The Search for the Earliest Ancestors of the Maya: Early Population Structure and the Origins of Farming

Keith Prufer, PhD, University of New Mexico

Recent research at two rock shelters in the Maya Mountains of southern Belize are changing the way archaeologists think about some of the earliest humans in the tropical Maya Lowlands. The sites were utilized for over 10,000 years as sheltered domestic spaces for processing plants and animals, making stone tools, and as cemeteries with over 100 human skeletons spanning the Holocene. Interdisciplinary research that includes population genetics, isotope ecology, and palaeobotanical analyses are revealing surprising details about the long-term presence of human groups in the Maya Mountains, and remarkably early evidence of food production and related technologies.

Keith Prufer is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico and Director of the Environmental Archaeology Lab. He received his PhD from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in 2002. He is especially interested in environmental archaeology, paleoecology, paleoclimate, and the neotropics.  He has conducted extensive research in Belize, most notably at the site of Uxbenka. At present, Dr. Prufer is a senior fellow in Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

The December monthly lecture will be hosted in person as well as virtually. The meeting will be held in the lecture theatre of the Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives, located at M and 17th Streets, NW, Washington, D.C. Photo ID is required to enter the building. Doors to the in-person meeting will open around 6:30 PM and light refreshments will be available before the lecture. For those of you who cannot make it to the Sumner School in person, the lecture will be live streamed via Zoom. To register, click HERE.

All monthly lecture meetings of the Pre-Columbian Society are free and open to the public.