Transcript:

Ambience: Tibetan music and street sounds, bells

“I keep coming back to the fact that these high-altitude adaptations, one here in Tibet the other in Peru, are remarkably similar despite the vast differences between them.”

Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. Today we join University of Arizona Anthropologist Mark Aldenderfer in Tibet where he is surveying archeological sites to study when and why people migrated into this rugged area. He’s done similar research in the Andes of Peru. We’re listening to a recording Mark made for us while in Tibet.

“One of the most important goals of our research into early Tibet is to record the timing of human movement onto the plateau. But we also hope to contribute to other important scientific questions, as well, and one of them is the exploration of the nature of human adaptation to extreme environments, in this case high-elevation environments. The Tibetan plateau, like the Andean altiplano, has relatively little oxygen compared to low-elevation places. So it's pretty clear that when you take a look at the physiological adjustments that Tibetans have and compare those to Peruvians, you find very clear differences between them. That is although both groups of people live and thrive at high elevation, they have very different physiological adjustments to those high-elevation environments.”

According to Mark Aldenderfer, Tibetans have adapted to high altitudes by breathing more frequently than people living at lower altitudes. Andeans cope with their low-oxygen conditions by tending to have higher concentrations of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen, in their blood.

“So why are these two populations so different in the way in which they've adjusted to environment, and how can we explain these differences?”

Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation.