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Welcome to the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology

Dear visitors, as Germany continues to deal with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology is committed to ensuring the health and wellbeing of its employees. In order to limit the spread of Covid-19, we have encouraged our employees to work from home. Our services and availability to the public during this time are limited. We thank you for your understanding.

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We work all over the world

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Press Releases

Interdisciplinary Environmental History: How Narratives of the Past can meet the Challenges of the Anthropocene

November 30, 2022

Charcoal and Cattle Correlate with Madagascar’s Megafaunal Extinctions

November 22, 2022

Renaming of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

June 23, 2022

Livestock and Dairying Led To Dramatic Social Changes in Ancient Mongolia, U-M Study Shows

May 11, 2022

More Press Releases

Updates

Isotope Data from Medieval Belarus Shows Similar Diets in Rural, Urban Populations

Exploring the State and Potential of Isotope Analysis in Archaeology

October 12, 2022

"We need to change course" - Interview with Prof. Dr. Jürgen Renn in the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung

Dogs in Madagascar’s Grasslands Eat Forest-Derived Foods

September 21, 2022

More Updates

Videos and Audios

Pollen, infectious disease and the Black Death with Adam Izdebski

Podcast

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

Barbara Huber studies old plant remains by using biochemical and biomolecular approches

Video

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

A Journey to the West: The Ancient Dispersal of Rice out of East Asia

Video

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.

glyph - An online game to crowdsource the science of letter shapes

Video

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

International Dog Day: "Having a Dog is Healthy"

Podcast

Biologist Juliane Bräuer researches dogs as head of the DogLab 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)

Finding Rico - Recruitment Video

Video

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.

Mtoto: The Sleeping Child

Video

The National Research Center on Human Evolution (CENIEH) in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the National Museums of Kenya, co-leads a study on the oldest human burial in Africa, dating back to 78,000 years old

Events

December 2022

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Guest Talk: Human-Animal Interactions in Northwestern Argentina with a Particular Focus on Camelids

from 01:00 PM to 02:00 PM (Local Time Germany)

Guest Talk: Human-Animal Interactions in Northwestern Argentina with a Particular Focus on Camelids

1 December, 2022 from 1:00 PM

Workshop: New theoretical and methodological approaches to changing land use in the South Central Andes during the last three millennia

28 November; 9:00am - 8:00pm CET

More Events

Latest Publications

Codlin, M. C.; Douka, K.; Richter, K. K.: An application of zooms to identify archaeological avian fauna from Teotihuacan, Mexico. Journal of Archaeological Science 148, 105692 (2022)

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DOI

Jaouen , K.; Villalba-Mouco, V.; Smith, G. M.; Trost, M.; Leichliter, J.; Lüdecke, T.; Méjean, P.; Mandrou, S.; Chmeleff, J.; Guiserix, D. et al.; Bourgon, N.; Blasco, F.; Mendes Cardoso, J.; Duquenoy, C.; Moubtahij, Z.; Salazar Garcia, D. C.; Richards, M.; Tütken, T.; Hublin, J.-J.; Utrilla, P.; Montes, L.: A Neandertal dietary conundrum: insights provided by tooth enamel Zn isotopes from Gabasa, Spain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 119 (43), e2109315119, pp. 1 - 9 (2022)

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DOI

publisher-version

Bräuer, J.: Like man, like dog: owner-dog resemblance ; is it a psychological phenomenon or a Disney fairy tale? (2022)

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Full

Finestone, E.; Breeze, P. S.; Breitenbach, S. F. M.; Drake, N.; Bergmann, L.; Maksudov, F.; Muhammadiyev, A.; Scott, P.; Cai, Y.; Khatsenovich, A. M. et al.; Rybin, E. P.; Nehrke, G.; Boivin, N.; Petraglia, M.: Paleolithic occupation of arid Central Asia in the Middle Pleistocene. PLoS One 17 (10), e0273984 (2022)

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DOI

publisher-version

Souilmi, Y.; Tobler, R.; Johar, A.; Williams, M.; Grey, S. T.; Schmidt, J.; Teixeira, J. C.; Rohrlach, A. B.; Tuke, J.; Johnson, O. et al.; Gower, G.; Turney, C.; Cox, M.; Cooper, A.; Huber, C. D.: Admixture has obscured signals of historical hard sweeps in humans. Nature Ecology & Evolution, s41559-022-01914-9 (2022)

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publisher-version

Skov, L.; Peyrégne, S.; Popli, D.; Iasi, L. N. M.; Devièse, T.; Slon, V.; Zavala, E. I.; Hajdinjak, M.; Sümer, A. P.; Grote, S. et al.; Bossoms Mesa, A.; López Herráez, D.; Nickel, B.; Nagel, S.; Richter, J.; Essel, E.; Gansauge, M.; Schmidt, A.; Korlević, P.; Comeskey, D.; Derevianko, A. P.; Kharevich, A.; Markin, S. V.; Talamo, S.; Douka, K.; Krajcarz, M. T.; Roberts, R. G.; Higham, T.; Viola, B.; Krivoshapkin, A. I.; Kolobova, K. A.; Kelso, J.; Meyer, M.; Pääbo, S.; Peter, B. M.: Genetic insights into the social organization of Neanderthals. Nature 610 (7932), s41586-022-05283-y, pp. 519 - 525 (2022)

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Laming, A.; Fletcher, M.-S.; Romano, A.; Mullett, R.; Connor, S.; Mariani, M.; Maezumi, S. Y.; Gadd, P. S.: The curse of conservation: empirical evidence demonstrating that changes in land-use legislation drove catastrophic bushfires in Southeast Australia. Fire 5 (6), 175 (2022)

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publisher-version

Cerasetti, B.; Arciero, R.; Billings, T.; Cattani, M.; D'Ippolito, L.; Forni, L.; Luneau, E.; Olson, K. G.; Potenza, A. C.; Rouse, L. M. et al.; Spengler III, R. N.: The rise and decline of the desert cities: The last stages of the BMAC at Togolok 1 (Southern Turkmenistan). In: Cultures in Contact: Central Asia as focus of trade, cultural exchange and knowledge transmission, pp. 89 - 116 (Eds. Baumer, C.; Novák, M.; Rutishauser, S.). Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden (2022)

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All Publications