Tierra del Fuego represents the southernmost limit of human settlement in the Americas. While people may have started to arrive there around 10 500 BP, when it was still connected to the mainland, the main wave of occupation occurred 5000 years later, by which time it had become an island. The co-existence in the area of maritime hunter-gatherers(in canoes) with previous terrestrial occupants pre-echoes the culturally distinctive groups encountered by the first European visitors in the sixteenth century. The study also provides a striking example of interaction across challenging natural barriers
This work contributes to ongoing discussions about the nature of tuberculosis in the Western Hemisphere prior to the time of European contact. Our example, from the extreme south of South America was, at the time of our study, without firm temporal association or molecular characterization. In Tierra del Fuego, Constantinescu (1999) briefly described vertebral bone lesions compatible with TB in an undated skeleton from Myren 1 site (Chile). The remains of Myren are estimated to represent a man between 18 and 23 years old at the time of death. The objectives of this research are to extend this description, to present molecular results, to establish a radiocarbon date, and to report stable isotopic values for the remains. We provide further description of the remains, including tuberculosis-like skeletal pathology. Radiocarbon dating of 640±20 years BP attributes this individual to the precontact fourteenth-fifteenth centuries. Isotopic ratios for nitrogen and carbon from bone collagen suggest a mixed diet. Molecular results were positive for the rpoB quantitative PCR (qPCR) assays but negative for two independent IS6110 and IS1081 qPCR assays. Further testing using genomic methods to target any mycobacteria for specific identification are needed.
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