Yaohan Wu is a Ph.D candidate at the Anthropology Department of University of California, San Diego. As a bioarchaeologist, she is interested in employing interdisciplinary research to understand how population in prehistoric times adapted to the geoenvironmental stressors around them and how the different foodways they utilized impacted their health. In particular, she studies the changes in past population’s lifestyle in relation to the domestication and management of animals in prehistoric China. Some of Yaohan’s previous research include reconstructing migration patterns in Bronze Age Tuckey through dental morphology, modeling stone toolmaking among fossil hominins through entheses on hands and forearms, and the growth of auditory exostoses related to deepwater diving. Her currently project focuses on the relationship between animal-human interaction and zoonotic diseases at Northwest China during the late Neolithic.

Project description

My project explores human-animal relationships and the corresponding pathways to zoonotic transmission by studying the emergence of zoonotic diseases. Specifically, I examine how the transmission of diseases is correlated to different stages of animal domestication in the Gansu province of China during 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, during which populations were in contact with other regions in China as may be inferred from existing archaeological materials documenting pottery exchanges with central China, imported jade from eastern China, and plant and animal domesticates from Central Asia. In analyzing the material from my study site Mogou, I will document the trends of animal-human interactions as its populations experimented with varieties of animal husbandry. I examine how the types of animal husbandry practiced at the time relate to the transmission of zoonotic diseases as inferable from the osteological remains, as well as by performing δ13C, δ15N & δ18O stable isotopic analysis on faunal remains and ancient DNA analysis on human remains.

My project is significant because humans have continued to intensify animal use in ways that may precipitate the spread of zoonotic diseases since the start of Holocene. The recent Covid-19 pandemic reminds us that if anything, this long-term process is accelerating in the modern age. Zoonotic diseases, caused by pathogens of non-human animal origin, make up most emerging infectious diseases affecting human populations around the globe: of the 1,415 identified species of infectious organisms that can cause ailments in humans, 61% are classified as zoonotic. Understanding the transmission process is critical in understanding how humans lived and adapted alongside animals despite the resulting pathogen transmission. However, most research effort so far on reducing the impacts of emerging diseases are focused on ad hoc outbreak control and vaccine development. My project will be the first study ever done to cover both faunal and human evidence and report the animal husbandry types that promote zoonotic diseases. 

Zoom Link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86848702905?pwd=QTRwNkJBR2p2azRWQm9sNFBnK09jUT09