Category: Science

To end the year, we’re counting down the top 10 most popular Futurity posts of 2023.

Thank you so much for reading the site this year. We hope you found research that was useful, surprising, fun, or informative.

Here are the top 10 Futurity posts of 2023:

10. Survey: Half of Tinder users don’t want a date

“We call them dating apps, but they’re clearly serving other functions besides dating,” says Elias Aboujaoude, clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.

9. Remembering events can trigger brain oscillations

“Being able to directly compare the oscillations that were present during the original experience, and during a later retrieval of that, is a huge step forward in the field in terms of designing new experiments and understanding the neural basis of memory,” says Sarah Seger, a graduate student in the neuroscience department at the University of Arizona.

8. 450M-year-old organism comes back to life in robot form

Using fossil evidence, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University engineered a soft robotic replica of pleurocystitids, a marine organism that existed nearly 450 million years ago.

7. Women around the world are avoiding marriage

A 2023 book chronicles the subtle ways in which women are “protagonists in moving the needle on marriage around the world,” says coeditor Joanna Davidson, associate professor of anthropology at Boston University. “It opens up the question, what are they opting out of, and what are they opting back into?”

6. Team finds sustainable alternative to air conditioning

“We found we could maintain air temperatures several degrees below the prevailing ambient temperature, and several degrees more below a reference ‘gold standard’ for passive cooling,” says Remy Fortin, PhD candidate at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University. “We did this without sacrificing healthy ventilation air changes.”

5. Chemical from common sweetener breaks up DNA

“In short, we found that sucralose-6-acetate is genotoxic, and that it effectively broke up DNA in cells that were exposed to the chemical,” says Susan Schiffman, an adjunct professor in the joint department of biomedical engineering at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

4. Herbicide may be cause of kidney disease epidemic

Researchers from Texas A&M University may have solved the mystery of what’s behind a kidney disease epidemic occurring in Central America.

3. Wild turkey discovery upends conventional wisdom

Precipitation levels during nesting season are not related to reproductive success for wild turkeys, according to a study from North Carolina State University.

2. Newfound antibodies neutralize all COVID variants, other viruses

“This work provides encouraging evidence that pan-coronavirus vaccines are possible if they can ‘educate’ the human immune system in the right way,” says Wang Linfa, a bat virus expert from Duke-NUS.

1. Fragrance at night boosts older adults’ memory

When neuroscientists exposed older adults to a fragrance for two hours every night for six months, they reaped a 226% increase in cognitive capacity compared to the control group, according to a study from the University of California, Irvine.

Thank you again for reading Futurity. Come back in 2024 for more fascinating and useful research news!

-The Futurity Team

While previous studies and explanations for loneliness have only looked at people’s need to belong and have warm relations, the story is a little more complicated, according to a new study.

The research focused on two needs that social relations help to fulfill: communion, which drives individuals to connect with other people, fitting in, and getting along, capturing qualities essential to establishing and maintaining social relationships (being friendly, helpful, trustworthy, and moral); and agency, which is another need all individuals have—to lead their lives on their own terms and strive for personally meaningful goals.

The data came from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Aging, conducted between October 2009 to February 2011. A sample of 8,500 people, ages 49-80, disclosed their economic circumstances, health, relationships, employment, and other variables.

Researchers asked study participants about their levels of loneliness, as well as their relationship support/strain (communion) and how much participants judged they were in charge of and had choice in their lives (agency).

Oscar Ybarra, the study’s lead author and University of Michigan psychology professor emeritus, and Google researcher Todd Chan created a four-prototype model:

1. Empowered (family and friends are supportive, and also cultivate the individual’s choice and autonomy)
2. Separated (family and friends may be moderately supportive, but the individual is made to focus on being self-sufficient)
3. Neglected (lack of warm relations, and also feeling little choice and autonomy in one’s life)
4. Muted (relationships may be supportive, but the individual experiences little choice and personal control)

People are divided into these categories based on high and low levels of communion and agency—the extent to which these needs are being met. Loneliness was as a function of both the level of communion and agency one experiences in their relationships, the study indicates.

Those who were neglected (low on both agency and communion) had the highest loneliness scores. Those who were empowered (those high on both agency and communion) produced the lowest loneliness scores.

“Loneliness has always been explained as a deficit in the satisfaction of one’s communion or relational needs,” Ybarra says. “But in addition to communion needs, individuals also need agency, personal control and choice, and not meeting this need should also affect experienced loneliness.”

What should people do if they believe someone in their social circle seems lonely? Try to be warm and supportive to that individual, but in a way that goes beyond hugs. Help them understand they have some control and choice in their lives, Ybarra says.

“That is, support that propels people and also takes into account their need to be their own person,” he says.

This is not the same as pushing them away to be self-sufficient, but a blend of being warm plus acknowledging their individual needs, wishes, and potential, he added.

“It’s also letting them know they have a place to come back to when they get a little bruised by life,” Ybarra says.

The study appears in Frontiers of Social Psychology.

Source: University of Michigan

Researchers have developed a promising new model to study a pneumonia-causing fungus that has been notoriously difficult to culture in a lab.

The researchers were able to use precision-cut slices of lung tissue to study Pneumocystis species, a fungus that causes Pneumocystis pneumonia in immunosuppressed patients and children.

This innovation overcomes a major hurdle in fungal research—the difficulty of growing this pathogen outside of a living lung—so scientists can more easily test new drugs to fight the infection. The fungus was recently listed among the top 19 fungal priority pathogens by the World Health Organization.

“Pneumocystis is likely the most common fungal pneumonia in children and attempts at culturing the organism have largely not been successful.” says corresponding author Jay Kolls, chair in internal medicine at Tulane University. “Thus, we have not had new antibiotics in over 20 years as they have to be tested in experimental animal studies.”

The new model utilizes precision-cut lung slices which retain the complexity and architecture of lung tissue, providing an environment that closely mimics conditions inside the lung.

The results were published in mBio.

The researchers used tissue from mice to cultivate two forms of the Pneumocystis fungus—the troph and ascus—for up to 14 days. The viability testing and gene expression analysis they conducted showed the fungus survived over time in the model.

“This is the first time both the trophic and ascus forms of Pneumocystis have been maintained long-term outside a mammalian host,” Kolls says.

The researchers confirmed the model’s potential for in vitro drug testing. When treated with commonly used medications trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and echinocandins, the expression of Pneumocystis genes was reduced, indicating successful targeting of the fungus.

The new technique reliably generates many uniform lung tissue samples for experimentation from a single lung, enabling high-capacity testing.

“With optimization, we believe precision lung slices could enable actual growth of Pneumocystis and become a powerful tool for developing new medications to treat this infection,” Kolls says. “This could significantly accelerate research on this pathogen.”

Source: Tulane

Researchers have used light and chlorine to eradicate low-concentration methane from air.

The result gets us closer to being able to remove greenhouse gases from livestock housing, biogas production plants, and wastewater treatment plants to benefit the climate.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has determined that reducing methane gas emissions will immediately reduce the rise in global temperatures. The gas is up to 85 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO₂, and more than half of it is emitted by human sources, with cattle and fossil fuel production accounting for the largest share.

A unique new method developed by a researchers from the University of Copenhagen and spin-out company Ambient Carbon has succeeded in removing methane from air.

“A large part of our methane emissions comes from millions of low-concentration point sources like cattle and pig barns. In practice, methane from these sources has been impossible to concentrate into higher levels or remove. But our new result proves that it is possible using the reaction chamber that we’ve have built,” says Matthew Stanley Johnson, an atmospheric chemistry professor who led the study.

Earlier, Johnson presented the research results at COP 28 in Dubai via an online connection and in Washington DC at the National Academy of Sciences, which advises the US government on science and technology.

How does it work?

Methane can be burnt off from air if its concentration exceeds 4%. But most human-caused emissions are below 0.1% and therefore unable to be burned.

To remove methane from air, the researchers built a reaction chamber that, to the uninitiated, looks like an elongated metal box with heaps of hoses and measuring instruments. Inside the box, a chain reaction of chemical compounds takes place, which ends up breaking down the methane and removing a large portion of the gas from air.

“In the scientific study, we’ve proven that our reaction chamber can eliminate 58% of methane from air. And, since submitting the study, we have improved our results in the laboratory so that the reaction chamber is now at 88%,” says Matthew Stanley Johnson.

The researchers built a reaction chamber and devised a method that simulates and greatly accelerates methane’s natural degradation process.

They dubbed the method the Methane Eradication Photochemical System (MEPS) and it degrades methane 100 million times faster than in nature.

The method works by introducing chlorine molecules into a reaction chamber with methane gas. The researchers then shine UV light onto the chlorine molecules. The light’s energy causes the molecules to split and form two chlorine atoms.

The chlorine atoms then steal a hydrogen atom from the methane, which then falls apart and decomposes. The chlorine product (hydrochloric acid) is captured and subsequently recycled in the chamber.

The methane turns into carbon dioxide (CO₂) and carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H₂) in the same way as the natural process does in the atmosphere.

Chlorine is key to the discovery. Using chlorine and the energy from light, researchers can remove methane from air much more efficiently than the way it happens in the atmosphere, where the process typically takes 10-12 years.

“Methane decomposes at a snail’s pace because the gas isn’t especially happy about reacting with other things in the atmosphere. However, we’ve discovered that, with the help of light and chlorine, we can trigger a reaction and break down the methane roughly 100 million times faster than in nature,” explains Johnson.

Looking ahead

A 40-foot shipping container will soon arrive at the chemistry department. When it does, it will become a larger prototype of the reaction chamber that the researchers built in the laboratory. It will be a “methane cleaner” which, in principle, will be able to be connected to the ventilation system in a livestock barn.

“Today’s livestock farms are high-tech facilities where ammonia is already removed from air. As such, removing methane through existing air purification systems is an obvious solution,” explains Johnson.

The same applies to biogas and wastewater treatment plants, which are some of the largest human-made sources of methane emissions in Denmark after cattle production.

As a preliminary investigation for this study, the researchers traveled around the country measuring how much methane leaks from cattle stalls, wastewater treatment plants and biogas plants. In several places, the researchers were able to document that a large amount of methane leaks into the atmosphere from these plants.

“For example, Denmark is a pioneer when it comes to producing biogas. But if just a few percent of the methane from this process escapes, it counteracts any climate gains,” concludes Johnson.

The research has just been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The research was conducted in collaboration between the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University, Arla, Skov, and the UCPH spin-out company Ambient Carbon, started and now headed by Professor Matthew Stanley Johnson. The company was started to develop MEPS (Methane Eradication Photochemical System) technology and make it available to society.

Funding for the research came via a grant from Innovation Fund Denmark for the PERMA project, a part of AgriFoodTure.

Source: University of Copenhagen

Conventional wisdom suggests that searching online to evaluate the veracity of misinformation would reduce belief in it. New research shows the opposite occurs.

According to the study, searching to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing misinformation.

The findings, which appear in the journal Nature, offer insights into the impact of search engines’ output on their users—a relatively under-studied area.

“Our study shows that the act of searching online to evaluate news increases belief in highly popular misinformation—and by notable amounts,” says Zeve Sanderson, founding executive director of New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics (CSMaP) and one of the paper’s authors.

The reason for this outcome may be explained by search-engine outputs—in the study, the researchers found that this phenomenon is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information.

“This points to the danger that ‘data voids’—areas of the information ecosystem that are dominated by low quality, or even outright false, news and information—may be playing a consequential role in the online search process, leading to low return of credible information or, more alarming, the appearance of non-credible information at the top of search results,” says lead author Kevin Aslett, an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida and a faculty research affiliate at CSMaP.

The researchers studied the impact of using online search engines to evaluate false or misleading views—an approach encouraged by technology companies and government agencies, among others.

To do so, they recruited participants through both Qualtrics and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk—tools frequently used in running behavioral science studies—for a series of five experiments and with the aim of gauging the impact of a common behavior: searching online to evaluate news (SOTEN).

The first four studies tested the following aspects of online search behavior and impact:

• The effect of SOTEN on belief in both false or misleading and true news directly within two days an article’s publication (false popular articles included stories on COVID-19 vaccines, the Trump impeachment proceedings, and climate events)
• Whether the effect of SOTEN can change an individual’s evaluation after they had already assessed the veracity of a news story
• The effect of SOTEN months after publication
• The effect of SOTEN on recent news about a salient topic with significant news coverage—in the case of this study, news about the COVID-19 pandemic

A fifth study combined a survey with web-tracking data in order to identify the effect of exposure to both low- and high-quality search-engine results on belief in misinformation. By collecting search results using a custom web browser plug-in, the researchers could identify how the quality of these search results may affect users’ belief in the misinformation being evaluated.

The study’s source credibility ratings were determined by NewsGuard, a browser extension that rates news and other information sites in order to guide users in assessing the trustworthiness of the content they come across online.

Across the five studies, the authors found that the act of searching online to evaluate news led to a statistically significant increase in belief in misinformation. This occurred whether it was shortly after the publication of misinformation or months later.

This finding suggests that the passage of time—and ostensibly opportunities for fact checks to enter the information ecosystem—does not lessen the impact of SOTEN on increasing the likelihood of believing false news stories to be true. Moreover, the fifth study showed that this phenomenon is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information.

“The findings highlight the need for media literacy programs to ground recommendations in empirically tested interventions and search engines to invest in solutions to the challenges identified by this research,” says Joshua A. Tucker, professor of politics and co-director of CSMaP, another of the paper’s authors.

Additional coauthors are from NYU and Stanford Law School.

The National Science Foundation supported the work.

Source: NYU

The “ideal” holiday season doesn’t always match up with our actual lives. And that’s OK.

If you’re feeling a little more “Grinch” and a little less “Buddy the Elf” this holiday season, Tracey Musarra Marchese, professor of practice in the Falk College’s School of Social Work at Syracuse University, has some tips to make your holidays feel a little more joyful, a little more peaceful, and a lot more authentic to your own experience.

If you’re feeling burnt out and overwhelmed

Start by keeping your expectations for the holiday season—and what you can realistically accomplish and give of yourself—in check, Marchese says.

“If you’re overdoing it with trying to create the ‘perfect’ holiday, you’re going to be exhausted—and where’s the enjoyment in that?”

It’s tempting to use the season as an excuse to overindulge in food and alcohol. While Marchese is not trained as a nutritionist, she says using either alcohol (which is a depressant) or sweets/sugar to cope don’t make us feel our best emotionally or physically.

“While these might seem helpful in the short-term, overindulging at the holidays can actually compound or further contribute to feelings of burnout and overwhelm for us,” Marchese says.

If you’re suffering from “comparison fatigue”

Sometimes it feels like social media is designed to make us feel poorly about ourselves, or like we aren’t living up to the standards everyone else is showing on their feeds.

It’s important to recognize that you are likely comparing yourself to “someone else’s highlight reel.” Marchese says.

“The truth is, life isn’t a Hallmark movie—life is messy sometimes and that is okay,” Marchese says. “You can still have lovely, joyful moments that are defined by how you want to enjoy the season. Don’t worry so much about what other people are up to because their social media is probably not depicting their reality, either.”

If you’re feeling particularly down after spending time on social media, setting daily app limits or deleting social media apps altogether for the remainder of December is always an option.

If you have strained or stressful family relationships

There are many reasons why someone might dread spending the holiday season with their families, from simply feeling like you aren’t on the same page with them—ideologically (politically or otherwise)—to having a history of abuse or other trauma in your family. If that’s the case, it’s totally normal not to feel excited to spend time with them and it’s always an option not to spend time with them.

If you do choose to spend time with your family, there are ways to make it easier on yourself. Marchese’s top tips include:

• Plan ahead for breaks and solitude. “Always have a game plan in your head for breaking away for a 20-minute walk, excusing yourself for some fresh air, or taking a solo trip to the store because you ‘forgot something,’ if needed,” Marchese says. During a longer trip to visit family, incorporate spending time with friends in the area you’ve missed or going to see a movie by yourself.
• Practice deep breathing. If you’re feeling anxious, stressed out or triggered, your breath can be your best friend. “Practicing deep, slow breathing—into our bellies—can help reset our nervous system and activate what’s called a relaxation response,” says Marchese. “It’s free, takes just seconds or minutes, and can be done anywhere, even at the dinner table.”
• Remember that you’re an adult now. Even as a college student, you’re an adult, not a child, but “it’s natural when you’re around family to revert to old roles, which may mean being treated as a child and not like the adult that you are,” says Marchese. “You may find yourself falling back into old ways of relating with your family, but it’s helpful to remember that you’re an adult now and you can make different decisions.”

If you’re still confused about what “self-care” actually is

Marchese says she thinks of “self-care” (widely used and rarely defined) in two realms: self-care and communal care.

“Self-care entails the basics like adequate sleep, exercise (anything that gets your blood moving—you don’t necessarily have to start an elaborate new workout routine), exposure to daylight, and being mindful about what you put in your body and how it makes you feel,” Marchese says. “It is also about making time for yourself to manage stress through things like meditation, self-reflection, and engaging in enjoyable activities, like hobbies.”

Communal care, Marchese says, means, “Do you have people you can rely on, that help meet your needs, that you have a reciprocal relationship with, that you actually like? Connecting and spending time with the people who ‘get you’ is a great way to offset familial obligations during the holidays.”

If you’re coping with grief and loss this holiday season

If you are grappling with loss, feelings of grief can well up at this time of year, especially if it’s the first holiday season without someone you love.

“Losses come in lots of ways—so it could be a loss of a person through death, but it could also be the loss of a relationship,” says Marchese. “Know that there is no such word as ‘should’ in the grieving process. You are at where you are at, and it takes as long as it takes [to grieve].”

She recommends allowing feelings of grief and sadness to come up when they arise and feeling them fully, but also giving yourself an “exit strategy” from the intense feelings. “If you’re concerned you are going to get ‘stuck’ in those feelings, you might say, ‘OK I’m going to let myself feel what I’m feeling for maybe 20 or 30 minutes, and then I’m going to call a friend or get up and take a walk because I don’t want to find myself falling into a deep pit of despair.’”

Additionally, Marchese suggests journaling about your feelings of grief, writing a letter to your loved one, volunteering, or doing something special to honor their memory as additional coping strategies.

If you feel like you need additional support

“December is a very common time for people to seek the support of a therapist,” says Marchese. Asking your primary care provider for a referral or seeking in-network providers with your health insurer are great starting points if you’re seeking a mental health professional.

If at any point you’re feeling like you may be suffering from depression, like you want to hurt yourself, or are experiencing suicidal ideation, it is time to seek professional help.

For crisis support, call or text 988 or use the live chat at 988lifeline.org to access the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or go to your nearest emergency room for immediate assistance.

Source: Syracuse University

Becoming a caregiver to an aging parent or spouse can be stressful, but a new study questions the idea that it’s a risk factor for depression.

The study, published in the journal Advances in Life Course Research, found that depression in adult caregivers is mostly driven by having a loved one experiencing serious health problems, while becoming a caregiver is associated with fewer symptoms of depression.

“Decades of research on this topic indicate that there are positive and negative aspects to being a caregiver,” says Sae Hwang Han, an assistant professor in the human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

“It’s widely assumed the negatives far outweigh the positives, that caregiving is a chronic stressor and that it contributes to worse health and well-being. But the evidence doesn’t always bear that out.”

Recent studies have found that caregivers live longer than noncaregivers and that many caregivers describe caregiving as a positive experience that gives them meaning and purpose. It was these contradictions that led Han to conduct the study.

“Most previous studies start by identifying caregivers and compare their well-being to noncaregivers,” Han says. “But having a loved one experience a serious health problem in later life is itself a very depressing event.

“It’s unsurprising that these studies would find a heightened risk of depression in caregivers compared to noncaregivers, who often do not have serious health problems in the family. That’s a misleading comparison, just as it would be misleading to compare the well-being of someone going through chemotherapy to someone who doesn’t have cancer.”

Han followed a group of adult children over the age of 50 who had a living mother. He tracked changes in their mental health as some of the mothers became disabled or cognitively impaired and the adult children became caregivers. Han found that adult children became more depressed as their mothers’ health deteriorated but found no evidence that becoming a caregiver worsened their depression.

“Rather, I found that caregiving alleviated the extent to which adult children became depressed in response to their mothers’ health problems, suggesting that there may be something protective about being able to help others we care about,” Han says.

A 2021 study by Han and colleagues found that spouses providing caregiving to their partners saw similar effects.

About 1 in 5 Americans are providing caregiving to an adult with health and functional needs, and about half of people over 50 are caregivers to older adults. Many people can expect to enter the caregiving role at some point in their lives, Han points out. While emphasizing the importance of social and policy interventions that continue to support caregivers, Han also says that this role does not have to be a source of dread and depression.

“There is no disputing that caregiving can be a very stressful experience,” he says. “But some stressful experiences also make you more resilient and help you grow.”

The Center on Aging and Population Sciences and the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the National Institute on Aging, and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development supported the work.

Source: UT Austin

Probiotics, specifically lactobacillus, demonstrated a significant ability to delay a COVID infection and reduce symptoms among unvaccinated people who had been in contact with someone in their home diagnosed with COVID, researchers report in a new study.

The randomized, placebo-controlled study suggests that probiotics could be a relatively simple and inexpensive approach to treating people after a COVID exposure.

The finding could be a timely intervention as COVID-tracking data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show hospital admissions and deaths on the rise in the US at the same time holiday celebrations will bring people together.

Additionally, fewer than 20% of the US population has received the 2023 updated COVID vaccine, according to the most recent CDC data.

“Prior to COVID, there was strong evidence that probiotics were protective against respiratory infections,” says Paul Wischmeyer, associate vice chair for clinical research in Duke University’s anesthesiology department and co-lead author of the study in the journal Clinical Nutrition.

“Once COVID hit, it was imperative to determine whether this simple, well-tolerated intervention could be useful. Our study provides encouraging evidence for the use of probiotics.”

Wischmeyer and colleagues launched their investigation in March 2020, prior to widespread vaccine availability in the United States. Patients were enrolled if they were unvaccinated and had been exposed to someone with COVID, but had not yet exhibited symptoms.

The study enrolled 182 participants, with half randomly assigned to take a probiotic of lactobacillus and the other half randomized to take a placebo pill. Neither study participants nor administrators knew who was receiving the active therapy.

Wischmeyer says the study enrollment period was shortened because the pool of eligible participants declined as vaccines became more commonplace and infections began leveling off prior to the Delta wave.

Upon analysis, the researchers found that participants randomized to receive the probiotic were 60% less likely to develop COVID symptoms compared to those randomized to receive placebo—26.4% vs. 42.9%. The probiotic participants were also able to stave off infection longer compared to those receiving the dummy pill.

Although the probiotic group had a numerically lower incidence of COVID-19 diagnosis, the rate did not meet statistical significance (8.8% COVID diagnosis rate in probiotic vs. 15.4% COVID diagnosis rate in control group) because of the study size.

“We are actually not surprised by these findings,” Wischmeyer says. “There have been several studies that have demonstrated the strong efficacy of probiotics against respiratory infections, including a very large study among babies in India that was published in Nature in 2017.

“Other early studies have shown that probiotics may also enhance the effect of vaccines against other viral illnesses, such as influenza.”

Wischmeyer cited evidence that probiotics improve immune function in several ways, including increasing the population of regulatory T-cells, decreasing pro-inflammatory cytokines, increasing the lung’s protective barrier against infection, and modulating antiviral gene expression.

“While limited in sample size, our study lends credence to the notion that our symbiotic microbes can be valuable partners in the fight against COVID-19 and potentially other future pandemic diseases,” Wischmeyer says.

“This may be particularly relevant in under-resourced nations where vaccination rates have lagged and even in the US, where COVID boosters are not widely accessed.”

The Duke Microbiome Center and private philanthropic donations supported the work. DSM/iHealth donated the probiotic and placebo pills for the trial, but had no role in the study’s design, conduct, analysis, or writing.

Source: Duke University

People in the Americas started to use bow and arrows around 5,000 years ago, according to a new study.

The research indicates that adoption of the technology coincided with the both the expansion of exchange networks and the growing tendency for people to reside in villages.

When archery arose in the Americas and the effects of the technology on society have long been debated among anthropologists and archaeologists. The new findings shine light on the mystery.

Focusing on the Lake Titicaca Basin in the Andes mountains, anthropologists found through analysis of 1,179 projectile points that the rise of archery technology dates to around 5,000 years ago. Previous research held that archery in the Andes emerged around 3,000 years ago.

“We think our paper is groundbreaking because it gives us a chance to see how society changed throughout the Andes throughout ancient times by presenting a huge number of artifacts from a vast area of South America,” says Luis Flores-Blanco, an anthropology doctoral student at the University of California, Davis and corresponding author of the paper published in the journal Quaternary International.

“This is among the first instances in which Andean archaeologists have investigated social complexity through the quantitative analysis of stone tools.”

Researchers say increasing social complexity in the region is usually investigated through analysis of monumental architecture and ceramics rather than projectile points, which are historically linked to foraging communities.

For the study, the team examined more than a thousand projectile points created over 10,000 years. Each projectile point originated in the Lake Titicaca Basin, specifically the Ilave and Ramis valleys, which are located southwest and northwest of the basin, respectively.

It’s among the highest plateau lands explored and conquered by humans, with Lake Titicaca sitting at an elevation of 12,500 feet, Flores-Blanco says.

“At Titicaca, Andeans accomplished the remarkable achievement of domesticating plants like the potato, leaving behind a nutritious legacy that is still appreciated today,” he says. “On top of that, the Tiwanaku were one of the major Andean civilizations that built their vast territory here. Even the Inca Empire claimed this territory was their mythical place of origin. Our study digs even deeper and goes to the roots of this Andean civilization.”

In their analysis, Flores-Blanco and his colleagues considered each projectile’s date of origin and then measured its length, width, thickness, and weight. They noticed that older projectile points—from the Early Archaic through the Late Archaic—were larger. A significant decrease in size occurred during the Terminal Archaic period, around 5,000 years ago. The team hypothesized that this size shift indicates a change in preference from spear-throwing technology to bow-and-arrow technology, but without abandoning the old technologies.

In addition, the team compared their projectile data to archaeological data from the region concerning settlement sizes, raw material availability and cranial trauma data. During the Terminal Archaic period, settlement sizes increased but the total number of settlement sites decreased, the researchers say. Not only that, but the inhabitants lacked signs of social violence, even though they had access to exotic raw materials.

“Based on our discovery, we can suggest that bow-and-arrow technology could have maintained and ensured adherence to emerging social norms that were crucial, such as those observed in the development of new social institutions, like obsidian exchange hubs or among individuals establishing residence in expanding villages,” Flores-Blanco says.

Additional coauthors are from UC Davis, the National University of San Marcos, UC Merced, the University of South Florida, and the University of Wyoming.

Source: Greg Watry for UC Davis