Andes – Paul Heggarty

The Andes

Languages, Origins and (Pre)History

Symposia

An ongoing series of conferences and symposia, uniquely interdisciplinary to bring together archaeologists, geneticists, linguists, historians, anthropologists and climatologists, for a more holistic view of the (pre)history of the civilisation of the Andes.

Sound Comparisons: Andes

Explore the sounds of the Andean languages, listen to how the same words are pronounced differently from Ecuador to Argentina. Thousands of word recordings and transcriptions in Quechua, Aymara and Uru, from over thirty years of fieldwork.

Quechua

Quechua is the greatest surviving legacy of the languages of indigenous Americas. It is the language of Machu Picchu, and crucial to understanding the prehistory of the Andes.

The Mapuche

The last major surviving indigenous people in southernmost South America are the Mapuche of Patagonia. I research their genetic origins, and created the Sound Comparisons: Mapudungun resource to explore regional diversity within their unique but endangered isolate language, Mapudungun.

Why the Andes?

The Andes are unique in the human story — one of the world’s few hearths where farming and a pristine civilisation arose, and here in isolation from all others. This made for a natural experiment in history, played out in an ecological context that is likewise unique. Nowhere else on Earth does ecology transform so swiftly and utterly as where the Andes rise out of a desert coast to over 6000m, then plunge back down to rainforest in Amazonia. And here in the Tropics, from arid west to humid east, this transect races through a panoply of ecologies, liveable here even up to 5000m.

The fascination of the Andes runs back through many millennia of prehistory. From the mesmerising stonework of the Incas to the Nazca lines a thousand years earlier, and all the way back to the first monuments and cities of the Americas, on Peru’s desert coast, that broke the mould of how civilisation arose elsewhere. In Peru itbegan not out of farming but out of foraging, hunting and fishing in the teeming waters of the Pacific. A crucial early crop was … cotton, not to eat but to make fish nets. Even the Incas ran one of the greatest world empires not with writing but with textiles (knotted khipu), and without iron, horses or the wheel.

My three decades of research here began from another dimension of Andean culture: their native languages, above all Quechua, Aymara and Mapudungun, in fieldwork from Ecuador to Patagonia. Today, some 7 million people still speak Quechua, the greatest surviving legacy of the speech of the entire Americas from before European conquest. The language of Machu Picchu (‘old peak’) and of the last Inca emperors can still be heard, but is increasingly threatened. And its diversity and origins tells an unsuspected new story, to challenge and enrich what we thought we knew of the Andean past.

Quechua goes back long before the Incas, to earlier cultures who together created Peru’s unparalleled archaeological record. But which of them spread Quechua so spectacularly — when, where and how? And from Colombia to Argentina, how did Quechua come to be spoken by people whose genetic origins, however, bear little or no trace of Cuzco. Archaeologists, geneticists, historians and linguists have had a great deal to learn from each other, over ten uniquely cross-disciplinary conferences and symposia and four books that I have convened and edited since 2008. By fomenting a meeting of minds between us, we hope to come together towards a new, fully coherent and holistic understanding of the astonishing prehistory of the Andes.

Publications

of mine on this research theme of: The Andes

Image	Link	Publication Details [count = 43]	Type	Author-Date
	-	Heggarty, P., & Epps, P. in press. Language lessons on the prehistory of South America. in: Aldenderfer, M., M. Sepulveda, & E.G. Neves (eds) Handbook of South American Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.	Book Section	Heggarty & Epps in press
	URL	Heggarty, P., & Epps, P. 2026a. Map of Major Language Families of South America: Heggarty* & Epps 2026 – Figure 1*. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15075188	Artwork	Heggarty & Epps 2026a
	URL	Heggarty, P., & Epps, P. 2026b. Map of Notable Linguistic Convergence Areas within South America: Heggarty* & Epps 2026 – Figure 2*. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15075425	Artwork	Heggarty & Epps 2026b
	URL	Heggarty, P. 2024. Expansions and language shift in prehistory. in: Urban, M. (ed) The Oxford Guide to the Languages of the Central Andes, p.683–724. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.10823.78241 https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198849926.003.0023	Book Section	Heggarty 2024
	URL	Arango-Isaza, E., Capodiferro, M.R., Aninao, M.J., Babiker, H., Aeschbacher, S., Achilli, A., Posth, C., Campbell, R., Martínez, F.I., Heggarty, P., Sadowsky, S., Shimizu, K.K., & Barbieri, C. 2023. The genetic history of the Southern Andes from present-day Mapuche ancestry. Current Biology 33 (13): p.2602-2615.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.05.013	Journal Article	Arango-Isaza et al. 2023
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2020a. Linguistics: How languages can inform on the Andes-Amazonia divide. in: Pearce, A.J., D.G. Beresford-Jones, & P. Heggarty (eds) Rethinking the Andes-Amazonia Divide, p.35–47. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13xps7k.10	Book Section	Heggarty 2020a
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2020b. Deep time and first settlement: what, if anything, can linguistics tell us?. in: Pearce, A.J., D.G. Beresford-Jones, & P. Heggarty (eds) Rethinking the Andes-Amazonia Divide, p.94–102. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13xps7k.16	Book Section	Heggarty 2020b
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2020c. Broad-scale patterns across the languages of the Andes and Amazonia. in: Pearce, A.J., D.G. Beresford-Jones, & P. Heggarty (eds) Rethinking the Andes-Amazonia Divide, p.164–77. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13xps7k.22	Book Section	Heggarty 2020c
	URL	Pearce, A.J., Beresford-Jones, D.G., & Heggarty, P. 2020a. Rethinking the Andes-Amazonia Divide. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787357358	Book	Pearce et al. 2020a
-	URL	Pearce, A.J., Beresford-Jones, D.G., & Heggarty, P. 2020b. Introduction: Why Andes–Amazonia? Why cross- disciplinary?. in: Pearce, A.J., D.G. Beresford-Jones, & P. Heggarty (eds) Rethinking the Andes-Amazonia Divide, p.1–18. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13xps7k.8	Book Section	Pearce et al. 2020b
	URL	Pearce, A.J., Beresford-Jones, D.G., & Heggarty, P. 2020c. Conclusion. The Andes–Amazonia divide: Myth and reality. in: Pearce, A.J., D.G. Beresford-Jones, & P. Heggarty (eds) Rethinking the Andes-Amazonia Divide, p.332–8. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13xps7k.34	Book Section	Pearce et al. 2020c
-	URL	Barbieri, C., Barquera, R., Arias, L., Sandoval, J.R., Acosta, O., Zurita, C., Aguilar-Campos, A., Tito-Álvarez, A.M., Serrano-Osuna, R., Gray, R.D., Mafessoni, F., Heggarty, P., Shimizu, K.K., Fujita, R., Stoneking, M., Pugach, I., & Fehren-Schmitz, L. 2019. The Current Genomic Landscape of Western South America: Andes, Amazonia, and Pacific Coast. Molecular Biology and Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msz174	Journal Article	Barbieri et al. 2019
-	URL	Barbieri, C., Sandoval, J.R., Valqui, J., Shimelman, A., Ziemendorff, S., Schröder, R., Geppert, M., Roewer, L., Gray, R., Stoneking, M., Fujita, R., & Heggarty, P. 2017. Enclaves of genetic diversity resisted Inca impacts on population history. Scientific Reports 7 (1): p.17411. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17728-w	Journal Article	Barbieri et al. 2017
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2015a. La riqueza idiomática de los Andes [= Language diversity in the Andes]. Investigación y Ciencia [= Spanish edition of Scientific American] 460: p.36–41. https://www.academia.edu/12448905	Journal Article	Heggarty 2015a
-	-	Sadowsky, S., Aninao, M.J., Cayunao, M.I., & Heggarty, P. 2015. Huilliche: ¿geolecto del mapudungun o lengua propia? Una mirada desde la fonética y la fonología de las consonantes. in: Fernández Garay, A. & M.A. Regúnaga (eds) Lingüística indígena sudamericana: aspectos descriptivos, comparativos y areales. Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires.	Book Section	Sadowsky et al. 2015
-	URL	Barbieri, C., Heggarty, P., Yang Yao, D., Ferri, G., de Fanti, S., Sarno, S., Ciani, G., Boattini, A., Luiselli, D., & Pettener, D. 2014. Between Andes and Amazon: The genetic profile of the Arawak-speaking Yanesha. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 155 (4): p.600–9. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.22616	Journal Article	Barbieri et al. 2014
-	URL	Heggarty, P., & Renfrew, C. 2014f. The Americas: Languages. in: Renfrew, C. & P. Bahn (eds) The Cambridge World Prehistory, p.1316–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781139017831.084	Book Section	Heggarty & Renfrew 2014f
	URL	Heggarty, P. 2014b. Sprachenvielfalt der Anden [= Language diversity in the Andes]. Spektrum der Wissenschaft 2014 (06): p.68–73. https://spektrum.de/alias/1281878	Journal Article	Heggarty 2014b
-	URL	Beresford-Jones, D.G., & Heggarty, P. 2013. Andes: archaeology. in: Ness, I. & P. Bellwood (eds) The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, p.410–6. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm853	Book Section	Beresford-Jones & Heggarty 2013
-	URL	Heggarty, P., & Beresford-Jones, D.G. 2013. Andes: linguistic history. in: Ness, I. & P. Bellwood (eds) The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, p.401–9. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm852	Book Section	Heggarty & Beresford-Jones 2013
-	URL	Beresford-Jones, D.G., & Heggarty, P. 2012a. Introduction: Archaeology, linguistics, and the Andean past — a much-needed conversation. in: Heggarty, P. & D.G. Beresford-Jones (eds) Archaeology and Language in the Andes, Proceedings of the British Academy, p.1–41. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/13/9780197265031_prelim.pdf	Book Section	Beresford-Jones & Heggarty 2012a
-	URL	Beresford-Jones, D.G., & Heggarty, P. 2012b. Broadening our horizons: towards an interdisciplinary prehistory of the Andes. in: Heggarty, P. & D.G. Beresford-Jones (eds) Archaeology and Language in the Andes, Proceedings of the British Academy, p.57–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197265031.003.0003	Book Section	Beresford-Jones & Heggarty 2012b
	URL	Heggarty, P., & Beresford-Jones, D.G. 2012a. Archaeology and Language in the Andes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197265031.001.0001	Book	Heggarty & Beresford-Jones 2012a
-	URL	Heggarty, P., & Beresford-Jones, D.G. 2012b. Conclusion — A cross-disciplinary prehistory for the Andes? Surveying the state of the art. in: Heggarty, P. & D.G. Beresford-Jones (eds) Archaeology and Language in the Andes, Proceedings of the British Academy, p.409–36. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197265031.016.0016	Book Section	Heggarty & Beresford-Jones 2012b
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2012a. Beyond lexicostatistics: How to get more out of ‘word list’ comparisons. in: Wichmann, S. & A.P. Grant (eds) Quantitative Approaches to Linguistic Diversity: Commemorating the Centenary of the Birth of Morris Swadesh, [Reprint of Diachronica 27 (2), from 2010], p.113–37. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.46.07heg	Book Section	Heggarty 2012a
-	URL	Barbieri, C., Heggarty, P., Castrì, L., Pettener, D., & Luiselli, D. 2011. Mitochondrial DNA variability in the Titicaca basin: matches and mismatches with linguistics and ethnohistory. American Journal of Human Biology 23: p.89–99. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.21107	Journal Article	Barbieri et al. 2011
-	URL	Beresford-Jones, D.G., & Heggarty, P. 2011a. What role for language prehistory in redefining archaeological ‘culture’? A case-study on new horizons in the Andes. in: Roberts, B. & M. Vander Linden (eds) Investigating Archaeological Cultures: Material Culture, Variability and Transmission, p.355–86. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6970-5_17	Book Section	Beresford-Jones & Heggarty 2011a
-	URL	Beresford-Jones, D.G., & Heggarty, P. 2011b. Broadening our horizons: towards an interdisciplinary prehistory of the Andes. in: Kaulicke, P., R. Cerrón-Palomino, P. Heggarty, & D.G. Beresford-Jones (eds) Lenguas y sociedades en el antiguo Perú: hacia un enfoque interdisciplinario, Boletín de Arqueología PUCP, p.61–84. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. http://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/boletindearqueologia/article/download/1184/1143	Book Section	Beresford-Jones & Heggarty 2011b
-	URL	Heggarty, P., & Beresford-Jones, D.G. 2011. Archaeology, language, and the Andean past: principles, methods, and the new ‘state of the art’. in: Kaulicke, P., R. Cerrón-Palomino, P. Heggarty, & D.G. Beresford-Jones (eds) Lenguas y sociedades en el antiguo Perú: hacia un enfoque interdisciplinario, Boletín de Arqueología PUCP, p.29–60. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. http://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/boletindearqueologia/article/download/1181/1142	Book Section	Heggarty & Beresford-Jones 2011
	URL	Heggarty, P., & Pearce, A. 2011. History and Language in the Andes. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230370579	Book	Heggarty & Pearce 2011
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2011. Enterrando el esqueleto quechumara. in: Adelaar, W.F.H., P. Valenzuela, & R. Zariquiey (eds) Estudios sobre lenguas andinas y amazónicas. Homenaje a Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, p.147–79. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la PUCP. https://doi.org/10.18800/9789972429729	Book Section	Heggarty 2011
	URL	Kaulicke, P., Cerrón-Palomino, R., Heggarty, P., & Beresford-Jones, D.G. 2011. Lenguas y sociedades en el antiguo Perú: hacia un enfoque interdisciplinario. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. https://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/boletindearqueologia/issue/view/220	Book	Kaulicke et al. 2011
-	URL	Pearce, A.J., & Heggarty, P. 2011a. History, linguistics, and the Andean past: a much-needed conversation. in: Heggarty, P. & A.J. Pearce (eds) History and Language in the Andes, p.1–16. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230370579_1	Book Section	Pearce & Heggarty 2011a
-	URL	Pearce, A.J., & Heggarty, P. 2011b. Mining the data on the Huancayo-Huancavelica Quechua frontier. in: Heggarty, P. & A.J. Pearce (eds) History and Language in the Andes, p.87–109. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230370579_5	Book Section	Pearce & Heggarty 2011b
-	URL	Heggarty, P., & Beresford-Jones, D.G. 2010. Agriculture and language dispersals: limitations, refinements, and an Andean exception?. Current Anthropology 51 (2): p.163–91. https://doi.org/10.1086/650533	Journal Article	Heggarty & Beresford-Jones 2010
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2010. Beyond lexicostatistics: How to get more out of ‘word list’ comparisons. Diachronica 27 (2): p.301–24. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.27.2.07heg	Journal Article	Heggarty 2010
-	URL	Heggarty, P., & Beresford-Jones, D.G. 2009. Not the Incas? Weaving archaeology and language into a single new prehistory. British Academy Review 12: p.11–5. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/04-heggarty.pdf	Journal Article	Heggarty & Beresford-Jones 2009
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2008. Linguistics for archaeologists: a case-study in the Andes. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 18 (1): p.35–56. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774308000036	Journal Article	Heggarty 2008
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2007. Linguistics for archaeologists: principles, methods and the case of the Incas. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17 (03): p.311–40. https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977430700039X	Journal Article	Heggarty 2007
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2006a. The Sounds of the Andean Languages. Website and CD-Rom resource: 1100 pronunciation recordings, 400 photos, 35000 words of explanatory text. www.quechua.org.uk/Sounds	Webpage	Heggarty 2006b
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2005a. Enigmas en el origen de las lenguas andinas: aplicando nuevas técnicas a las incógnitas por resolver. Revista Andina 40: p.9–57. http://www.revistaandinacbc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/ra40/ra-40-2005-01.pdf	Journal Article	Heggarty 2005a
-	URL	Heggarty, P. 2005b. Response to commentaries on Heggarty (2005). Revista Andina 40: p.70–80. http://www.quechua.org.uk/Eng/Cpv/EnigmasArticle.htm	Journal Article	Heggarty 2005b
-	URL	McMahon, A.M.S., Heggarty, P., McMahon, R., & Slaska, N. 2005. Swadesh sublists and the benefits of borrowing: an Andean case study. Transactions of the Philological Society 103 (2): p.147–70. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968X.2005.00148.x	Journal Article	McMahon et al. 2007