Lars Fehren-Schmitz

• Dr. rer. nat.
• Professor (Associate) at University of California, Santa Cruz

Rationale Iron deficiency plagues reproductive‐aged women across the world, and blood loss during menstruation is proposed as the driving force. To assess if other factors related to reproduction influence Fe and Cu isotope variation in females, we measured Fe and Cu isotope compositions in the bones of chimpanzees and bonobos. Methods To do this,...

The Moche archaeological culture flourished along Peru’s North Coast between the 4th and 10th centuries CE and was characterized by a complex social hierarchy dominated by political and religious elites. Previous archaeological evidence suggests kinship was a key factor in maintaining political authority within Moche society. To test this hypothesi...

The Caucasus and surrounding areas, with their rich metal resources, became a crucible of the Bronze Age¹ and the birthplace of the earliest steppe pastoralist societies². Yet, despite this region having a large influence on the subsequent development of Europe and Asia, questions remain regarding its hunter-gatherer past and its formation of expan...

The geographic origin, evolution and spread of treponemal diseases remains one of the most debated topics of infectious disease history. Treponema pallidum subspecies, the pathogens known to cause modern treponemal diseases that have been genomically characterized, are closely related yet cause various disease syndromes. Each subspecies was traditi...

In-solution hybridisation enrichment of genetic markers is a method of choice in paleogenomic studies, where the DNA of interest is generally heavily fragmented and contaminated with environmental DNA, and where the retrieval of genetic data comparable between individuals is challenging. Here, we benchmarked the commercial "Twist Ancient DNA" reage...

Resumen: El origen, evolución y propagación de la treponematosis, causada por Treponema pallidum subsp., es uno de los temas más debatidos en la historia de las enfermedades infecciosas, sin embargo, su historia evolutiva sigue siendo incierta. En este estudio presentamos la evidencia más antigua de treponematosis publicada hasta la fecha recuperad...

Les récentes avancées en paléogénomique ont ouvert de nouvelles perspectives sur l’étude des pratiques funéraires et des structures sociales en Mésoamérique. Cette note présente les premiers résultats d’un programme en cours dans une petite résidence sur le site de Naachtun (Guatemala) numérotée 5N6. Les possibilités d’estimation du sexe offertes p...

In‐solution hybridisation enrichment of genetic variation is a valuable methodology in human paleogenomics. It allows enrichment of endogenous DNA by targeting genetic markers that are comparable between sequencing libraries. Many studies have used the 1240k reagent—which enriches 1,237,207 genome‐wide SNPs—since 2015, though access was restricted....

Machu Picchu originally functioned as a palace within the estate of the Inca emperor Pachacuti between ~1420 and 1532 CE. Before this study, little was known about the people who lived and died there, where they came from or how they were related to the inhabitants of the Inca capital of Cusco. We generated genome-wide data for 34 individuals burie...

In-solution hybridisation enrichment of genetic variation is a valuable methodology in human paleogenomics. It allows enrichment of endogenous DNA by targeting genetic markers that are comparable between sequencing libraries. Many studies have used the 1240k reagent-which enriches 1,237,207 genome-wide SNPs-since 2015, though access was restricted....

During the late Initial Period (c. 1100-800 BC), the Conchucos region of highland Peru witnessed the formation of the ceremonial and “proto-urban” center of Chavín de Huántar (c. 1000-500/400 BC). An important question regarding Chavín de Huántar centers on the nature of its subsistence economy during the time when it was first founded. In this pap...

Open Access: https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at/produkt/archaeologia-austriaca-band-107-2023/archa-107-2023?name=archaeologia-austriaca-band-107-2023&product_form=5014

The Late Intermediate Period (LIP, c. 1000–1450 CE) was a time of cultural change in the Peruvian highlands. During this time, interpersonal violence increased, and settlements were placed in defensive locations at high elevations. High altitude settlement was also a proxy for agropastoral economies. Coinciding with these cultural and economic tran...

We are a group of archaeologists, anthropologists, curators and geneticists representing diverse global communities and 31 countries. All of us met in a virtual workshop dedicated to ethics in ancient DNA research held in November 2020. There was widespread agreement that globally applicable ethical guidelines are needed, but that recent recommenda...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has been infecting humans for millennia and remains a global health problem, but its past diversity and dispersal routes are largely unknown. We generated HBV genomic data from 137 Eurasians and Native Americans dated between ~10,500 and ~400 years ago. We date the most recent common ancestor of all HBV lineages to between ~...

Machu Picchu, in Cuzco, is one of the most famous archaeological sites in South America. The precise dating of the monumental complex, however, relies largely on documentary sources. Samples of bone and teeth from individuals buried in caves at four cemeteries around Machu Picchu form the basis for a new programme of AMS radiocarbon-dating. The res...

The Southern Cone of South America (SCSA) is a key region for investigations about the peopling of the Americas. However, little is known about the eastern sector, the Argentinian Pampas. We analysed 18 mitochondrial genomes—7 of which are novel—from human skeletal remains from 3 Early to Late Holocene archaeological sites. The Pampas presents a di...

Strontium isotope (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) analysis of human skeletal remains is an important method in archaeology to examine past human mobility and landscape use. ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr signatures of a given location are largely determined by the underlying bedrock, and these geology specific isotope signatures are incorporated into skeletal tissue through food and water...

The rulers of the Inka empire conquered approximately 2 million km² of the South American Andes in just under 100 years from 1438–1533 CE. Inside the empire, the elite conducted a systematic resettlement of the many Indigenous peoples in the Andes that had been rapidly colonised. The nature of this resettlement phenomenon is recorded within the Spa...

On the basis of distinct lines of evidence, detailed reconstructions of the Holocene population history of the Sabana de Bogotá (SB) region, Northern South America, have been performed. Currently, there exist two competing models that support temporal continuity or, alternatively, divergence. Despite recent bioarchaeological and isotopic research t...

Analyzing ancient DNA of the central Andes, Ringbauer and colleagues identify a markedly elevated rate of unions of closely related parents after ca. 1000 CE. This change of mating preferences sheds new light on a unique system of social organization based on ancestry (“ayllu”) whereby within-group unions were preferred to facilitate sharing of res...

Significance Genomic, archaeological, historical, and biogeochemical data are integrated to examine six individuals from two cemeteries in the Chincha Valley of southern Peru. Results demonstrate consistency among these independent datasets in support of a model of north Peruvian coast peoples moving to the Chincha Valley during the Late Horizon (1...

The Late Preceramic Period (3000–1700 BCE) and Initial Period (1700–800 BCE) in Peru was a time of emergent social complexity as illustrated by the construction of ceremonial architecture and permanent settlements. A long-standing debate centers on the nature of the subsistence economies that supported this incipient complexity. Though some scholar...

There are many unanswered questions about the population history of the Central and South Central Andes, particularly regarding the impact of large-scale societies, such as the Moche, Wari, Tiwanaku, and Inca. We assembled genome-wide data on 89 individuals dating from ∼9,000-500 years ago (BP), with a particular focus on the period of the rise and...

The prurient element in the popular notion of the Maya sacrifice of “beautiful virgins” during the first half of the twentieth century (Frost and Arnold 1909; Willard 1926) appears to have made researchers wary of studying women in human sacrifice. Interest in human sacrifice arose in the 1990s along with the formulation of the warfare hypothesis f...

Evidence of intentional dental modification practices has been found throughout Mesoamerica dating from the Early Preclassic period to the conquest. The recovery of 102 modified teeth from Midnight Terror Cave (MTC) provides a sufficiently large sample to critically examine current explanations of intentional dental modification. Paleogenomic analy...

On the basis of distinct lines of evidence, detailed reconstructions of the Holocene population history of the Sabana de Bogota (SB) region, Northern South America, have been performed. Currently, there exist two competing models that support temporal continuity or, alternatively, divergence. Despite recent research that lends support to the popula...

In July 2011, renovations to Yale-New Haven Hospital inadvertently exposed the cemetery of Christ Church, New Haven, Connecticut’s first Catholic cemetery. While this cemetery was active between 1833 and 1851, both the church and its cemetery disappeared from public records, making the discovery serendipitous. Four relatively well-preserved adult s...

Studies of Native South American genetic diversity have helped to shed light on the peopling and differentiation of the continent, but available data are sparse for the major ecogeographic domains. These include the Pacific Coast, a potential early migration route; the Andes, home to the most expansive complex societies and to one of the most widel...

Here we report the results of excavation and interdisciplinary study of the largest child and camelid sacrifice known from the New World. Stratigraphy, associated artifacts, and radiocarbon dating indicate that it was a single mass killing of more than 140 children and over 200 camelids directed by the Chimú state, c. AD 1450. Preliminary DNA analy...

Studies of Native South American genetic diversity have helped to shed light on the peopling and differentiation of the continent, but available data are sparse for the major ecogeographic domains. These include the Pacific Coast, a potential early migration route; the Andes, home to the most expansive complex societies and to one of the most spoke...

The Sabana de Bogotá in the eastern highlands of Colombia is a well-known archaeological region that has played a significant role in the discussion of the initial human expansion into South America. In addition, such region presents a very complete archaeological, bioarchaeological and paleoenvironmental record that encompass the whole Holocene pe...

Table S2. Affinity of Early South Americans to North Americans, Related to Table S4 Representative f4-statistics on 1240K dataset of the form f4(Mbuti, Anzick-1; Early South American, Brazil_LapaDoSanto_9600BP or Late Central Andes) or f4(Mbuti, Canada_Lucier_4800BP-500BP; Brazil_LapaDoSanto_9600BP or Brazil_Laranjal_6700BP, Late or Modern Peruvia...

Table S3. Data Description, Ancient DNA Workflow, mtDNA, Radiocarbon Dates, Related to Figure 1

Table S4. f4- and f3-Statistics, Related to Figures 1, 4, 5, S5D–S5F, and S6A–S6D and Table S2

Table S1. Relatedness of Ancient to Present-Day People, Related to Figures 2, S1, and S2 f4-statistics on the Illumina dataset of the form f4(Mbuti, Test; South American 1, South American 2) where “Test” is a newly reported ancient group, “South American 1” is the population with highest affinity to Test in outgroup f3-statistics (excluding Chorot...

We report genome-wide ancient DNA from 49 individuals forming four parallel time transects in Belize, Brazil, the Central Andes, and the Southern Cone, each dating to at least ∼9,000 years ago. The common ancestral population radiated rapidly from just one of the two early branches that contributed to Native Americans today. We document two previou...

UC Santa Cruz is an emerging leader in archaeological research locally and around the world. Our PhD program adopts a rigorous and innovative approach to the archaeology of colonial encounters. We emphasize the combination of advanced laboratory and eld methods to answer exciting anthropological questions about the past. UCSC boasts regional specia...

The term “isolation by distance” (IBD) describes a number of models that explore patterns of population genetic variation resulting from spatially limited gene flow. The key assumption of IBD is that genetic similarity between individuals of a population decreases as the geographic distance between them grows. On a global scale, IBD is observed in...

Human population structure studies suggest that craniometric and genetic data demonstrate similar genetic distances within and between populations. However, few studies use craniometric and genetic data from the same individuals to conduct comparative analyses. Therefore, it is necessary to assess whether distance analysis methods deliver significa...

Some recent academic and popular literature implies that the problem of the colonization of the Americas has been largely resolved in favor of one specific model: a Pacific coastal migration, dependent on high marine productivity, from the Bering Strait to South America, thousands of years before Clovis, the earliest widespread cultural manifestati...

The origins and lifeways of the inhabitants of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), a remote island in the southeast Pacific Ocean, have been debated for generations. Archaeological evidence substantiates the widely accepted view that the island was first settled by people of Polynesian origin, as late as 1200 CE [1-4]. What remains controversial, however, is...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine South American population structure and prehistoric population displacements prior to the Spanish conquest, utilizing mitochondrial DNA haplogroups of extant mixed populations from Mexico, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Method: Relative fr...

The timing of the entry of the first humans into the Americas has been a source of debate for decades amongst archaeologists and geneticists. Here we briefly review the evidence for current hypotheses on the peopling process of the Americas and discuss how ancient mitochondrial DNA can provide a unique temporal perspective. We propose that, in abse...

The peopling of the high altitude Andes marks an important episode in South American population history, eventually leading to the formation of the most complex societies of the late pre-Columbian period, namely Wari, Tiwanaku, and Inca. Little is known about how population dynamic processes and genetic adaptation to physical stressors like hypoxia...

South American populations have played a critical role in elucidating the timing, origin, and migration routes of the first Americans. Among the ongoing debates surrounding the peopling of South America, there has been a great deal of focus on the cranial shape of prehistoric populations on this continent, which some researchers have described as h...

High-Throughput DNA Sequencing (HTS) technologies have changed the way in which we detect and assess DNA contamination in ancient DNA studies. Researchers use computational methods to mine the large quantity of sequencing data to detect characteristic patterns of DNA damage, and to evaluate the authenticity of the results. We argue that unless comp...

The application of radiographic imaging methods like conventional X-Ray and computed tomography (CT) in bioarchaeological research is normally considered to be non-invasive. While this holds true on the macro- and microscopic level, little is known about potentially induced damage on the molecular level that could inhibit the successful recovery of...

In the past two decades, paleogenetics has made a significant impact on the field of archaeology. Interestingly, paleogenetic methods have not been extensively employed in osteoarchaeology despite its ability to address issues that cannot be resolved through traditional osteological analysis alone. This paper tackles a problem concerning the relati...

The analysis of ancient human DNA from South America allows the exploration of pre-Columbian population history through time and to directly test hypotheses about cultural and demographic evolution. The Middle Horizon (650–1100 AD) represents a major transitional period in the Central Andes, which is associated with the development and expansion of...

List of sample details collected from Huaca Pucllana archaeological site. (DOCX)

List of populations used to perform the comparative analysis. (DOCX)

The exact timing, route, and process of the initial peopling of the Americas remains uncertain despite much research. Archaeological evidence indicates the presence of humans as far as southern Chile by 14.6 thousand years ago (ka), shortly after the Pleistocene ice sheets blocking access from eastern Beringia began to retreat. Genetic estimates of...

Archaeological evidence shows that humans began living in the high altitude Andes approximately 12,000 years ago. Andean highlanders are known to have developed the most complex societies of pre-Columbian South America despite challenges to their health and reproductive success resulting from chronic exposure to hypoxia. While the physiological ada...

First C14 measurements on the skeletons in context of earlier C14 measurements from the same cave

Certain Polymorphisms in the DRD4 gene have been associated with behavioral traits such as novelty seeking (NS), impulsivity, and ADHD. Research has suggested that these personality traits may affect individual fitness differently depending on social structure, subsistence patterns, and mobility. To test this hypothesis this study examines the diac...

The discovery of human remains from the Lauricocha cave in the Central Andean highlands in the 1960’s provided the first direct evidence for human presence in the high altitude Andes. The skeletons found at this site were ascribed to the Early to Middle Holocene and represented the oldest known population of Western South America, and thus were use...

Significance It has long been assumed that climate played a major role in the population history of the Central Andes. Although adaptations of the Andean populations to climatic changes such as the intensification of agriculture have been inferred from the archaeological record, evidence for demographic adaptations such as migration is missing so f...

Phylogeographic studies have described a reduced genetic diversity in Native American populations, indicative of one or more bottleneck events during the peopling and prehistory of the Americas. Classical sequencing approaches targeting the mitochondrial diversity have reported the presence of five major haplogroups, namely A, B, C, D and X, wherea...

The majority of Native Americans nearly exclusively belong to group O of the ABO blood group system. Several hypotheses have been formulated to explain this observation, primarily differing by the presumption that the observed patterns of ABO diversity are due to the processes of the initial peopling of the Americas or due to subsequent events, esp...

The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in Europe is associated with demographic changes that may have shifted the human gene pool of the region as a result of an influx of Neolithic farmers from the Near East. However, the genetic composition of populations after the earliest Neolithic, when a diverse mosaic of societies that had...

This paper reports on an archaeogenetic study that was embedded in a transdiciplinary research project with the principal aim of understanding the cultural development in pre-Columbian Southern Peru. Ancient DNA analyses were conducted on over 300 pre-Columbian individuals from various archaeological sites in coastal Southern Peru and the Andean hi...

The analysis of short tandem repeats (STRs) is a useful tool in various contexts of ancient DNA research. Main applications are the reconstruction of kinship, identification, and authentication. Here we describe a short amplicon autosomal short tandem repeat (miniSTR) heptaplex system for the amplification of D13S317, D21S11, D18S51, TH01, D5S818,...

The genetic and demographic impact of European contact with Native Americans has remained unclear despite recent interest. Whereas archeological and historical records indicate that European contact resulted in widespread mortality from various sources, genetic studies have found little evidence of a recent contraction in Native American population...

In 2008, a mass grave was found on the grounds of the University of Kassel, Germany. Historians hypothesized that the individuals died in a typhoid fever epidemic in winter 1813/14. To test this hypothesis, the bones were investigated on the presence of specific DNA of pathogens linked to the historical diagnosis of typhoid fever. It was possible t...

Aún cuando el análisis de ADN de huesos arqueológicos tiene algunas grandes limitaciones, constituye la manera más directa de investigar eventos prehistóricos de dinámica poblacional. La contextualización interdisciplinaria de los datos genéticos con los registros arqueológico y paleoecológico permite reconstruir las historias poblacionales pasadas...

This study examines the reciprocal effects of cultural evolution, and population dynamics in pre-Columbian southern Peru by the analysis of DNA from pre-Columbian populations that lived in the fringe area between the Andean highlands and the Pacific coast. The main objective is to reveal whether the transition from the Middle Horizon (MH: 650-1000...

Se presenta aquí un estudio cuyo objetivo principal es la comprensión del desarrollo y decadencia de la cultura Nasca en la parte alta de la cuenca del Río Grande de Nasca, así como sus afinidades biológicas y culturales con su antecesora, la cultura Paracas. Se realizaron análisis de ADN antiguo en más de 300 individuos procedentes de varios cemen...

Alternative models have been proposed to explain the formation and decline of the south Peruvian Nasca culture, ranging from migration or invasion to autochthonous development and ecological crisis. To reveal to what extent population dynamic processes accounted for cultural development in the Nasca mainland, or were influenced by them, we analyzed...

The burial area BRiG 3117 (Coyungo) was investigated during the PABRiG (Proyecto Arqueológico Bajo Río Grande). It consists of four burial contexts with about 25 individuals (MNI) and a considerable amount of pottery, textiles and gourd fragments among others. One of the textiles is part of a famous piece housed at Dumbarton Oaks. It is the most si...

Through the analysis of ancient DNA from human mortal remains it is possible to gain access to a biohistoric archive containing relevant information about the structure of prehistoric populations. The data obtained help to answer questions related to migration processes and population relationships that could not be answered by the methods of cultu...

Knochen werden zumeist als Einzelfunde, seltener im anatomischen Verband des Skeletts, aber auch zunehmend in kunstgewerblichen oder industriellen Verarbeitungsformen sowie biologisch-forensischen Zusammenhängen begutachtet. Der Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die häufigsten Überlieferungsformen und ihre Kontexte und fasst die grundlegenden Frage...