Dr. LARS FEHREN-SCHMITZ

Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, UCSC

Abstract:

Most paleogenomic research to date has focused on narratives of large-scale demographic events. However, when combined with archaeological, ethnohistorical, and oral history sources paleogenomics can also help to gain a deeper understanding of the genetic histories and lifeways of past individuals and communities. Here I will focus on the people buried at Machu Picchu, which originally functioned as a palace within the estate of the Inca emperor Pachacuti. Little is known about the people that lived and died at the site, and how they related to the inhabitants of the Inca capital of Cusco, other than that they were most likely retainers brought there to serve the emperor. We generated genome-wide data for several individuals buried along the slopes of the site between 1420-1530 CE, and for individuals from sites in Cusco, the capital of the Inca empire, and contextualized the data with historical and archaeological sources. Our analyses show that the community at Machu Picchu was highly heterogenous, with individuals exhibiting genetic ancestries associated with groups from regions throughout the Inca Empire including Amazonia. Our results suggest a cosmopolitan community, not restricted in their cultural or biological interactions by Inca policies, in which people of different backgrounds lived, mated and were interred together.