News from the Human Palaeosystems Research Group

Stone tools recovered from near the Senegalese coast extend occupation of the region back to 150 thousand years ago and are comparable to those seen across Africa at this time, but uniquely persist in the region until 10 thousand years ago more

A publication in the Journal of Maps synthesizes all well-contextualized Stone Age sites in Sub-Saharan West Africa more

A recent study published in the journal Nature Plants examines charcoal and pit fragments to reveal that people were already using olives as food and fuel 100,000 years ago more

New study identifies regions best suited to persistent human occupation through the last glacial cycle more

A scientific consortium led by Dr Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr of the University of Potsdam has found that ancient El Niño-like weather patterns were the primary drivers of environmental change in sub-Saharan Africa over the last 620 thousand years – the critical timeframe for the evolution of our species. The group found that these ancient weather patterns had more profound impacts in sub-Saharan Africa than glacial-interglacial cycles more commonly linked to human evolution. more

A new article in PLOS ONE offers a novel method for illustrating stone tools, developed to allow researchers, students and educators to produce high quality, publishable illustrations more

New analysis of a fossil tooth and stone tools from Shukbah Cave reveals Neanderthals used stone tool technologies thought to have been unique to modern humans more

New research suggests that genetic and fossil records will not reveal a single point where modern humans originated more

Pan-Ev is delighted to welcome Dr Niang, whose expertise in West African Stone Age lithics will contribute towards unravelling the deep human past in this important region. more

Some 11 thousand years ago, Africa’s furthest west harboured the last populations to preserve tool-making traditions first established by the earliest members of our species more

Excavations at Tiémassas, Senegal, indicate roughly 40,000 years of behavioural continuity, in contrast to other African regions over this period more

In a recent paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, a group of multidisciplinary authors discuss the future of field-based sciences in a COVID-19 world more

The Honorary Professorship was awarded in the Department of Classics and Archaeology of The University of Malta, Malta, with which the Pan-African Evolution Research Group already enjoys close collaborative relationships. more

The Rainforest Redux virtual seminar series will explore the role of the tropics in the deep human past more

Dr. Eslem Ben Arous will be applying geochronological methods to date new discoveries in West Africa. more

As part of the MPI SHH's Distinguished Lecture Series, come hear on January 30, Professor Manica discuss advances on reconstructing the past of our species by quantitatively combining climatic reconstructions, ecological and palaeontological data, as well as genetics from both modern and ancient genomes. more

Dr. Eleanor Scerri has received a Leakey Grant for her fieldwork in the Ivory Coast, which will attempt to unravel the history of rainforest habitation in this region and its implications for how we understand the Pleistocene prehistory of Africa. The fieldwork will take place in the spring of 2020. more

Modern humans evolved in Africa, and we now know that human groups from all over the continent contributed to that process. An international group of scientists says that means it is time to stop arguing about where in Africa humans “really” came from. more

The Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA) was established in 2013 by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Arabian Gulf University in Bahrain. more

From 2019, the Pan-African Evolution Research Group will explore human evolution and demography across Africa through a combination of archaeology, genetics, biogeography and climate science. The group is headed by Dr Eleanor Scerri. more

Dr Scerri and her team will explore human evolution and demography across Africa and parts of southwest Asia. more