Image: R. Douglas Fields
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QUITO, ECUADOR—Long before the Spanish conquered the Incas in 1533, and centuries before the Incas inhabited this area, the present-day site of Quito International Airport was a marshy lake surrounded by Indian settlements—the Quitus on one shore and the Ipias on the other. Between A.D. 200 and 800 these cultures prospered here, fishing the lake, growing corn, beans and potatoes in the fertile soil, and fermenting an alcoholic drink—chicha—made of a watery corn broth.
In 1980, while clearing land for new construction in a warren of graffiti-covered cinderblock shanties bristling with barbwire and defended by concrete walls tipped with broken glass, workers scraped open a tomb that had been hidden for over a millennium beneath the ramshackle neighborhood. Then, nine more deep-welled tombs were uncovered in the volcanic rock, each containing about 20 bodies. The walls of the shafts were lined with Quitus remains, each one crouched in the fetal position, clothed in the finest textile, adorned with gold jewelry, and surrounded by pottery containing offerings of food and chicha for the afterlife.
Yeast biologist Javier Carvajal Barriga, of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador in Quito, collected scrapings from inside large, torpedo-shaped clay fermentation vessels taken from one of the tombs in an attempt to recover microbes that had fermented the ancient chicha and, if possible, revive them.
» View a Slide Show of Tombs in Ecuador Where Ancient Yeast Was Found
Under the sterile conditions of his laboratory, he scratched away the surface layers from inside the fermentation vessels hoping to collect yeast trapped deep in the pottery's pores. Using a special method that he devised to humidify the desiccated cells, repair their damaged membranes, and jump-start their arrested metabolisms, he coaxed a community of yeasts, which had lain dormant in the entombed vessels since A.D. 680, back to life. Carvajal says he resurrected "a consortium of yeasts" from the containers, but none of the yeasts were Saccharomyces cerevisiae—the type used in modern fermentation. They were primarily strains of the genus Candida, closely related to the well-known yeast that causes skin and vaginal infections. But careful genetic analysis showed that two strains of yeast were a new species of Candida, which he named C. theae, meaning "tea."
These findings confirm 16th-century reports of how indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Andes fermented their chicha. According to Spanish chroniclers, Inca Indians initiated fermentation using animal bones, human saliva and even human feces.
"The most closely related species to C. theae are C. orthopsilosis, C. metapsilosis and C. parapsilosis, all of which are found in human saliva and feces," Carvajal says. Indeed he found human-associated C. parapsilosis, along with C. tropicalis, among the community of yeast in the ancient fermentation vessels. C. parapsilosis is the second-most commonly isolated pathogenic species of Candida infecting people. "Also [there are] the Crytococcus saitoi and C. laurentii that are related to respiratory diseases. They [the Quitus] were chewing and spitting the corn [into the fermentation vessels], so we can assume this population probably had some respiratory problems caused by pathogenic yeasts."
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14 Comments
Add CommentThe slide with the very short mummies is confounding without an explanation - what is that a picture of? It's not them, is it full scale, PC generated; what? By itself, it is macabre.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI object to the word "new" to qualify this "discovery"; the writer states, "he coaxed a community of yeasts, which had lain dormant in the entombed vessels since A.D. 680, back to life." By definition, new is never-before. Coaxed BACK to life; they're old, not new. It's not a discovery, it's a stumble into the past, serendipity. You cannot bring something back to life and call it new! "Look, here for the second time - I mean first time, this new, recently dead thing."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe bones from this tomb have been removed to a museum for study and replaced with manikins to show how the bodies were found in the fetal position. Many other tombs here are still undergoing excavation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisC. thea is a new species based on genetic sequencing and molecular biological analysis and it is recorded as such in the paper published this week in the scientific journal cited in the article. This is not the first time a new species thought to be extinct has subsequently been found alive. The coelacanth (an ancient lobe fin fish) is a famous example of this. The yeast does not form spores. It was not viable without the specialized process Dr. Carvajal has devised to revive ancient yeast. The process involves rehydrating the cells,repairing the damaged cell membrane, and restarting their metabolism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDarwinian/Mendelian evolution includes microbes, the dominant form of life on Earth. This is not a new species of Candida but a phase in the evolution of the Candida microbial breed that we have identified in modern times to date. Some phases in microbial evolution have become extinct, as we well know happened with primate fossils, such as Lucy. Anti-microbial pharmaceuticals have speeded up microbial evolution, so that many microbes can now defend themselves against what we see, with our limited knowledge, as old-line antibiotics, for example, that really haven't been around that long. Some modern microbes have learned to thicken their cell wall when attacked and/or to bombard the antibiotic molecule with an enzyme that snips off its tail, crippling it. Giving rise to an ID wisecrack that some bugs today are smarter than the drugs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSign me up for a growler! Hold the human feces though.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs stated in the article, the bodies were found in the fetal position, which is why they appear "short". What was not stated, but was probably true, is that the bodies were dessicated (and then wrapped) before interment, which is why the bodies appear to be less bulky than you would expect from being in the fetal position.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs someone else has so verbosely pointed out, "new" has multiple meanings, and in this context means "previously unknown or undecribed by science". The headline is perfectly accurate, if easily misconstrued by the scientifically illiterate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisR. Douglas Fields, very impressive report about some very impressive work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me, unhygienic eating habits alone with near starvation, from time to time, are the circumstances that give us alcoholic beverages! No doubt such was discovered and rediscovered in many places over many spans of time.
Richard Carlson
They started their fermented drinks using feces and diseased phlegm? I'm not mourning the demise of this particular "culture".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile the word "new" can obviously have "relative" meanings, perhaps what's even worse than any so-called "scientific illiteracy", is the sense of grandiosity and "entitlement" that it must take to so casually resort to rudeness & name-calling over a disagreement. Although I think the, um, "scientific" term for that is clinical Narcissism! ;-p
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe method used to initiate fermentation is fascinating, but of course these people had no idea about germs--or the mechanism of fermentation for that matter. In fact German biologist Theodore Schwann was ridiculed by leading authorities when he first proposed the idea that fermentation was the result of microbes consuming sugar and excreting alcohol and carbon dioxide in 1839. (Schwann's scientific career was ended after only 5 years.) These ancient people were simply following ritualistic practices that had been found to work through trial and error.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMing..., I intended no rudeness nor name-calling. I consider it a fact that the scientifically literate would have no problem understanding what was meant by the term "new" in the context in which it was used. I'm sorry that I couldn't find a more polite term in which to couch my comment. You, on the other hand, were deliberately rude and resorted to name-calling. You read way too much into a simple statement.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Ipias from Quito were a human cultural group whose believes were too much different to those of the Occidental Culture. When they died, they returned to mother earth, they didn`t go to heaven. In that context, they made deep tombs to facilitate the dead`s last trip to their original homeland. If we think on the introspective character of this believes (i.e. coming back to the bowels of the earth)it is not surprising that live in the form of food (i.e. chicha) came from their oun bowels, that is, from their feaces. On the other hand, the aparent absence of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in the fermentations systems in America (unpublished studies of fermented beverages from ancient indian cultures of America) can probably point out to an ecological characteristic very much different to that of the European, where wine and beer were produced thousands of years before, using the abovementioned species. Moreover, if we think on the tradicional, old fashioned way of making wine, we have to remind that grape juice was obtained after steping with naked feet on the grapes. I need to remark that Candida yeast species are also found as inhabitants in feet, in some cases causing athlete`s foot disease.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the pejorative comment about the culture that some reader posted, I would ask for the wide and profound criteria about the costumes of our and his ancestors.