Videos and Audios

Fuel-forage-food. This is the common rule of three describing the conflict over the distribution of agricultural production: Fuel for machines, feed for animals, or food for people. Facing the social debate about ways out of the energy crisis, the Werkleitz Festival 2024 (Fuel or Food) aims to take a fresh look at this conflict. On Friday May 31 the festival and the respecitive exhibition was opened with quite some publicity at the center of Halle (Saale). MPI GEA resercher Dr. Benjamin Steininger is one of the co-curators of the exhibition and got interviewed by Deutschlandfunk-Kultur about "The nitrogen conspiracy.”

Image info: Themeninsel 2 Bilder der Landwirtschaft, Ausstellungsansicht Tank oder Teller © Werkleitz 2024, Foto: Falk Wenzel
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An open society and a strong democracy - that is what the leading science organizations are calling for. According to a statement, the challenges of our time require a diversity of talents. Video from MDR in German. more

Podcast: “Networking with plants in the Anthropocene”. Interview with Prof. Patrícia Vieira from the MPI-GEA project RESILIENT: Forest Cities - Utopia and Development in the Modern Amazon. more

From the Leakey Foundation’s “Origin Stories”  Podcast: Travel through 50,000 years of human history following clues hidden inside beads made from ostrich eggshells. In this episode, researchers Jennifer Miller and Yiming Wang share how these tiny artifacts reveal a sweeping story of ancient social networks, cultural connections, and human adaptability. more

Anyone who has a dog is convinced that the relationship between dog and human is something unique. A close bond, unshakeable, perhaps even love. Dogs are the most popular pets worldwide. But why does the relationship between humans and dogs feel so special? Do dogs really love us? And if so, why? more

Podcast in German. more

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: Balsam für die Mumie | Wissen Was News (Video in German) - Researchers from MPI-GEA have now analyzed the fragrances of a mummy for the first time and recreated the smell. These are the richest and most complex balsams identified so far for this period of Egyptian history. more

Deutschlandfunk Kultur interview with Jürgen Renn (audio in German) more

SRF interview with Jürgen Renn on the beginnings of the Anthropocene (audio in German) more

Dr. Jennifer Miller and Dr. Yiming Wang discuss how their research into ostrich eggshell beads reveals symbolic behavior and social networks in the distant past more

A series of videos from a global network of interdisciplinary scientists researching the relationship between past societies and their environmental history more

Adam Izdebski joins the Infectious Historians to discuss his work at the frontier between pollen and disease, and in particular in light of his recent work analyzing pollen from the time of the Black Death. The conversation begins with an introduction to palynology (pollen analysis) and its limitations. Adam discusses fieldwork as well as a few examples for what pollen can offer us before turning to his research and what his large meta-analysis of pollen sites across Europe found about the Black Death. Adam also touches upon the potential of interdisciplinary work as well as his outreach initiatives, including his project of getting involved with policymaking.  more

Barbara Huber is a Joachim Herz Foundation Add-On Fellow for Interdisciplinary Life Science. In her PhD research at the Max Planck Institute she studies old plant remains by using biochemical and biomolecular approches to find out how people used plants in the past. more

Rice is one of the most culturally valued and widely grown crops in the world today, and extensive research over the past decade has clarified much of the narrative of its domestication and early spread across East and South Asia. By better understanding the adoption of this water-demanding crop in the arid regions of West Asia, we explore an important chapter in human adaptation and agricultural decision making.
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Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Harvard, and PSL University, have designed a gaming applet where players compete to classify the letter shapes of the world's writing systems. Researchers will better understand how letter shapes evolve to be distinctive and informative thanks to this crowdsourced typology more

Biologist Juliane Bräuer researches the animals as head of dog studies at the Max Planck Institute. Unlike many other animal species, the sympathy between humans and dogs is based on mutuality, the expert explains. (Audio in German) more

Are you a left-hander? Well, Dr. Natalie Uomini will tell you all you need to know! more

From Deutschlandfunk: July 27, 2021. Little is really known about the groups of people who roamed Europe, Asia and Africa between the 3rd and 8th centuries. Who were they? And what drove them? What we know and tell about them is based on a rather thin source material. DNA analysis could reveal some of their secrets. Audio in German. more

Juliane Kaminski (Dog Cognition Centre, University of Portsmouth) and Juliane Bräuer (DogStudies, MPI for the Science of Human History, Jena) are looking for special dogs, that are able to distinguish objects by name. more

Dr. Patrick Roberts about the oldest known human burial in Africa. (in German)
detektor.fm - 13.05.2021 more

March 2021 more

02/25/2021 - Prof. Johannes Krause discusses "The Power of Prejudice" (Die Macht der Vorurteile) and how genetic research can combat racism (video in German, available until 02/25/2026). more

Jan. 2021 - Director Nicole Boivin discussed on Deutschlandfunk how studying the past can help us shape the future. (In German) more

Auf den Hund gekommen - Juliane Bräuer and Alf Haubitz discuss Juliane's new book "Was Hunde wissen" (What dogs know). Broadcast date 11/24/2020, audio in German more

Professor Krause on migration in human history, DNA from the stone age, genetic differences today, the term "ethnicity" and much more (German Language) more

With an interdisciplinary approach that bridges the gap between cultural heritage, contemporary economies and microbial biodiversity, this conference brings together a diverse group of scientists, livestock owners, civil society actors and state employees from Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, China and Germany. more

He Yu and Johannes Krause discuss the findings of their research in the region of Lake Baikal more

Campus Talks featuring Juliane Bräuer, ARD-alpha,  May, 09 2020 more

Campus Talks featuring Prof. Dr. Philipp W. Stockhammer. ARD-Alpha. April, 27 2020 (in German) more

Archaeologists from the University of Colorado-Boulder Museum of Natural History and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History traverse the high Altai Mountain range of western Mongolia in search of clues to the area's past melting from alpine ice more

Interview with Dr. Natalie Uomini about the curious origins of handedness. Newstalk, Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea, aired on 03 March, 2020 more

Interview with Johannes Krause (in German) about his book Die Reise unserer Gene.
Saarländischer Rundfunk (SR 2), Fragen an den Autor, aired on 22.09. 2019 more

Follow the documentary to learn more about humankind's history and how the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History contributed to the documentary. more

When and how did Homo sapiens succeed in inhabiting Mongolia and adapting to the sometimes extreme environmental conditions? The video shows the work of the archaeologists on site and gives an insight into how the laboratory succeeds in drawing an ever more differentiated and complete picture of the human past from the samples obtained. more

Interview with Juliane Bräuer (in German)
WDR 5 Neugier genügt, aired on 29.07.2019, available until 28.07.2020 more

Interview Johannes Krause (in German, starts at min. 29:40)
WDR 5 Quarks, Wissenschaft und mehr, aired on 30.07.2019, available until 29.07.2024 more

Interview with Chiara Barbieri (in German)
detektor.fm, Forschungsquartett, aired on 29.08.2019 more

Interview with Stephan Schiffels (in German)
Deutschlandfunk, Forschung aktuell, aired on 06.06.2019 more

Interview with Katerina Douka (Report in German)
Deutschlandfunk, Forschung aktuell, aired on 31.01.2019
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Interview with Johann-Mattis List (in German)
Deutschlandfunk: Forschung Aktuell, aired on 07.05.2019 more

Dental calculus, a calcified form of tooth plaque, can give detailed information about the diets, diseases and lifestyles of past humans. Christina Warinner discusses how she gains new knowledge about the way human beings used to live, what they ate, and how their microbiome has evolved. more

In popular culture as in traditional archaeology, the tropical forest has been assumed to represent an environment inhospitable to humans. In this video, Patrick Roberts challenges this view. more

One of the most disputed issues in historical-comparative linguistics is the origin of the Japanese language and the question of whether it is related to the Transeurasian languages. Martine Robbeets has already shown in past research that it is possible to find a small core of evidence that relates Japanese as a daughter language of Transeurasian. more

The ability to cooperate with each other has given humans one of the key advantages in the colonization of this planet. What about other species? Do they have cooperative abilities as well? Russel Gray and his fellow researchers have investigated this particular question observing keas, a New Zealand bird known for its playfulness and inquisitiveness. more

The notion of a powerful god is often said to play a significant role in supporting the transition from small relatively equal hunter and gatherer societies to big hierarchical societies. Russel Gray gets to the bottom of it. more

Different ethnic groups have shaped the genetic makeup of today’s Europeans. By analyzing D.N.A extracted from ancient bones, Johannes Krause traces back the genetic ancestry of human beings, especially those living in Europe today. more

Human development is determined by biology and culture. Biologically seen, the history of evolution has brought us certain cognitive biases, whereas our cultural legacy is built through interactions with other people. Olivier Morin pursues research at the intersection of these two legacies and his particular area of interest is cultural transmission. more

Traditional theory holds that Homo sapiens’ first moved Out of Africa into Eurasia along coastal routes some 60,000 years ago. In this video, Michael Petraglia explodes this theory demonstrating that modern humans emerged from Africa much earlier and, at least some of the time, via inland routes. more

To find out how languages are related and form a family, linguists compare them by sifting through dictionaries, grammars or word lists. Recently, scholars have proposed automatic methods to compare languages more efficiently. Johann-Mattis List wants to know how well these automatic methods for language comparison really perform. more