Precipitation variability, fertility, and metabolic stress over 5 millennia in the ancient Andes: A bioarchaeological path analysis.

Climate change is a pressing global issue. Research on living populations fails to capture the full range of possible responses. Archaeological and bioarchaeological research offers a window into how people adapted to past climatic changes. We investigate the relationship between human health and precipitation among archaeological populations in the Andes region of South America. We conduct a path analysis of precipitation, cribra orbitalia, and age-at-death to assess the evidence for metabolic responses to climate change. Our models suggest that cribra orbitalia was less common, and that fertility was higher, when precipitation was greater. Model results were characterized by uncertainty, emphasizing the high variety in human responses to environmental change.