated by new kinds of adaptation focusing on exploiting the abundant resources of the sea. 

- The more distant areas of Japan had experienced population growth prior to the eruption, but saw demographic stagnation or even decline after the disaster. These far-reaching effects have never been identified before, and may be linked to short-term climate change triggered by the eruption, or to catastrophic tooth attrition among the deer and boar that the Jomon relied on for their food supplies (possibly a consequence of the animals grazing in ash covered landscapes), or to a suite of other volcanic impacts on human health and well-being.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aeh7197

Humans experienced abrupt environmental shifts during the last ice age

Expanded excavations at White Sands National Park in New Mexico have provided researchers an opportunity to refine the age of the oldest human footprints in North America and establish a deeper understanding of the landscape and environmental conditions at the time humans were present there. 

The new study, published in Science Advances by a team of researchers including the University of Arizona, the United States Geological Survey and other partners, reveals a dynamic environment indicating the humans who left their tracks along an ancient lake shore experienced abrupt changes in temperature and water availability within their lifetimes. 

The research team previously discovered and confirmed the White Sands human footprints to be the oldest evidence of human presence in North America, placing people on the continent thousands of years earlier than once thought. 

The research details innovative extraction procedures used to isolate up to 75,000 individual pollen grains per sample and refined dating methods used at the USGS Radiocarbon Laboratory. This resulted in a more precise age of the site and reaffirmed the White Sands footprints date to between 23.5 and 21.7 thousand years ago, or during the Last Glacial Maximum. The new chronology was key to unlocking the rest of the story, which includes a deeper understanding of the abrupt environmental changes that early humans in North America faced. 

The researchers used the new chronology to investigate the climate and environmental changes at a timescale equivalent to a human generation, or approximately 50 years, which is rare for terrestrial paleoclimate archives of this time period from the southwestern U.S.

"The White Sands sediments are unique in that they allow us to reconstruct environmental conditions during the last ice age at a very high temporal resolution, so that we can see fluctuations that were relevant for the humans present at that time," said co-author Jessica Tierney, a professor at the U of A Department of Geosciences. 

Tierney applied her expertise in the analysis of geochemical signatures captured in sediments, which she combined with fossil pollen from the plants growing in the surrounding landscape, to reconstruct temperature, precipitation, aridity and plant communities. The results show the climate at White Sands was dynamic. Humans witnessed a complete turnover of the landscape from conifer forest to sagebrush and oak steppe and the recession of Lake Otero, a massive lake that would have covered most of what is White Sands National Park during the last ice age. By measuring isotopes – elemental atoms that differ by their number of neutrons, in this case, hydrogen – in leaf waxes of preserved plant material, Tierney's group at the U of A discovered that there were also swings in water availability within a century that included severe aridity during an abrupt warming event also recorded in ice core samples from Greenland. 

"This tells us that local changes in aridity at White Sands were quite large and followed global climate shifts," Tierney said.

During the last glacial maximum, when the humans left their footprints in what likely was a muddy plain, temperatures in the Southwest were generally cooler, around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, as opposed to today's annual mean temperatures around 60 degrees in that area, Tierney explained. During the sudden shift documented by pollen in the sedimentary layers, vegetation changed from pine forest to pinyon and juniper, all within about 100 years. 

Tierney said that varying amounts of pollen left behind by Ruppia, an aquatic plant that likes to grow in desert streams and springs, indicate Lake Otero's water level went up and down over the course of about 1,500 years. 

"Eventually the lake shrunk more and more until it gave way to a flat playa," she said. "And throughout that whole sequence, people were walking there, leaving their tracks alongside those of mammoths, giant sloths and dire wolves." 

Having an exquisitely preserved record of the environmental conditions and changes, such as rainfall, temperatures and vegetation in the same place with tracks left by humans and wildlife at the same time is extremely unique for the Southwest, if not globally, Tierney added. 

"Even though these footprints have been buried in the gypsum mud for more than 20,000 years, they look like someone walked out on the playa yesterday," Tierney said. "This is an incredibly rare opportunity to be able to do paleoclimate reconstruction and combine it with archeology in the same exact place."

Next, the researchers want to delve deeper into what exactly happened at the time – what mechanisms may have been at work that would have caused a warming event in Greenland to cause drying in the American Southwest. 

"This study fulfilled a long-term research goal at White Sands – to expand the originally published footprint site and sample for environmental indicators to help further our understanding of the complete context of conditions at the height of the Last Glacial Maximum," said Kathleen Springer, USGS research geologist and co-lead author on the paper. "It's remarkable that early humans in the region were real-time witnesses to a rapidly changing environment discernible within a human lifetime – that is really food for thought."

Ed Jolie, Clara Lee Tanner Associate Professor of Anthropology at the U of A and a study co-author, said the findings "humanize the deep Indigenous past of the Americas." Jolie, who is Oglala Lakota and Hodulgee Muscogee, is also associate curator of ethnology at Arizona State Museum.

"This research continues to remind scientists and the wider public that these resilient ancient human populations are the ancestors of contemporary Indigenous peoples, providing important scientific evidence in support of sovereign Native nations' oral traditions and reinforcing the fact that we have been here since time immemorial," Jolie said.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aeh0707 

The human impact of Britain’s largest medieval lead industry

 

 through ancient teeth

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of Nottingham

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Gold-bound beaver-tooth pendant from the Wigber Low cemetery (mid-7th century)

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Credit: Sheffield Museums Trust

The first definitive evidence of when post-Roman lead production began in one of Europe’s largest medieval lead-producing regions, the Derbyshire Peak District in central England, has been uncovered by archaeologists, after centuries of mining had erased much of the archaeological evidence.

With Roman and medieval lead waste repeatedly re-smelted during the 16th to 19th centuries, many of the industrial traces archaeologists would normally rely on had disappeared.

The research team, led by the University of Nottingham in collaboration with the British Geological Survey, the University of Sheffield, York Archaeology and Castleton Historical Society, therefore turned to an unexpected archive – the teeth of the people who lived in the Peak District. By analysing chemical signatures preserved in tooth enamel, they were able to reveal when mining and smelting restarted after the end of Roman Britain, during the mid-7th century, and uncover how this major industry shaped the lives of local communities.

Tooth enamel forms during childhood and does not remodel throughout life, meaning it preserves a permanent record of the lead absorbed during childhood. By measuring lead concentrations locked within enamel, the researchers reconstructed childhood exposure to pollution between c. 650 and 1500.

Lead author, Christopher Loveluck, Professor of Medieval European Archaeology at the University of Nottingham’s Department of Classics and Archaeology, said: “The team is delighted to have finally confirmed definitively the date by which the early medieval lead industry was established in the Peak District, by the mid-7th century AD, through evidence provided by the people themselves, providing the foundations of western Europe’s largest lead-producing region between the late 12thth and 16th centuries.”

The study compared the lead levels of three Peak District cemeteries with populations from across Britain, from the Neolithic period through to the Industrial Revolution, showing that even in the 7th century the lead levels in children among the Derbyshire mining communities were the same, or greater than those from industrialised cities from c. 1750-1850. The research is the first to analyse lead contamination in people who mined and smelted lead in western Europe’s largest medieval lead-producing region.

Lead is a toxic metal that can damage the nervous, renal and reproductive systems. Medieval mining and smelting created multiple routes of exposure through contaminated dust, fumes and materials. By examining lead preserved in tooth enamel, the researchers were able to investigate how exposure varied between individuals and across communities.

The findings provide the first absolute evidence that post-Roman lead production in the Derbyshire Peak District was established by the middle of the 7th century AD, and show that by the mid-8th century, large-scale production had contaminated the wider environment around mining centres such as Castleton, in the Peak District.

However, exposure was not experienced equally across society. Individuals buried with high-status grave goods, including weapons, generally had much lower lead concentrations than those from less richly furnished burials. This suggests that elites may have controlled or benefited from lead production, while lower-status households were more directly involved in processing ore and smelting, exposing children within those communities to much higher levels of pollution.

The findings also highlight the potential vulnerability of women within these communities. Three women analysed in the study died between the ages of around 17 and 25 and had elevated childhood lead exposure. While the relationship between childhood lead exposure and premature death remains complex, the results suggest a possible association between high lead burdens and increased health risks. This may have been particularly significant during pregnancy, when lead stored in the body can be released back into the bloodstream.

Dr Anna Bloxam, Co-Director of the Castleton excavations, added: “We know from modern studies that lead can have profoundly harmful effects on the health and development of children: there is no safe level of exposure. All the individuals included in our study survived into adulthood, but they were exposed to lead while they were young and growing. We can tell from their skeletons that most of the men we studied lived until middle or old age, whereas the women primarily died much earlier, in young adulthood.

“Our results indicate that in these mining communities, girls and boys alike were raised in dangerously polluted home environments. This exposure will likely have caused negative health effects in life, and perhaps contributed to higher rates of premature death among women of child-bearing age.”

Lead exposure remained high throughout the medieval period, reaching its greatest levels during the late 12th and early 13th centuries. This corresponds with historical records showing that Peak District lead production reached its medieval height, as well as environmental evidence recording rising atmospheric lead pollution across Europe.

Results also suggest that mining communities in the Peak District were remarkably stable. Isotopic analysis indicates that most individuals studied had grown up locally, suggesting that mining and smelting knowledge was passed down through generations rather than relying on large numbers of incoming workers.

The findings also align with wider environmental evidence from across western Europe. Previous studies of Alpine ice cores and sediment cores from river channels, lakes and peat bogs have identified a particular rise in atmospheric lead pollution attributed especially to British production around 1200. The new evidence from human tooth enamel provides a direct link between these environmental signals and the people living and working within one of Europe’s major lead-producing landscapes.

The research builds on decades of archaeological investigation in the Peak District, including earlier work by Colin Merrony at the University of Sheffield, which identified and excavated key medieval burial sites in the region. By analysing human remains from three cemetery populations – Wigber Low in the Derbyshire White Peak, dating to the 7th century; Joule Yard at Castleton, dating from the 7th to 11th centuries; and Spital Field at Castleton, dating from the 12th to 15th centuries – these combined samples provided a unique record of communities living through the revival and expansion of medieval lead production, allowing researchers to explore how exposure to the industry changed over time.

 

Colin Merrony of the University of Sheffield, said: “Our recent excavations in Castleton have provided a lot of new information about the people living in the Hope Valley during the medieval period. We now understand more about the size of the population in the valley, and we can see from the archaeological evidence that these working communities were involved in industries which required hard physical labour. However, this study has enabled us, for the first time, to see beyond this broader understanding and to look more deeply into the profound impact lead production had on individuals and the communities they lived in.”

The study brings together archaeology, history, chemistry and environmental science to show how one of Britain’s most significant industrial landscapes developed – and how its effects can still be detected more than a millennium later. The findings relate to medieval mining and smelting between the 7th and 15th centuries and do not reflect modern environmental conditions. The legacy of historic mining in the Peak District is now well understood and carefully monitored, with land management, conservation and environmental regulation helping to minimise any risks associated with former mining activity.

The results of this research will form part of the developing medieval archaeological research agenda for the Peak District National Park, funded by Historic England, and will be shared with the public by a temporary display in the region over autumn-winter 2026-27, showcasing the results of this research alongside archaeological discoveries from the excavations in Castleton.

The research was funded and supported by the University of Nottingham, the Peak District National Park Authority, Castleton Historical Society, the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Museums and Historic England.

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Journal

Antiquity

DOI

10.15184/aqy.2026.10416

Polynesian wayfinding is written in the genomes of island populations

For centuries, Polynesian navigators crossed thousands of miles of open ocean, using their knowledge of stars, currents, birds, clouds and the sea to settle islands across the Pacific. Now, a new University of California San Diego study shows the history of voyaging is also reflected in the genomes of Polynesian populations today.

Published Oct. 8 in Science and featured on the journal’s cover, the study analyzes whole-genome sequences from 1,050 individuals across Polynesia. The findings offer genomic evidence of the extraordinary skill, knowledge and achievement of Polynesian voyagers, whose mastery of long-distance ocean travel helped shape the genetic history of the Pacific. 

Using DNA to trace how Polynesian communities were formed, the study also shows that the same migration history may help explain why certain health-related genetic variants are more common in some island populations.

As Polynesian voyagers left established island communities to settle new ones, each group carried only a portion of the genetic diversity found in the population it left behind. For example, a group departing Mangareva for Hawaiʻi or Rapa Nui would have carried only a smaller genetic selection of the people living in Mangareva. When later groups set out from newly settled islands, they carried an even smaller subset of that genetic variation with them. 

The authors compare the pattern to a set of Russian nesting dolls: The largest population contains the most genetic variation, while each successive population contains a smaller genetic subset within it.

“As we go from one island to the next, we're selecting a subset of a gene pool, and that is shaping our genome over time,” said Keolu Fox, an associate professor of anthropology at the UC San Diego School of Social Sciences and a corresponding author of the study.

Reconstructing a history of voyaging

The study examined genomic data from populations in French Polynesia, including the Austral, Society, Marquesas and Tuamotu islands, as well as Mangareva. The researchers also incorporated data from Rapa Nui, Native Hawaiians, Samoans and Tongans.

The analysis found that Hawaiʻi and Rapa Nu i — two of the most geographically distant Polynesian populations — are also the most closely genetically related among the remote island populations studied.

The islands are separated by approximately 7,000 kilometers and each is more than 3,000 kilometers from the nearest inhabited Polynesian island. The researchers say their genetic similarities suggest that both populations were ultimately settled by voyagers whose deeper ancestral roots trace back to Mangareva.

The findings support the existence of an ancient culture capable of repeated, long-distance voyaging across the Pacific. The researchers refer to this hypothesized tradition as Holomoana Nui, meaning “great ocean voyaging.”

The pattern was not created by a single, one-way migration. Polynesian voyaging involved repeated movement among island populations, with voyagers carrying provisions, knowledge and genetic material across the ocean. Over time, the repeated settlement of new islands produced increasingly concentrated founder effects.

In Polynesia, the researchers found evidence of multiple founder effects — when small groups establish new populations, carrying only a portion of the genetic diversity of the larger population they left behind. They also discovered bottlenecks — when disease or another major event sharply reduces a population, leaving survivors with less genetic variation than before — accumulating over the course of settlement. The result is one of the strongest cumulative founder effects observed in human population genetics.

What the findings could mean for health

Founder effects can influence health because rare genetic variants carried by a small founding population may become more common in later generations.

The researchers identified three variants associated with autosomal recessive diseases at relatively high frequencies in French Polynesia. One variant in the FAN1 gene, associated with karyomegalic interstitial nephritis — a rare condition that can lead to kidney failure — was found in more than 11% of the French Polynesian cohort. The variant was absent from gnomAD, a major international database containing genomic data from more than 800,000 individuals.

The findings demonstrate how medically important variants can be common within a specific founder population while remaining invisible in large global genomic databases.

That gap matters because much of modern genomic medicine has been developed using data from populations of European ancestry. Without more detailed information about Polynesian populations, clinicians may not know which variants to screen for or how frequently certain disease-associated variants occur.

The study also underscores why broad population categories can be inadequate for clinical genetics. Grouping Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations together may obscure important differences among individual island populations.

Fox said the findings could eventually help researchers develop more precise approaches to screening, diagnosis and treatment, including for diseases such as cancer.

The study itself does not establish new clinical guidelines or treatments. Rather, it identifies genetic information that could guide future research and clinical work.

A study designed around trust

Fox, who is the first Native Hawaiian to earn a Ph.D. in Genome Sciences, has a longstanding interest in Polynesian history and the health needs of Pacific Islander communities.

During a 2017 visit to French Polynesia, a conversation about the legacy of French nuclear testing led Fox to consider how genomic research might help clarify disease risks in communities exposed to environmental hazards and underserved by modern medical infrastructure.

The French government conducted 193 nuclear tests in French Polynesia between 1966 and 1996. Fox said the experience prompted him to think more deeply about how precision medicine could serve communities that have not always had access to comprehensive cancer screening, genetic testing or specialized care.

But the study was also shaped by a second question: How could the research be conducted in a way that protected Indigenous communities and allowed them to share in the benefits of scientific discovery?

The answer became Variant Bio, a biotechnology company that Fox joined as a senior advisor while conducting the research. It develops partnerships with populations that have historically been underrepresented in genomic research. He said the company was created to give participating communities greater control over how their data are collected, stored and used.

“We want to build trust first,” Fox said. “Making you a partner and not a subject in this allows us to expedite the development of these projects.”

That approach treats community members as partners in research rather than simply as sources of biological material. It includes explaining the potential uses and risks of genomic data, building relationships with community leaders and involving local health professionals in the research process.

The study includes contributions from Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities in Hawaiʻi, Rapa Nui and French Polynesia. Its authors also acknowledge the French Polynesian clinicians, nurses and community health workers who helped make the research possible.

Fox said the inclusion of local clinicians reflects a central principle of the project: The people who understand the health needs of a community should be involved in research conducted there.

“None of this is possible without the contributions of these partners,” Fox said.

Sharing in the benefits

Variant Bio’s model includes a formal benefit-sharing commitment of 4% of the company’s revenue and 4% of equity-derived value that are designated for partner communities.

The arrangement is intended to ensure that communities contributing genetic data share in the value created by research and future commercial partnerships. The funds can support priorities identified by the communities themselves, including health care, education, infrastructure, food sovereignty, energy projects and data infrastructure.

For Fox, benefit-sharing is not separate from the science. It is part of the research design.

“If you want to recruit communities into research, you have to make them stakeholders in the technology you are building,” he said.

Fox, who spent nearly a decade on the research endeavor, says the paper in Science reflects a broader vision for the future of genomic medicine — one in which Indigenous communities help shape the research questions, govern the use of their data and participate in the benefits of discoveries made from their genomes.

“It is remarkable to say that our achievements as voyaging people have shaped our genomes over time,” Fox said. “And to have that recognized on the cover of Science is incredibly validating.” 

Read the full study, “Message in a Bottleneck: Nested Founder Effects from French Polynesia to Rapa Nui and Hawaiʻi” in Science. 

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