Peruvian Stalagmites Hold Clues To Climate Change

ScienceDaily (May 16, 2009) — How will the Netherlands, dominated by water, be affected by future climate change? Dutch researcher Martin van Breukelen hopes to answer that question by analyzing stalagmites from the South American Amazon tributaries in Peru as a way to reconstruct climate changes in the past.

Information that can be used to test climate models is stored in various forms: in ice formations, plant remnants, oceans and caves. Limestone formations in caves, so-called speleothemes, provide insights into the land climate. The best-known speleothemes are stalagmites, standing formations and stalactites, hanging formations. Van Breukelen discovered stalagmites in South America that provide information about the climate over the past 13,000 years.

In order to study climate change, Van Breukelen analyzed the accumulation of oxygen isotopes in both the cave water and the stalagmite. A small quantity of fossil cave water is enclosed in the core of the stalagmite, so-called fluid inclusions. The entrapped water is just as old as the carbonate of the stalagmite in which it is trapped. The isotope ratio of this fossil water can be measured using an extraction technique. As this water has been entrapped for thousands of years it provides unique information about the climatic history.

Much climate research on the land and sea is based on the measurement of subtle changes in the ratio between stable oxygen isotopes in, for example, ice or stone formations. Isotopes of an element can have different numbers of neutrons but always contain the same number of protons. Light isotopes (¹⁶O) respond differently to climate change than heavier isotopes (¹⁸O). Climate changes result in an altered ratio of the ¹⁶O and ¹⁸O isotopes. The ratio of the different isotopic elements oxygen, carbon and hydrogen provides a lot of useful information about the climatic history. Van Breukelen uses this information to reconstruct the changes in temperature and precipitation.

Climate research reveals that even without human influence the Earth's climate was changeable in the past. To what extent humans have influenced climate change since the industrial revolution remains unclear. It should be remembered that studies into climatic history can provide insights into the natural behaviour of the climate in the past. Additionally current climate models can only be improved if more historical data become available so that the accuracy of these models can be tested. The research method used by Van Breukelen that examines stalagmites is vitally important for climate research. This method allows the accurate reconstruction of independent temperature changes and precipitation patterns from thousands of years ago.

Van Breukelen's research was funded by a grant from the NWO division WOTRO Science for Global Development. WOTRO focuses on funding innovative scientific research into development issues, especially sustainable development and poverty alleviation.

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Adapted from materials provided by NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research).

First Evidence Of Pre-industrial Mercury Pollution In The Andes

ScienceDaily (May 18, 2009) — The study of ancient lake sediment from high altitude lakes in the Andes has revealed for the first time that mercury pollution occurred long before the start of the Industrial Revolution.

University of Alberta Earth and Atmospheric Sciences PhD student Colin Cooke's results from two seasons of field work in Peru have now provided the first unambiguous records of pre-industrial mercury pollution from anywhere in the world and will be published in the May 18th Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"The idea that mercury pollution was happening before the industrial revolution has long been hypothesised on the basis of historical records, but never proven," said Cooke whose research was funded by the National Geographic Society.

Cooke and his team recovered sediment cores from high elevation lakes located around Huancavelica, which is the New World's largest mercury deposit. By measuring the amount of mercury preserved in the cores back through time, they were able to reconstruct the history of mercury mining and pollution in the region.

"We found that mercury mining, smelting and emissions go back as far as 1400 BC," said Cooke. "More surprisingly, mining appears to have began before the rise of any complex or highly stratified society. This represents a departure from current thinking, which suggests mining only arose after these societies emerged," said Cooke.

Initially, mercury pollution was in the form of mine dust, largely resulting from the production of the red pigment vermillion. "Vermillion is buried with kings and nobles, and was a paint covering gold objects buried with Andean kings and nobles," said Cooke. However, following Inca control of the mine in 1450 AD, mercury vapour began to be emitted.

"This change is significant because it means that mercury pollution could be transported over much greater distances, and could have been converted into methylmercury, which is highly toxic," said Cooke.

"All of these results confirm long-standing questions about the existence and magnitude pre-industrial mercury pollution, and have implications for our understanding of how mining and metallurgy evolved in the Andes," said Cooke.

Cooke is an interdisciplinary scientist researching human impacts on the environment. His research combines paleolimnology (the study of ancient lake sediments) with the fields of archaeology, and geochemistry. The research team included Prentiss Balcom from the University of Connecticut (USA), Harald Biester from the University of Braunschweig (Germany), and Alexander Wolfe from the University of Alberta

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Adapted from materials provided by University of Alberta, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

EBay Has Unexpected, Chilling Effect On Looting Of Antiquities, Archaelogist Finds

ScienceDaily (May 9, 2009) — Having worked for 25 years at fragile archaeological sites in Peru, UCLA archaeologist Charles "Chip" Stanish held his breath when the online auction house eBay launched more than a decade ago.

"My greatest fear was that the Internet would democratize antiquities trafficking, which previously had been a wealthy person's vice, and lead to widespread looting," said the UCLA professor of anthropology, who directs the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

Indeed, eBay has drastically altered the transporting and selling of illegal artifacts, Stanish writes in an article in the May/June issue of Archaeology, but not in the way he and other archaeologists had feared.

By improving access to a worldwide market, eBay has inadvertently created a vast market for copies of antiquities, diverting whole villages from looting to producing fake artifacts, Stanish writes. The proliferation of these copies also has added new risks to buying objects billed as artifacts, which in turn has worked to depress the market for these items, further reducing incentives to loot.

"For most of us, the Web has forever distorted the antiquities trafficking market in a positive way," Stanish said.

Looting, which is illegal, is widely recognized as destructive to cultural heritage because it can remove from public ownership tangible links to a people's past. In addition, looting is perceived as the enemy of scholarship because it typically is done without regard to any appropriate methods that allow scientists to date objects and to place them in a larger, more meaningful context.

One of the world's premiere authorities on Andean archaeology and supervisor, at UCLA, of the one of the world's largest collections of working archaeologists, Stanish has been tracking objects billed as antiquities on eBay for more than nine years. His conclusions also are informed by experiences with the U.S. customs service, which occasionally asks him to authenticate objects. In addition, Stanish has visited a number of workshops in Peru and Bolivia that specialize in reproductions of pottery and has interviewed these artisans. While his background is in South American archaeology, he has tracked eBay listings of antiquities from many cultures.

"Chinese, Bulgarian, Egyptian, Peruvian and Mexican workshops are now producing fakes at a frenetic pace," he writes.

When he first started tracking eBay's sales of antiquities, Stanish focused mainly on objects related to his field. At the time, the ratio of real artifacts to fakes was about 50-50, he estimates. About five years later, 95 percent were fakes. Now, he admits, he can't always tell, because the quality of the fakes has improved so much.

He estimates that about 30 percent of "antiquities" currently for sale on eBay are obvious fakes, in so much as creators mix up iconography and choose colors and shapes for visual effect rather than authenticity. Another 5 percent or so are genuine treasures. The rest fall in the ambiguous "I would have to hold it in my hand to be able to make an informed decision" category, he writes. Stanish admits himself to occasionally being duped by fakes encountered in shops in areas where both looted items and fakes are sold.

The advent of eBay has had the biggest impact on the antiquities market by reducing the incentive to unearth precious treasures in the first place, Stanish has found.

"People who used to make a few dollars selling a looted artifact to a middleman in their village can now produce their own 'almost-as-good-as-old' objects and go directly to a person in a nearby town who has an eBay account," he said. "They will receive the same amount or even more than they could have received for actual antiquities."

As a result of the rise of a ready market, many of the primary purveyors have shifted from looting sites to faking antiquities.

In addition to linking craftsmen with a market for cheap fakes, eBay has tended to have a depressing effect on prices for real looted artifacts, further discouraging locals from pillaging precious sites.

"The value of ... illicit digging decreases every time someone buys a 'genuine' Moche pot for $35, plus shipping and handling," he writes. (An authentic antiquity would sell for upwards of $15,000.)

So far, authentication techniques have struggled to keep abreast of increasingly sophisticated fakes, Stanish said. Pottery can still be authenticated reliably, although the process is costly. In addition, forgers tend to only guarantee the authenticity of their pieces as long as no form of "destructive" analysis is used. While just a tiny flake of pottery is required for thermoluminescence dating — the gold standard for pottery — the process is technically considered destructive, Stanish points out, so the test invalidates such warrantees, no matter its conclusion.

Thanks to laser technology and chemical processes for forming antique-appearing patinas, stone and metal, reproductions are "almost impossible" to authenticate using today's technology, Stanish writes. However, the prospect of authentication techniques eventually catching up with today's fakes is also having a chilling effect on the market for antiquities, by dramatically adding to the risk of illicit, high-end trafficking.

"Who wants to spend $50,000 on an object 'guaranteed' to be ancient by today's standards, when someone can come along in five years with a new technology that definitively proves it to be a fake," he asks.

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Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Los Angeles.

Dwarf In The Elfin Forests: Tiniest Frog In South America’s Andes Mountains

ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2009) — It fits on a fingertip: Noblella pygmaea is a midget frog, the smallest ever found in the Andes and among the smallest amphibians in the world. Only its croaking was to be heard from the leaves on the mossier ground of the “elfin forests” in the highlands of Manu National Park, before German and Peruvian herpetologists discovered the tiny little thing in south-eastern Peru.

The popular name of the new species is fitting: Noble’s Pygmy Frog has an average length of 11.4 millimeters. It was introduced in a paper recently published in the journal Copeia by Edgar Lehr, a German herpetologist at the Senckenberg Natural History Collection Dresden, and the Swiss-Peruvian ecologist Alessandro Catenazzi from the University of California at Berkeley, USA. The pygmy that fits on a fingertip was discovered during field work in the Wayqecha Research Station. Not only its small size left it undiscovered for so long. Its predominantly brown colour camougflages Noblella perfectly. But Noble’s Pygmy Frog could be spotted with the assistance of the members of the native communities adjacent to the Manu National Park.

Manu National Park is well known as “hotspot” in the lowland rainforests, a place of exuberant diversity; however the biosphere reserve also preserves vast areas of montane cloud forests, where the sempiternal mists envelop and often conceal plants and animals. In the countless ecological niches many of them were able to evolve undisturbed and are highly adapted to the cold and permanently humidity at a daily average temperature of 11° Celsius. Genetic studies show that the diversity of amphibians in general and especially in this region is highly underestimated. That is why Edgar Lehr and Alessandro Catenazzi think that Noblella pygmaea is only one of many undiscovered amphibians in the Andes mountain area. The scientists expect to find other new species during the next few years.

Currently the midget frog is one of the smallest vertebrates ever found above 3000 metres, where most species tend to be larger than congeneric or similar species in lowland areas. Noblella pygmaea inhabits the cloud forest, the montane scrub and the high-elevation grasslands at a height from 3025 to 3190 metres above sea level. Beside its size the remarkably long forefinger is a notable distinguishing feature that was not found at other pygmy frogs in the mountains of Peru. The females lay only two eggs of approximately four millimeter in diameter. In contrast to most amphibian species these eggs are laid in moist, terrestrial microhabitats, such as in moss or leave litter, and are protected from insect predators by the mother frog. It is noteworthy also that embryos do not change into aquatic tadpoles, but immediately after the hatching lead a fully terrestrial life.

Whilst the scientists cannot give a reason for Noblella’s minute size, it is apparently advantageous. Maybe it is perfectly adopted to its special niche. The fact, that the species is not forced to leave its habitat – not even for egg deposition – might protect it from natural enemies. Despite living in the Manu Biosphere Reserve the survival of the midget frog and of other amphibians is uncertain. Several adverse influences such as anthropogenic habitat changes and the effects of global warming, which among other things facilitates the dispersal of the highly virulent pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis threaten amphibians of the Andean region. Fotunately the fungus, which has become epidemic, has not been noticed on Noblella so far. Possibly because of its terrestrial life Noblella is less exposed to the fungus than stream-dwelling frogs.

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis is suspected to be the cause of the extinction of many frog species in Ecuador and northern Peru and is currently decimating populations of high-elevation frogs in southern Peru. Up to now no effective means are known for stopping the expansion of fungal infections in the region. Researchers hope that the large topographic heterogeneity of the Andes cordilleras will provide refugia where the fungus is unable to cause massive population declines in amphibian species, thus ensuring the survival of the dwarf in the Andean "elfin forests."

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Adapted from materials provided by Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, via AlphaGalileo.

Evidence From Dirty Teeth: Ancient Peruvians Ate Well

ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2008) — Starch grains preserved on human teeth reveal that ancient Peruvians ate a variety of cultivated crops including squash, beans, peanuts and the fruit of cultivated pacay trees. This finding by Dolores Piperno, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the National Museum of Natural History, and Tom Dillehay, professor of archaeology at Vanderbilt University, sets the date of the earliest human consumption of beans and pacay back by more than 2,000 years and indicates that New World people were committed farmers earlier than previously thought.

In northern Peru’s Ñanchoc Valley, Dillehay and colleagues recovered human teeth from hearths and floors of permanent, roundhouse structures. Human bone, plant remains and charcoal closely associated with the teeth are approximately 6,000 to 8,000 years old according to carbon- dating techniques.

Piperno examined 39 human teeth, probably from six to eight individuals. “Some teeth were dirtier than others. We found starch grains on most of the teeth. About a third of the teeth contained large numbers of starch grains,” Piperno said.

To identify the starch grains, Piperno compared the particles in tooth scrapings with her modern reference collection of starch grains from more than 500 economically important plants. “We found starch from a variety of cultivated plants: squash, Phaseolus beans—either limas or common beans, possibly, but not certainly the former, pacay and peanuts,” said Piperno. “Parts of plants that often are not evident in archeological remains, such as the flesh of squash fruits and the nuts of peanuts, do produce identifiable starch grains.”

Starch from squash found on the teeth affirms that early people were eating the plants and not simply using them for nonfood purposes, such as for making containers or net floats. Whether or not some of the earliest cultivated plants, such as squashes, were grown as dietary items has been a long-debated question among students of early agriculture.

Evidence that foods had been cooked was also visible on some of the starch grains. “We boiled beans in the lab to see what cooked starch grains looked like—and recognized these gelatinized or heat-damaged grains in the samples from the teeth,” said Piperno. Starch from raw and roasted peanuts looks similar, probably because it is protected within the hull.

Starch grains from four of the crops were found consistently through time indicating that beans, peanuts, squash and pacay were important food sources then, as they are today. “Starch analysis of teeth, which, unlike other archaeobotanical techniques, provides direct evidence of plant consumption, should greatly improve our ability to address other important questions in human dietary change relating to even earlier time periods,” said Piperno.

The results of this study appear online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the week of Dec. 1-5, 2008.

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Adapted from materials provided by Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Oil And Gas Projects In Western Amazon Threaten Biodiversity And Indigenous Peoples

ScienceDaily (Aug. 14, 2008) — The western Amazon, home to the most biodiverse and intact rainforest left on Earth, may soon be covered with oil rigs and pipelines.

According to a new study, over 180 oil and gas "blocks" – areas zoned for exploration and development – now cover the megadiverse western Amazon, which includes Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and western Brazil. These oil and gas blocks stretch over 688,000 km2 (170 million acres), a vast area, nearly the size of Texas.

For over three years, researchers from two U.S. non-profit organizations – Save America's Forests and Land Is Life – and scientists from Duke University tracked hydrocarbon activities across the region and generated a comprehensive map of oil and gas activities across the western Amazon. The result is an alarming assessment of the threats to the biodiversity and indigenous peoples of the region.

"We found that the oil and gas blocks overlap perfectly with the most biodiverse part of the Amazon for birds, mammals, and amphibians," said study co-author Dr. Clinton Jenkins of Duke University. "The threat to amphibians is of particular concern because they are already the most threatened group of vertebrates worldwide."

The study also found that the oil and gas blocks are concentrated in the most intact part of the Amazon. Even national parks are not immune; exploration and development blocks cover the renowned Yasuní National Park in Ecuador and Madidi National Park in Bolivia.

"The most dynamic situation is unfolding in the Peruvian Amazon," warned lead author Dr. Matt Finer of Save America's Forests.

The study reports that 64 oil and gas blocks cover approximately 72% of the vast Peruvian Amazon (~490,000 km2 or ~121 million acres), an area much larger than California. All but eight of these blocks have appeared since 2003, when Peru launched a major effort to boost exploration across the Amazon. National parks are off limits to hydrocarbon activities in Peru, but oil and gas blocks do overlap a variety of other types of protected areas.

Many of the oil and gas blocks in the western Amazon overlap titled lands of indigenous peoples and encroach on the territories of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. These isolated peoples have chosen to live in the forests without contact with the outside world. They are extremely susceptible to outside illnesses due to lack of natural resistance.

In the second part of the study, the researchers delve into the most cutting policy issues related to oil and gas activities in the Amazon.

The authors highlighted new access roads as the greatest single threat from hydrocarbon development. Roads trigger deforestation, colonization, overhunting, and illegal logging in previously remote areas.

"The elimination of new oil access roads could significantly reduce the impacts of most projects," said Finer, echoing one of the studies' main conclusions.

The analysis points out that the current environmental assessment process is inadequate due to a lack of independence in the review process and a lack of comprehensive analyses of the long-term, cumulative, and synergistic impacts of multiple oil and gas projects across the wider region. The authors stress the need for regional Strategic Environmental Assessments in order to correct this situation.

The study also addresses the complex policy issues related to indigenous peoples.

"The way that oil development is being pursued in the Western Amazon is a gross violation of the rights of the indigenous peoples of the region" said Brian Keane of Land is Life, "International agreements and Inter-American human rights law recognize that indigenous peoples have rights to their lands, and explicitly prohibit the granting of concessions to exploit natural resources in their territories without their free, prior and informed consent."

The authors also detail the growing conflict of hydrocarbon activities slated for the territories of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.

Finally, the study highlights the role of the international community. Growing global energy demand is driving the search for more oil and gas in the Amazon and companies from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and China are carrying out most of the development.

"Filling up with a tank of gas could soon have devastating consequences to rainforests, their peoples, and their species" remarked co-author Dr. Stuart Pimm of Duke University.

Ecuador's innovative Yasuní-ITT Initiative is held up as a potentially precedent-setting example of how the global north and south can collaborate on both protecting the Amazon and combating climate change. The initiative is the Government of Ecuador's limited-time offer to keep its largest untapped oilfields unexploited in exchange for financial compensation from the international community.

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Journal reference:

1. Finer et al. Oil and Gas Projects in the Western Amazon: Threats to Wilderness, Biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples. PLoS One, 2008; 3 (8): e2932 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002932

Adapted from materials provided by Public Library of Science, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Rock Art Marks Transformations In Traditional Peruvian Societies

ScienceDaily (Aug. 6, 2008) — Most rock paintings and rock carvings or petroglyphs were created by ancient and prehistoric societies. Archaeologists have long used them to gain clues to the way of life of such peoples. Certain rock frescos − such as the renowned Lascaux and Chauvet cave paintings or the petroglyphs of Scandinavia and North America − have already yielded substantial information on our ancestors' daily lives.

However, for other regions of the world like Latin America studies are still fragmentary. In Peru, where many sites have already been located, mystery still cloaks the signification and role of these concentrations of cave paintings and petroglyphs. One of these sites, Toro Muerto, in the South of the country, contains over 4000 carved blocks scattered over several dozen hectares.

Discoveries made in different areas of the country over recent years by Peruvian and international researchers are keys to improved understanding of the meaning behind these artistic representations which were realized over a long period from 10 000 BP to the arrival of the first Spanish Conquistadors in the XVIth Century, or even beyond that time, as in the Cuzco area.

Analysis of the distribution and characteristics of these sites brought out a distinction between the art produced in the coastal valleys from that of the Andean Cordillera uplands. The extensive sites with rocks carved in the open air are concentrated mainly on the Pacific facing slopes, whereas the scenes painted in caves or under shelters predominate in the high regions and on the Amazon side.

These preferences as to the supports and techniques used reflect associated ritual practices which are probably rather different. Study of the oldest rock paintings and their dating by indirect methods (carbon 14 dating of remains of in situ burnt charcoal) showed them to be the work of hunter-gatherers who occupied the region between 7000 and 3000 BC The motifs are small and most often painted in red. They depict hunting scenes involving wild camelid species, such as the guanaco, and also human-like silhouettes. The latter are portrayed with animal-like rather than human faces. Such figures are usually armed with sticks, bows or assegais and sometimes carry nets.

The most ancient sites show a predominance of naturalistic representations of dead or wounded animals. However, a second set dated at 4000 to 5000 years BC eulogizes fertility. This time the images are large, drawn with the abdomen enormously swollen, sometimes containing a foetus. This stylistic development, which seems to coincide with the beginnings of animal husbandry in the high upland regions of Peru, appear to symbolize the emergence of pastoralism and the change in man—animal relationships that came along with this practice.

These research studies also brought into relief periods that were quite distinct in terms of stylistic evolution of carved figures. Whereas the most ancient motifs, associated with the rise of the first great Andean civilizations (2500-300 BC) essentially reproduced complex figures bearing high symbolic and spiritual content, depicting mythical, often monster-like, animals and supernatural beings, the later carvings characteristically appear in abundance and testify to a simplification of morphological features. The simplicity and relative abundance of these petroglyphs, which depict animals of the local fauna and also scenes from daily life, suggest a degree of generalization of rock carving practices to further sections of the society.

The largest sites dating from this era, which contain several hundred carved rocks with dozens of motifs, probably played a significant role in societies' cultural and social life, both at local and regional level. Their location, and some of the rituals that took place, may have been linked to areas of production and trade routes of prized commodities such as coca or salt. Other, geographical, factors like the confluence of two rivers or the proximity to communication routes also appear to have significantly influenced the context and purpose of these artistic representations.

A more extensive study of these archaeological sites, still strongly subjected to vandalism and erosion, is paramount. These vestiges testify to the ideological and social changes that occurred over a period of almost 8000 years, and can further understanding of the way of life and beliefs of peoples who were among the New World's first settlers.

Reference: Guffroy, J., New research into rock art in Peru (2000-2004), In :G. Bahn, A. Fossati (eds), Rock art studies. News of the world III, 2008, Oxbow: p 239-247

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Adapted from materials provided by Institut de Recherche Pour le Développement, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.