Archaeologists have been asking where high-elevation populations came from for decades; how they are going about answering the question, however, is new.
“Fifty years ago, I would have consulted other archaeologists,” UC Merced Professor Mark Aldenderfer said. “It used to be the one archeologist who led a dig with assistants. It was much more insulated. Now, you can’t answer interesting questions about the past without a team of scientists.”
A recent feature in Archaeology magazine highlights the team Aldenderfer has been working with in the Himalayas, including a specialist in human biology, a human geneticist interested in understanding how natural selection in humans works, and a scientist using ancient DNA to study the evolution of our species.
The incorporation of other interdisciplinary experts is a real game-changer, Aldenderfer said. Radiocarbon dating emerged in the 1950s, and scientists discovered they could extract DNA from ancient samples in the 1970s.
“With radiocarbon dating, now, you can place artifacts in time,” Aldenderfer said. “And with the study of ancient DNA, we now have ways to approach the past and ask questions that a more conventional archaeology could never have asked. These kinds of scientific advances have made it possible for us to ask questions we might never have thought about.”
To build and maintain a team like the one he works with, Aldenderfer relies on the networks he has built over the years. While a student at Penn State, he got to know other researchers who were beginning to look at human adaptations to high elevations in a methodical way. Although at that time, the work didn’t overlap with his, he knew that “you have to build your networks early and feed them.”
Once Aldenderfer’s involvement with the interdisciplinary science of high-elevation adaptation began, he contacted fellow former Penn State grad student and now one of the university’s most famous human biology alumni, Cynthia Beall. She is now a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a professor at Case-Western Reserve University in Ohio.
“She helped me understand how to think about the biological aspects of how modern peoples adapt to high elevation,” Aldenderfer said. “I got in touch with her after I was able to obtain samples of human remains from Nepal that would allow me to study this question in a new way. In the Andes, I never had remains of this kind to look at — but now, I could look more deeply at the question in a new way.”
