Biocultural evidence of precise manual activities in an Early Holocene individual of the high‐altitude Peruvian Andes
Dados Bibliográficos
| AUTOR(ES) | |
|---|---|
| AFILIAÇÃO(ÕES) | Paleoanthropology, Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, Department of Geosciences University of Tübingen Tübingen Germany, Integrative Prehistory and Archaeological Science University of Basel Basel Switzerland, Michigan State University, DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) Center for Advanced Studies “Words, Bones, Genes, Tools,” Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen Tübingen Germany, State Office for Cultural Heritage Baden‐Württemberg, Osteology Konstanz Germany |
| ANO | 2021 |
| TIPO | Artigo |
| PERIÓDICO | American Journal of Physical Anthropology |
| ISSN | 0002-9483 |
| E-ISSN | 1096-8644 |
| EDITORA | Berghahn Journals (United Kingdom) |
| DOI | 10.1002/ajpa.24160 |
| CITAÇÕES | 8 |
| ADICIONADO EM | 2025-08-18 |
Resumo
ObjectivesCuncaicha, a rockshelter site in the southern Peruvian Andes, has yielded archaeological evidence for human occupation at high elevation (4,480 masl) during the Terminal Pleistocene (12,500–11,200 cal BP), Early Holocene (9,500–9,000 cal BP), and later periods. One of the excavated human burials (Feature 15‐06), corresponding to a middle‐aged female dated to ~8,500 cal BP, exhibits skeletal osteoarthritic lesions previously proposed to reflect habitual loading and specialized crafting labor. Three small tools found in association with this burial are hypothesized to be associated with precise manual dexterity.Materials and methodsHere, we tested this functional hypothesis through the application of a novel multivariate methodology for the three‐dimensional analysis of muscle attachment surfaces (entheses). This original approach has been recently validated on both lifelong‐documented anthropological samples as well as experimental studies in nonhuman laboratory samples. Additionally, we analyzed the three‐dimensional entheseal shape and resulting moment arms for muscleopponens pollicis.ResultsResults show that Cuncaicha individual 15‐06 shows a distinctive entheseal pattern associated with habitual precision grasping via thumb‐index finger coordination, which is shared exclusively with documented long‐term precision workers from recent historical collections. The separate geometric morphometric analysis revealed that the individual'sopponens pollicisenthesis presents a highly projecting morphology, which was found to strongly correlate with long joint moment arms (a fundamental component of force‐producing capacity), closely resembling the form of Paleolithic hunter‐gatherers from diverse geo‐chronological contexts of Eurasia and North Africa.DiscussionOverall, our findings provide the first biocultural evidence to confirm that the lifestyle of some of the earliest Andean inhabitants relied on habitual and forceful precision grasping tasks.