Takumi Tsutaya Follow Takumi
Assistant Professor
Department of Evolutionary Studies of Biosystems, Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Hayama, Japan
Biography
We all live one life, and each of us has a story to tell. If you were born as a hunter-gatherer in the Jomon period or a chimpanzee in the rainforest, how would you have been born, grown up, had children or not, and died? I have reconstructed the lived experiences of such “we” (Homo sapiens and evolutionarily related species). Furthermore, I have been investigating the impact of differences in socio-cultural and natural environments on the lived experiences of individuals and how such differences affect evolution and social situations over a long time frame.
Specifically, I apply stable isotope analysis to biological samples to reconstruct diet, breastfeeding and weaning patterns, and habitat, and proteomic analysis to reconstruct physiological conditions, species and body tissues from which samples were derived, to investigate lived experience of past humans and extant primates. I am also developing analytical methods for this purpose.