Trophic ecology of a Late Pleistocene early modern human from tropical Southeast Asia inferred from zinc isotopes

Nicolas Bourgon (1, 2) , Klervia Jaouen (1) , Anne-Marie Bacon (3) , Elise Dufour (4, 2) , Jeremy Mccormack , N.-Han Tran , Manuel Trost (5) , Denis Fiorillo (2) , Tyler E Dunn , Clément Zanolli (6) , Alexandra Zachwieja , Philippe Duringer , Jean-Luc Ponche , Quentin Boesch , Pierre-Olivier Antoine , Kira E Westaway , Renaud Joannes-Boyau No , Eric Suzzoni , Sébastien Frangeul , Françoise Crozier , Françoise Aubaile (7) , Elise Patole Edoumba , Thonglith Luangkhoth , Viengkeo Souksavatdy , Souliphane Boualaphane , Thongsa Sayavonkhamdy , Phonephanh Sichanthongtip , Daovee Sihanam , Fabrice Demeter (7) , Laura L Shackelford , Jean-Jacques Hublin (8) , Thomas Tütken

1 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology [Leipzig]
2 AASPE - Archéozoologie, archéobotanique : sociétés, pratiques et environnements
3 BABEL - Biologie, anthropologie, biométrie, épigénétique, lignées : De la diversité des populations à l'individu, de l'identification à l'identité
4 MNHN - Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle
5 Department of Human Evolution [Leipzig]
6 PACEA - De la Préhistoire à l'Actuel : Culture, Environnement et Anthropologie
7 EA - Éco-Anthropologie
8 Collège de France - Chaire Paléoanthropologie

Tam Pà Ling, a cave site in northeastern Laos, has yielded the earliest skeletal evidence of Homo sapiens in mainland Southeast Asia. The reliance of Pleistocene humans in rainforest settings on plant or animal resources is still largely unstudied, mainly due to poor collagen preservation in fossils from tropical environments precluding stable nitrogen isotope analysis, the classical trophic level proxy. However, isotopic ratios of zinc (Zn) in bioapatite constitute a promising proxy to infer trophic and dietary information from fossil vertebrates, even under adverse tropical taphonomic conditions. Here, we analyzed the zinc isotope composition (66Zn/64Zn expressed as δ66Zn value) in the enamel of two teeth of the Late Pleistocene (63–46 ka) H. sapiens individual (TPL1) from Tam Pà Ling, as well as 76 mammal teeth from the same site and the nearby Nam Lot cave. The human individual exhibits relatively low enamel δ66Zn values (+0.24‰) consistent with an omnivorous diet, suggesting a dietary reliance on both plant and animal matter. These findings offer direct evidence of the broad utilization of resources from tropical rainforests by one of the earliest known anatomically modern humans in Southeast Asia.

Mots clés: Enamel; Diet; Homo sapiens; Hunter-gatherer; Tam Pà Ling; Stable carbon isotopes

Domaines: Paléontologie; Anthropologie biologique; Archéologie et Préhistoire

Nicolas Bourgon, Klervia Jaouen, Anne-Marie Bacon, Elise Dufour, Jeremy Mccormack, et al.. Trophic ecology of a Late Pleistocene early modern human from tropical Southeast Asia inferred from zinc isotopes. Journal of Human Evolution, 2021, 161, pp.103075. ⟨10.1016/j.jhevol.2021.103075⟩. ⟨hal-03390541⟩