2025 News from the MPI of Geoanthropology

New study shows how Indigenous farming practices have sustained one of the world’s most important crops for thousands of years more

A New Study Puts Fecal Biomarkers to the Test more

A new study published in Nature Cities examines ancient Roman and modern-day cities, revealing a scaling relationship between population and physical expressions of elite wealth which may transcend time and culture more

Rainforests are a major world biome which humans are not thought to have inhabited until relatively recently. New evidence now shows that humans lived in rainforests by at least 150 thousand years ago in Africa, the home of our species. more

Dr. Lucy Timbrell of the Human Palaeosystems group and Yosef Dosha of Addis Ababa University have been accepted as a mentor/mentee pair in the ARTEMIS programme of the Max Planck Society more

Genomic analyses reveal the vital role of human activity in the Amazonian species’ genetic makeup. more

A recent study published in PNAS Nexus and led by an international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology (Germany) and the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” (Italy) in collaboration with the Parco Archeologico di Pompei, Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica, and Sapienza University of Rome, has shed new light on infant weaning practices across the Roman Empire, revealing intriguing differences that potentially reflect the impact of settlement complexity on breastfeeding durations.
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