An Archaeological Science in Hong Kong Interdisciplinary Initiative event

Date: Monday, 26 May 2025
Time: 14:00 to 15:30
Venue: RM302, Mong Man Wai Building, CUHK 

Speaker: Dr. Jonathan Cybulski, the University of Hong Kong

One of humanity’s greatest ecosystem impacts comes from food provisioning. In many regions, this human influence spans millennia. Yet reconstructing ancient diets and their ecological consequences remains challenging due to the interplay of cultural preferences, resource availability, and environmental factors.

This talk involves research combining historical ecology, biogeochemistry, and collaborations with archaeologists and paleobiologists to investigate the question: What did ancient Panamanians eat? Dr. Cybulski will present research in which we used stable isotopes from coral skeletons to establish a historical baseline of nutrients and climate in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. These data were then used as a framework to investigate ancient human diets, revealed through advanced compound-specific stable isotope analysis of preserved bone collagen. By pairing archaeological evidence with environmental reconstructions, the work demonstrates why pre-human baselines are essential to contextualize long-term ecological change-offering insights for both the past and future of human-influenced ecosystems.

 All are welcome!