Domestication and human demographic history in South America

Pérez, S. Iván; Postillone, María Bárbara; Rindel, Diego

doi:10.1002/ajpa.23176

“…Colonising groups successfully adapted to a broad range of environments during the Terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene, from the Amazonian rainforest and Patagonian grasslands to the high Andes 1–4 . The genetic and demographic structure of early populations have been the focus of substantial recent research 5,6 . In parallel, a growing body of archaeological evidence from several regions has suggested that climatic transitions acted as a driver of significant regional depopulation during the mid-Holocene.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Widespread population decline in South America correlates with mid-Holocene climate change

Riris

¹

,

Arroyo‐Kalin

²

2019

Sci Rep

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Quantifying the impacts of climate change on prehistoric demography is crucial for understanding the adaptive pathways taken by human populations. Archaeologists across South America have pointed to patterns of regional abandonment during the Middle Holocene (8200 to 4200 cal BP) as evidence of sensitivity to shifts in hydroclimate over this period. We develop a unified approach to investigate demography and climate in South America and aim to clarify the extent to which evidence of local anthropic responses can be generalised to large-scale trends. We achieve this by integrating archaeological radiocarbon data and palaeoclimatic time series to show that population decline occurred coeval with the transition to the initial mid-Holocene across South America. Through the analysis of radiocarbon dates with Monte Carlo methods, we find multiple, sustained phases of downturn associated to periods of high climatic variability. A likely driver of the duration and severity of demographic turnover is the frequency of exceptional climatic events, rather than the absolute magnitude of change. Unpredictable levels of tropical precipitation had sustained negative impacts on pre-Columbian populations lasting until at least 6000 cal BP, after which recovery is evident. Our results support the inference that a demographic regime shift in the second half of the Middle Holocene were coeval with cultural practices surrounding Neotropical plant management and early cultivation, possibly acting as buffers when the wild resource base was in flux.

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“…With reference to the systems driving rainfall variability across South America (Supplementary Information), these regions respectively approximate areas principally influenced by moisture transportation from the Atlantic, areas influenced by the Atlantic and potentially Pacific sources, and predominantly South Pacific/South Atlantic-influenced zones 13,[23][24][25] . The Southern Cone, as defined here, also acts as a geographical proxy for the southern limits of tropical domesticates prior to the beginning of the late Holocene 6,26 . We take consistent patterns in the radiocarbon data to reflect robust and independent trends in human population across regions rather than specific archaeological cultures.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Widespread population decline in South America correlates with mid-Holocene climate change

Riris¹,

Arroyo‐Kalin²

2018

Preprint

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Quantifying the impacts of climate change on prehistoric demography is crucial for understanding the adaptive pathways taken by human populations. Archaeologists across South America have pointed to patterns of regional abandonment during the Middle Holocene (8200 to 4200 cal BP) as evidence of sensitivity to shifts in hydroclimate over this period. We develop a unified approach to investigate demography and climate in South America and aim to clarify the extent to which evidence of local anthropic responses can be generalised to large-scale trends. We achieve this by integrating archaeological radiocarbon data and palaeoclimatic time series to show that population decline occurred coeval with the transition to the initial mid-Holocene across South America. Through the analysis of radiocarbon dates with Monte Carlo methods, we find multiple, sustained phases of downturn associated to periods of high climatic variability. A likely driver of the duration and severity of demographic turnover is the frequency of exceptional climatic events, rather than the absolute magnitude of change. Unpredictable levels of tropical precipitation had sustained negative impacts on pre-Columbian populations lasting until at least 6000 cal BP, after which recovery is evident. Our results support the inference that a demographic regime shift in the second half of the Middle Holocene were coeval with cultural practices surrounding Neotropical plant management and early cultivation, possibly acting as buffers when the wild resource base was in flux.

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“…Recent studies have marshalled population genetics, geoarchaeology, and importantly, climate archives to contextualise the wealth of data on pre-Columbian demographic processes (Keefer et al 2003;Dillehay and Kolata et al 2004;Fehren-Schmitz et al 2014;Perez et al 2017). Figure 5a-c presents three palaeoclimatic archives for the Holocene that are of especial importance to contextualising millennial-scale demographic patterns illustrated by the model and permutation testing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dates as data revisited: A statistical examination of the Peruvian preceramic radiocarbon record

Riris

¹

2018

Journal of Archaeological Science

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This paper adopts a formal model-testing approach to the Peruvian radiocarbon (14 C) record, the site of the first aggregate analysis of this type of archaeological data. Using a large and improved regional dataset of radiometric determinations (n = 1180) from the period 14000-3000 14 C years before present, the study performs a comparative analysis of the demographic trajectories of two subregions, the desert coast and Andean highlands. Against the backdrop of theoretical models of population growth, and controlling for taphonomic factors and sampling biases, the study performs global significance and permutation tests on the data. These provide a necessary measure of statistical confidence that have hereto been absent from the discussion of pre-Columbian demography. Contrary to the findings of prior work, this study of radiocarbon data in Peru reveals that regional trends in the data are statistically indistinguishable. Further testing and comparison to climate archives is able to illustrate sustained population growth over the entire Holocene epoch in this region, with only a few notable exceptions at the end of the mid-Holocene (5000 cal BP). The findings of the analysis are viewed in relation to the cultural and technological changes that indigenous societies experienced in the timeframe in question, and some directions for methodological advances are suggested.

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Domestication and human demographic history in South America

Cited by 26 publications

References 50 publications

Widespread population decline in South America correlates with mid-Holocene climate change

Widespread population decline in South America correlates with mid-Holocene climate change

Widespread population decline in South America correlates with mid-Holocene climate change

Dates as data revisited: A statistical examination of the Peruvian preceramic radiocarbon record

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