UG research gears to examine prehistoric lifestyle

Jul 26, 2015 News

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– in quest to design model for ideal environment
Patterning a lifestyle based on prehistoric life is the ultimate aim of Louisa Dagger, an undertaking she is looking to prove possible through a research project titled ‘Assessing prehistoric diet breadth and settlement to model a low carbon life’.

Dagger was among a group of nine lead researchers of the University of Guyana (UG) who were just last week awarded grants to conduct investigative research projects.
As arguably the youngest of the researchers, Dagger has embarked on a project that is undeniably the most unique.
“It will mean that we will try to look at things much differently and try to utilise resources more effectively and select carefully the things we do and try to monitor our way of life,” said Dagger of the intention of her project.
Her primary aim, therefore, is to let the Guyanese people gain a better understanding of how their everyday activities impact the environment and by extension, their wellbeing.
It is her hope to help model an ideal environment “where everything is within proximity so that we are comfortable doing stuff…the school is close, everything is close so we don’t have to drive motor vehicles; we can even walk to the market.”
Dagger therefore has plans to collaborate with the Boise State University in the Unites States of America to highlight how her vision is possible.
The project will see Dagger and a team of researchers, including a representative from Boise State University, attempting to shed light on how people survived and maintained their health in prehistoric times. With such information in hand she believes that an informed analysis can be done to ascertain how the prehistoric situation can be applied to improve modern existence. “We will be looking to see what we can use from them to become a lot healthier…have the necessary nutrients without having to head to the supermarket to get junk food so that we can live stable lives,” said Dagger.
The support of Boise State University is a crucial factor, since according to the young researcher, “they have the technology and the facilities and we are going to embark on assessing prehistoric diet.”
The research project will see the utilisation of isotope analysis and radiocarbon dating which Dagger said “would help us to really get down to the bottom of what the climate was 7,000 years ago.”
“So we are going to try to set a benchmark for Guyana identifying what was the carbon footprint 7,000 years ago then chronologically try to give a breakdown of how that carbon footprint changed over time,” said Dagger as she explained that the analysis will be done using fauna and human remains .
“Fortunately we were able to gather some amount of data and we will be going back into the fields to excavate a few sites, collect human remains from various parts of Guyana; these of course will be pre historic humans,” she asserted.
According to her too, the archaic period under consideration is one that was marked by a lot of climate shifts thus the temperature was ever changing. The researcher pointed out that in order to survive that period it is believed that people needed to develop a series of adoptive mechanisms to deal with the climate. “It meant choosing resources, doing things differently so that they could survive and their main objective would have been survival,” she insisted.
As part of the project, efforts will be made to ascertain not only what sparked the survival mechanisms but also what they were and even how people of that people selected foods from the then existing food chain.
Attempts will also be made to determine what diseases plagued human beings during that period and how they went about combating those despite a perceived limited capacity.
Dagger also has plans to look at the skeletal pathology of people to deduce if they were able to gain the necessary nutrients.
“Based on that we will also be able to look at how much carbon they were emitting into the atmosphere…They were lighting fire, they were doing their stuff and we really want to know what they were doing to have a thriving population in the prehistoric period so that we can use some of their methods to apply to our current population so that we can reduce our carbon emissions,” Dagger conveyed.
Areas in Regions One and Two are expected to be the main target areas for the research project with the early stages including excavation of archaeological sites and attempts being made to acquire stratigraphic profiles of the sediments there.
The team which is expected also include representatives from the Ministry of Culture will see attempts being made to extract human remains (aged bones) and the securing of necessary fauna to help derive the needed answers.
Although she has been engaged in such activities over the past few years, Dagger is confident that through the research on a larger scale will be possible. “For us this opens a lot of avenues so that we can now tap into funding and have laboratories do the necessary testing we need to do so that we can compile a comprehensive report that addresses critical questions that we have been able to address over the years,” said Dagger.
The project is expected to commence this month and is slated to be concluded by the end of next year.
The project is being funded under the University of Guyana Science and Technology Support Project (UGSTSP) which is based on a US$10 million loan from the World Bank to the Government of Guyana that is being executed by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the University of Guyana.

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