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…

When do fire making tools appear in prehistory, and how might the use of these tools manifest in the archaeological record?

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.

Are traces of fire use detectable in ancient hominin genomes?

Correctly interpreting the patterns of fire evidence in the archaeological record will illuminate the origin of human fire use.

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

Promotores: H.A. Udo de Haes, H.H.T. Prins, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh

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…

What impact does a mid-season wildfire have on grassland invertebrates?

A contextual approach to anthropomorphic figurines in the Pavlovian (Central Europe, 29-24 kyr BP) (2001)

A study by a Leiden-Wageningen group shows that present-day humans are biologically poorly equipped to deal with the toxins they are regularly exposed to in smoky environments: compared to earlier hominins, we modern humans are probably even worse off. The study appeared in Molecular Biology and Evolution.…

The word ¨pyroptosis¨ can be understood as ¨fiery falling¨, which describes the bursting of pro-inflammatory signals from the dying cell. Our observations indicate that pyroptosis also ¨spreads like wildfire¨ and once a cell dies via pyroptotic cell death, neighbouring cells are more prone to die as…

In Europe, archaeological traces of fire become more frequent between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago; but could the earliest occupants have survived without fire for at least half a million years before this? How could the early occupants of Europe have kept warm and processed meat without fire?

Ancient peoples might have harnessed the power of fire to modify their environment

Early hominins probably lived in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years before using fire to alleviate the winter cold, to cook or to make tools. It was only in the period betwen 300,000 and 400,000 years ago that the first finds were made that indicate that people had the ability to control fire…

A global synthesis of the extent, diversity and patterns in off-site fire use by historically documented and current hunter-gatherers with the remit of this study in the deeper past.

A discussion is currently being held about whether a demonstrating policy official employed by the Municipality of The Hague, who is also a local councillor in Rijswijk, can remain in office after she participated in Extinction Rebellion’s recent climate protest. The VVD party in The Hague claims this…

It is time for the international community to put a stop to war crimes – especially against medical personnel, argued international chair of Doctors Without Borders Joanne Liu in her Cleveringa lecture.

At around noon on Tuesday 9 April, a small fire started in the basement of Leiden University’s Snellius building. The fire brigade was quickly on the scene and soon extinguished the fire.

The seventh Leiden wall formula has been finished. Over the last few weeks, mural artists Ben Walenkamp and Jan Willem Bruins have painted Christiaan Huygens' pendulum formula on 'De Brandmeester' an old drill and hose tower in de Plaatsteeg, just behind the Breestraat in Leiden.

The HARVEST project explores the dietary choices that our hominin ancestors and relatives made, by recovering information on what they consumed, and how factors like environmental variation, intrinsic biology, and development of food processing technologies could have influenced their decisions.

Andrea Bartolucci is Assistant Professor at Institute of Security and Global Affairs. In this study, the scholars adopted a multidisciplinary approach to investigate wildfire risk in Van Chan district in northern Vietnam, a region where official data are sometimes difficult to collect or inconsisten…