Cultural Unity and Disunity in the Titicaca Basin

1950 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendell C. Bennett

In pre-Columbian Peru, conditions favorable for population concentration and cultural development were largely restricted to the coastal valleys and the high structural basins in the mountains. Most archaeologists who have dealt with comparative chronology have grouped adjacent valleys and compared their combined cultural sequences with those of a highland basin. The justification for this procedure has been the assumption that cultural uniformity would be found throughout these regional units in any given time period. For the valleys, such an assumption is based on the limited size of the area and the fact that each has only one major source of water supply to support an economy based on irrigated agriculture. The intensive archaeological work in Viru by the Institute of Andean Research verified the thesis of cultural uniformity for one valley. The situation in the highlands is, however, somewhat different since the basins are comparatively large, have many sources of water supply, and allow economies not totally dependent on irrigation. Only one highland basin, the Lake Titicaca, is sufficiently known archaeologically to allow examination of distributions at different time periods as a basis for evaluating its cultural unity or disunity. The present paper undertakes such a review.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danijela Popović ◽  
Martyna Molak ◽  
Mariusz Ziołkowski ◽  
Alexei Vranich ◽  
Maciej Sobczyk ◽  
...  

AbstractTiwanaku was a civilization that flourished in the Lake Titicaca Basin (present-day Bolivia) between 500 and 1000 CE. At its apogee, Tiwanaku controlled the lake’s southern shores and influenced certain areas of the Southern Andes. There is a considerable amount of archaeological and anthropological data concerning the Tiwanaku culture; however, our understanding of the population of the site of Tiwanaku is limited. To understand the population dynamics at different stages of the Tiwanaku cultural development, we analyzed 17 low-coverage genomes from individuals dated between 300 and 1500 CE. We found that the population from the Lake Titicaca Basin remained genetically unchanged throughout more than 1200 years, indicating that significant cultural and political changes were not associated with large scale population movements. In contrast, individuals excavated from Tiwanaku’s ritual core were highly heterogeneous, some with genetic ancestry from as far away as the Amazon, supporting the proposition of foreign presence at the site. However, mixed-ancestry individuals’ presence suggests they were local descendants of incomers from afar rather than captives or visiting pilgrims. A number of human offerings from the Akapana Platform dating to ca. 950 CE mark the end of active construction and maintenance of the monumental core and the wane of Tiwanaku culture.Significance StatementTiwanaku was an important pre-Inca polity in South America and an example of primary social complexity on par with civilizations in the Indus and Nile river valley. Flourishing between 500 and 1000 CE, Tiwanaku exercised control in the south Titicaca basin and influenced a vast area in southern Peru, Bolivia, and northern Chile. Comprehensive archeological studies provided information about the rise, expansion, and fall of the Tiwanaku culture, but little is known about the monumental site’s population. To address this lacuna, we generated low coverage genomes for 17 individuals, revealing that while the Titicaca basin’s residential population was homogenous, the individuals excavated from the ritual core of Tiwanaku drew their ancestry from distant regions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (49) ◽  
pp. e2113395118
Author(s):  
Melanie J. Miller ◽  
Iain Kendall ◽  
José M. Capriles ◽  
Maria C. Bruno ◽  
Richard P. Evershed ◽  
...  

The Lake Titicaca basin was one of the major centers for cultural development in the ancient world. This lacustrine environment is unique in the high, dry Andean altiplano, and its aquatic and terrestrial resources are thought to have contributed to the florescence of complex societies in this region. Nevertheless, it remains unclear to what extent local aquatic resources, particularly fish, and the introduced crop, maize, which can be grown in regions along the lakeshores, contributed to facilitating sustained food production and population growth, which underpinned increasing social political complexity starting in the Formative Period (1400 BCE to 500 CE) and culminating with the Tiwanaku state (500 to 1100 CE). Here, we present direct dietary evidence from stable isotope analysis of human skeletal remains spanning over two millennia, together with faunal and floral reference materials, to reconstruct foodways and ecological interactions in southern Lake Titicaca over time. Bulk stable isotope analysis, coupled with compound-specific amino acid stable isotope analysis, allows better discrimination between resources consumed across aquatic and terrestrial environments. Together, this evidence demonstrates that human diets predominantly relied on C3 plants, particularly quinoa and tubers, along with terrestrial animals, notably domestic camelids. Surprisingly, fish were not a significant source of animal protein, but a slight increase in C4 plant consumption verifies the increasing importance of maize in the Middle Horizon. These results underscore the primary role of local terrestrial food resources in securing a nutritious diet that allowed for sustained population growth, even in the face of documented climate and political change across these periods.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantin-Cristian Topriceanu ◽  
James C. Moon ◽  
Rebecca Hardy ◽  
Nishi Chaturvedi ◽  
Alun D. Hughes ◽  
...  

AbstractA frailty index (FI) counts health deficit accumulation. Besides traditional risk factors, it is unknown whether the health deficit burden is related to the appearance of cardiovascular disease. In order to answer this question, the same multidimensional FI looking at 45-health deficits was serially calculated per participant at 4 time periods (0–16, 19–44, 45–54 and 60–64 years) using data from the 1946 Medical Research Council (MRC) British National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD)—the world’s longest running longitudinal birth cohort with continuous follow-up. From these the mean and total FI for the life-course, and the step change in deficit accumulation from one time period to another was derived. Echocardiographic data at 60–64 years provided: ejection fraction (EF), left ventricular mass indexed to body surface area (LVmassi, BSA), myocardial contraction fraction indexed to BSA (MCFi) and E/e′. Generalized linear models assessed the association between FIs and echocardiographic parameters after adjustment for relevant covariates. 1375 participants were included. For each single new deficit accumulated at any one of the 4 time periods, LVmassi increased by 0.91–1.44% (p < 0.013), while MCFi decreased by 0.6–1.02% (p < 0.05). A unit increase in FI at age 45–54 and 60–64, decreased EF by 11–12% (p < 0.013). A single health deficit step change occurring between 60 and 64 years and one of the earlier time periods, translated into higher odds (2.1–78.5, p < 0.020) of elevated LV filling pressure. Thus, the accumulation of health deficits at any time period of the life-course associates with a maladaptive cardiac phenotype in older age, dominated by myocardial hypertrophy and poorer function.


2020 ◽  
pp. 135245852091049 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelsi A Smith ◽  
Sarah Burkill ◽  
Ayako Hiyoshi ◽  
Tomas Olsson ◽  
Shahram Bahmanyar ◽  
...  

Background: People with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) have increased comorbid disease (CMD) risk. Most previous studies have not considered overall CMD burden. Objective: To describe lifetime CMD burden among pwMS. Methods: PwMS identified using Swedish registers between 1968 and 2012 ( n = 25,476) were matched by sex, age, and county of residence with general-population comparators ( n = 251,170). Prevalence, prevalence ratios (PRs), survival functions, and hazard ratios by MS status, age, and time period compared seven CMD: autoimmune, cardiovascular, depression, diabetes, respiratory, renal, and seizures. Results: The magnitude of the PRs for each CMD and age group decreased across time, with higher PRs in earlier time periods. Before 1990, younger age groups had higher PRs, and after 1990, older age groups had higher PRs. Male pwMS had higher burden compared with females. Overall, renal, respiratory, and seizures had the highest PRs. Before 2001, 50% of pwMS received a first/additional CMD diagnosis 20 years prior to people without MS, which reduced to 4 years after 2001. PwMS had four times higher rates of first/additional diagnoses in earlier time periods, which reduced to less than two times higher in recent time periods compared to people without MS. Conclusion: Swedish pwMS have increased CMD burden compared with the general population, but this has reduced over time.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 237802311881180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan J. B. Mijs

In this figure I describe the long trend in popular belief in meritocracy across the Western world between 1930 and 2010. Studying trends in attitudes is limited by the paucity of survey data that can be compared across countries and over time. Here, I show how to complement survey waves with cohort-level data. Repeated surveys draw on a representative sample of the population to describe the typical beliefs held by citizens in a given country and period. Leveraging the fact that citizens surveyed in a given year were born in different time-periods allows for a comparison of beliefs across birth cohorts. The latter overlaps with the former, but considerably extends the time period covered by the data. Taken together, the two measures give a “triangulated” longitudinal record of popular belief in meritocracy. I find that in most countries, popular belief in meritocracy is (much) stronger for more recent periods and cohorts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuen-Chang Lin ◽  
You-Lun Shen ◽  
An-Na Wu

Carbon nanotubes/graphene composites are directly grown on nickel foil without additional catalysts by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Next, the cobalt is deposited on carbon nanotubes/graphene composites by radio frequency (RF) sputtering with different power levels and time periods. Then, the cobalt is transformed into cobalt oxide by annealing. A longer time period of sputtering leads to higher specific capacity. Furthermore, the electrochemical stability of cobalt oxide/carbon nanotubes/graphene composites is higher than that of cobalt oxide.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loredana G. Suciu ◽  
Robert J. Griffin ◽  
Caroline A. Masiello

Abstract. Ozone (O3) in the lower troposphere is harmful to people and plants, particularly during summer, when photochemistry is the most active and higher temperatures favor local chemistry. Because of its dependence on the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to nitrogen oxides (NOx) ratio, ground-level O3 is difficult to control locally, where many sources of these precursors contribute to its mixing ratio. In addition to local emissions, chemistry and transport, larger-scale factors also contribute to local O3 and NOx. These additional contributions (often referred to as "regional background") are not well quantified within the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria (HGB) region, impeding more efficient controls on precursor emissions to achieve compliance with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for O3. In this study, we estimate regional background O3 and NOx in the HGB region and quantify their decadal-scale trends. We use four different approaches based on principal component analysis (PCA) to quantify background O3 and NOx. Three of these approaches consist of independent PCA on both O3 and NOx for both 1-h and 8-h levels to compare our results with previous studies and to highlight the effect of both temporal and spatial scales. In the fourth approach, we co-varied O3, NOx and meteorology. Our results show that the estimation of regional background O3 has less inherent uncertainty when it was constrained by NOx and meteorology, yielding a statistically significant temporal trend of −0.69 ± 0.27 ppb y−1. Likewise, the estimation of regional background NOx trend constrained by O3 and meteorology was −0.04 ± 0.02 ppb y−1. Our best estimates of 17-y average of season-scale background O3 and NOx were 46.72 ± 2.08 ppb and 6.80 ± 0.13 ppb, respectively. Regional background O3 and NOx both have declined over time in the HGB region. This decline is likely caused by a combination of state of Texas controls on precursor emissions since 2007 and the increase in frequency of flow from the Gulf of Mexico over the same time period.


2020 ◽  
pp. 675-686
Author(s):  
M Massányi ◽  
M Halo ◽  
L Strapáková ◽  
T Slanina ◽  
P Ivanič ◽  
...  

The goal of this study was to observe the effect of resorcinol on motility, viability and morphology of bovine spermatozoa. The semen was used from six randomly chosen breeding bulls. Ejaculate was diluted by different solutions of resorcinol in 1:40 ratio. Samples were divided into 7 groups with different concentrations of resorcinol (Control, RES1 – 4 mg/ml, RES2 – 2 mg/ml, RES3 – 1 mg/ml, RES4 – 0.5 mg/ml, RES5 – 0.25 mg/ml and RES6 – 0.125 mg/ml). Motility of spermatozoa was detected using CASA method at temperature of 37 °C in time periods 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 hours from the start of the experiment. Significant motility differences between all groups except control and RES6 with difference of 5.58 %, as well as between RES1 and RES2 groups with difference of 2.17 % were found. Progressive motility had the same significant differences. Spermatozoa viability (MTT test) decreased compared to control in all experimental groups during the entire duration of experiment. Observing morphologically changed spermatozoa, no significant changes were observed and a higher percentage of spermatozoa with separated flagellum in all experimental resorcinol groups compared to control were detected. Also, increased number of spermatozoa with broken flagellum, acrosomal changes and other morphological forms in the group with the highest concentration of resorcinol (RES1) were found. Results of our study clearly show negative effects on motility parameters of spermatozoa which depend on concentration, cultivation temperature and time period.


2001 ◽  
pp. 40-44
Author(s):  
Miklós Pakurár ◽  
László Lakatos ◽  
János Nagy

The effect of soil temperature was evaluated on the yield of the Occitan corn hybrid at a depth of 5 cm. We examined this effect on the time required from planting to emergence for three average durations: five, ten and fifteen days, all calculated from the day of planting. Winter plowing (27 cm), spring plowing (23 cm), disc-till (12 cm) treatments and 120 kg N per hectare fertilizer were applied. As a result of our analysis, we determined the post planting optimum soil temperatures for various time periods. The average soil temperature for a time period of 15 days post planting is the most usable for determining actual yields, followed by ten days, with five days proved to be the least usable (winter plow R2 = 0.86, spring plow R2 = 0.87, disc-till R2 = 0.64).


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