This project focuses on the study of Neanderthal and early modern human behavior, primarily on the basis of stone tools, fauna and spatial patterns

This study presents an agent-based simulation model exploring the patterns of presence and absence of Late Pleistocene Neanderthals in western Europe.

Neanderthals and modern humans in Belgium, a bone story

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.

Extinct hominin DNA extracted from >40,000 years old sediment

The Modern Devotion: pone of the most influential religious initiatives in the late medieval Low Countries.

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…

Neanderthals at Pech-de-l'Azé I in South Western France had a striking use for manganese dioxide 50,000 years ago.

A flint tool covered with a tar-like substance has turned out to be a top scientific find. Research by a Dutch team of scientists showed the find to be a piece of birch tar that was extracted 50,000 years ago by Neanderthals using complex techniques. The tar was used as an adhesive to make it easier…

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.

British and Australian researchers have analysed the DNA in the dental tartar of several Spanish Neanderthals. One of the conclusions was that the Neanderthals had a mostly vegetarian diet.

ASLU 28 Michalis Karambinis (2015)

Neanderthals in cold regions probably ate a lot more vegetable food than was previously thought. This is what archaeologist Robert Power has discovered based on new research on ancient Neanderthal dental plaque. PhD defence 1 November.

On the 2nd of April, Eline Lismont successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Eline on this achievement!

This volume discusses practices of memory in early modern Europe.

Providing a valuable overview of regionalism throughout the entire continent, Regionalism in Modern Europe combines both geographical and thematic approaches to examine the origins and development of regional movements and identities in Europe from 1890 to the present.

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…

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…

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.

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.

Towards a Biological Understanding of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition

The Leiden Institute of History approaches early modern and modern European history from comparative and transnational perspectives.

The world’s oldest known glue was made by Neanderthals. But how did they make it 200,000 years ago? Leiden archaeologists have discovered three possible ways. Publication in Scientific Reports, 31 August.

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections and interactions between a variety of artistic expressions and society. It focuses not only on objects (artistic, literary, cinematic, and medial), but also on practices (aesthetic, political, and cultural).

Fat is a very valuable food component, packed with calories, especially important when other resources might be scarce. Our earliest ancestors in Africa already cracked open bones to extract the fatty marrow from bone cavities. But now a new study published in Science Advances demonstrates that our…

In Freedom on the Offensive, William Michael Schmidli illuminates how the Reagan administration's embrace of democracy promotion was a defining development in US foreign relations in the late twentieth century.

Neanderthals were able to outwit straight-tusked elephants, the largest land mammals of the past few million years. Leiden professor Wil Roebroeks has published an article about this together with his German colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser in the Science Advances journal. The breakthrough takes…

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.

Are traces of fire use detectable in ancient hominin genomes?

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.

La Grande Roche is one of the rare archaeological sites that preserved a long sequence of deposits formed at the time of contact between late Neandertals and early Homo sapiens.

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…

The conquest by Rome brought profound changes to large parts of Europe. Unprecedented infrastructural works were created, towns sprang up, a ribbon of fortresses was laid out along the frontiers.

This dissertation the role of the English dissenting minister Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) as a grammarian is studied.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe.

An Introduction and Field Guide, Second and Revised Edition (15 December 2014)

Despite the field’s general agreement that pyrotechnology had a significant impact on the cultural evolution of humankind, our understanding of the origins and development of fire use and its role in humankind’s cultural evolution is very limited, blurred by strong disagreements over its chronology…

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…

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…

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…

This project studies the roles of prehistoric foragers in past ecosystems to establish the character of past “natural” landscapes and enhance the management of current ones.

Built Environment and Domestic Material Culture in the Medieval and Post-Medieval Cyclades, Greece (13th – 20th Centuries AD)

Huda Abi-Fares defended her thesis on 10 January 2017.

An experimental approach to organic palaeolithic technology

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…

Neanderthals were able to outwit straight-tusked elephants, the largest land mammals of the past few million years. Leiden professor Wil Roebroeks has published an article about this together with his German colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser in the Science Advances journal.