146 search results for “life neandertal and first anatomical modern human” in the Public website
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Neandertal Legacy
The genetic material of currently living Europeans is partly of Neandertal origin. Were our ancestors successful because they were hybridising and interacting with the local populations they encountered when migrating into new places? Reconstructing our evolutionary trajectory is key for rethinking…
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Behavioral implications of Neandertal energetics
Recent studies of Neandertal body mass and skin surface indicate raised energetic requirements in this lineage compared to anatomically modern humans.
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Neanderthals and modern humans
This project focuses on the study of Neanderthal and early modern human behavior, primarily on the basis of stone tools, fauna and spatial patterns
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Neandertals revised
As the flagship journal of the National Academy of Sciences USA, PNAS publishes several special features each year highlighting topics that are expected to engage the interest of the journal’s broad readership. Archaeologist Wil Roebroeks was invited by the Editors of PNAS to contribute a paper on the…
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Anatomically modern humans reached China well before settling in Europe
In Nature researchers at Leiden University and Utrecht University show how 47 teeth from Southern China indicate that anatomically modern humans where present at least 80,000 years ago in the region. This is 40,000 years earlier than in Europe.
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the cold: The adaptive role of pyrotechnology among the earliest modern humans in Europe, ca. 45,000–20,000 years ago
The routine assumption that Upper Palaeolithic early modern humans in Europe were regular fire users who produced fire at will has never been tested against the archaeological record. Utilizing literature, database and microwear analytical approaches, this project seeks to establish the role and forms…
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About us
The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.
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Beyond Prometheus
The research contained in this dissertation explores the origins of fire making in prehistory, focusing primarily on the fire use practices and fire production capacities of Neandertals.
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Neandertal genome from Les Cottés site sequenced
On March 21 2018, a study was published in Nature, co-authored by Professor M. Soressi from the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University, announcing the sequencing of five new Neandertals, raising the number of high-coverage sequenced Neandertals from two to seven. A tooth lost by a Neandertal woman…
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Archaeologist Marie Soressi joins the discussion about the early use of bow-and-arrow technology in Europe
Nature News reported on the use of bow-and-arrow for hunting based on the research made on small points found in a 54,000-year-old cave site in southern France.
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Memory before Modernity. Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe
This volume discusses practices of memory in early modern Europe.
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Neandertal Legacy Scientific Reports’ article in the top 100 most downloaded
With an off-the-charts number of downloads, outstanding media coverage, and more than 300 tweets, a small team behind the Scientific Reports article led by a Leiden PhD Igor Djakovic is living every researcher’s dream.
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Reconstructing adhesives
An experimental approach to organic palaeolithic technology
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Marie Soressi produces documentary on Neandertal Legacy
The genetic material of currently living Europeans is partly of Neandertal origin. Were our ancestors successful because they were hybridising and interacting with the local populations they encountered when migrating into new places? This subject takes centre stage in a beautiful documentary produced…
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Andrew SorensenFaculty of Archaeology
a.c.sorensen.2@umail.leidenuniv.nl | +31 71 527 1681
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Neandertals made the first specialised bone tools in Europe
New finds demonstrate that Neandertals were the first in Europe to make standardised and specialised bone tools – which are still in use today. These firndings are reported by Leiden reseachers together with an international team of archaeologists in the PNAS journal (Proceedings National Academy of…
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Laminar Technology and the Onset of the Upper Paleolithic in the Altai, Siberia
The Altai region has yielded a cluster of Middle and Upper Paleolithic stratified sites that have been recently excavated using a multidisciplinary approach.
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Archaeological excavations in Romania show life of earliest modern humans in Europe
In a new article in the journal Scientific Reports, Leiden archaeologist Wei Chu and colleagues report on recent excavations in Western Romania at the site of Româneşti, one of the most important sites in southeastern Europe associated with the earliest Homo sapiens. The site gives an important glimpse…
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Close encounters of the third kind?
Neanderthals and modern humans in Belgium, a bone story
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New insights into Neandertal knowledge from the mass-spectrometry analysis of plastic containers
The analysis of protein residues extracted from the storage containers of circa 50,000 year old bone-tools reveals Neandertal strategic selection of bovid ribs to make some of their “lissoirs”.
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Tracing Players Playing Traces: Non/Human Music in Modern and Contemporary Literature
Musical instruments are multiple things: they are objects but also means of communication; they are technological and also deeply connected to embodiment through the player; and they leave certain cultural traces (Ricoeur 1975/1984). This research project explores how literary texts from the 19th century…
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Ongoing excavations at Les Cottés (near Poitiers, France)
Les Cottés is one the rare site in western Europe with occupations in sequence by the very last Neandertals and the first anatomically modern humans.
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Human Origins
The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.
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Beyond Prometheus: Pursuing the origins of fire production among early humans
When do fire making tools appear in prehistory, and how might the use of these tools manifest in the archaeological record?
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Fire and Human Origins
Correctly interpreting the patterns of fire evidence in the archaeological record will illuminate the origin of human fire use.
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What makes us human? Or modern human?
Two Vidi subsidies for Faculty of Archaeology.
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Idols of the Mind: Modern Variations on a Baconian Theme, 1800-2000
Drawing on a broad array of sources, this project examines modern retrievals of Bacon’s idols, thereby testing Justus von Liebig’s intriguing observation, back in 1863, that Bacon’s name lived on mainly in mottos or stereotypical phrases. More importantly, it examines the rhetorical purposes served…
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No humans needed: Neanderthals possibly responsible for their own extinction
Scientists remain puzzled by the sudden extinction of Neanderthals, some 40,000 years ago. New research by scientists from Eindhoven University of Technology, Leiden University and Wageningen University now suggests we might have been too quick in attributing the demise of Neanderthals to invasions…
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Neanderthals coming out of the dirt
Extinct hominin DNA extracted from >40,000 years old sediment
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Archaeologists come up with a more precise estimate for how long modern humans and Neanderthals co-existed
Modern humans and Neanderthals may have co-existed in France and Northern Spain for up to 2,900 years until the Neanderthals disappeared. This is what archaeologists from Leiden University and Cambridge University write in a new publication in Scientific Reports.
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Public Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe: Theatrical Entertainments for the State Journeys of English and French Royals into the Low Countries
One way for governments to conduct foreign policy and promote national interests is through direct outreach and communication with the population of a foreign country. This is called public diplomacy. Historians such as Helmer Helmers and William T. Rossiter have shown that printed media were already…
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Wei ChuFaculty of Archaeology
w.chu@arch.leidenuniv.nl | +31 71 527 2727
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They came, they saw, they left: on the first humans in the Low Countries
Over hundreds of thousands of years, our region witnessed the comings and goings of various types of hominin. This depended on the temperature as ice ages alternated with warmer periods. In ‘De eerste mensen in de Lage Landen’ (‘The First Humans in the Low Countries’) Leiden archaeologists Yannick Raczynski-Henk…
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Are modern humans simply bad at smoking?
Scientist looked for the genetic footprint of fire use in our genes, but found that our prehistoric cousins - the Neanderthals - and even the great apes seem better at dealing with the toxins in smoke than modern humans.
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Making the most of the first time a medicine is administered to humans
Collecting as much information as possible about administering a new medicine to people can save a lot of money.
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Neuromodulation Shapes Intrinsic MRI Functional Connectivity in the Human Brain
The factors that dynamically sculpt the inter-regional correlation of brain patterns are poorly understood. Here, we test the hypothesis that they are shaped by the catecholaminergic neuromodulators norepinephrine and dopamine.
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University of Chicago Press Journals Continue to Earn Top Impact Factor Rankings
According to Thomson Reuters’ 2014 Journal Citation Reports® (JCR) and the Washington & Lee University School of Law 2014 Journal Rankings, 22 journals published by the University of Chicago Press rank at the top of their subject categories.
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The Life and Death of the Shopping City: Public Planning and Private Redevelopment in Britain since 1945
How have British cities changed in the years since the Second World War? And what drove this transformation? This innovative new history traces the development of the post-war British city, from the 1940s era of reconstruction, through the rise and fall of modernist urban renewal, up to the present-day…
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Alexander VerpoorteFaculty of Archaeology
a.verpoorte@arch.leidenuniv.nl | +31 71 527 2927
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intercultural connectivity in the deep past with an NWO PhDs in the Humanities grant
For already two years, Vincent Niochet has been affiliated with the Leiden Faculty of Archaeology as an external PhD candidate. Now, he has been awarded an NWO PhDs in the Humanities grant, allowing him to continue his research as a paid PhD staff member. ‘The past two years have been quite challenging,…
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nationalism in China: state propaganda and public discourse during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic
On Wednesday 25 June 2025 Dechun Zhang successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.
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Marika KeblusekFaculty of Humanities
m.keblusek@hum.leidenuniv.nl | +31 71 527 2360
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Neanderthals could make fire – just like our modern ancestors
Neanderthals were able to make fire on a large scale with the aid of pyrite and hand-axes. This means they could decide when and where they wanted fire and were not dependent on natural fire, as was thought earlier. Archaeologist Andrew Sorensen has discovered the first material evidence for this. Publication…
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Rosanne van der VoetFaculty of Humanities
r.van.der.voet@hum.leidenuniv.nl | 070 8002727
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African rock shelter sheds light into Middle and Later Stone Age modern human behaviour
In the eighties the Umhlatuzana rock shelter in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, was excavated. Results from this excavation led to an understanding when the Later Stone Age started in this area. This archaeological period is often associated with the structural presence of modern human behavior. Now a…
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Nicky van de BeekFaculty of Humanities
n.van.de.beek@hum.leidenuniv.nl | 071 5272727
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Conference: the Plurality of Early Modern Media: 21st-Century Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities
On January 8 and 9, a conference will take place at Leiden University, titled: "The Plurality of Early Modern Media: 21st-Century Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities". This conference marks the 25 years anniversary of the Intersections series (published by Brill) and reflects…
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Jonathan Powell: ‘In early modern England, people went to court very often.’
Jonathan Powell came to Leiden from England to conduct research into the role of women in early modern court cases. In addition to all kinds of exciting documents, he also discovered the biscuits from the Water & Bloem bakery and the wild flowers at the Groenesteeg cemetery.
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Human DNA softer than DNA single-celled life
Single-celled organisms have stiffer DNA than multicellular lifeforms like humans and rice. Theoretical physicists managed to simulate the folding in full genomes for the first time to reach this conclusion. Publication in Biophysical Journal on February 7.
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Prehistoric hunters from the North Sea used human bones as weapons
Over the years, many spectacular archaeological finds have been washed ashore on the Dutch coast. Among these a large assemblage of barbed points made of bone and antler from the Mesolithic (11,000-8000 BC). The species used by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to manufacture their barbed points remained…