2024 Events

Tapeworms as a proxy for studying hominin meat eating and food cooking behaviors

Human Palaeosystems in Focus Seminar Series
This talk will feature results from integrative functional (experimental heating of tapeworm cysts and RNA sequencing) and evolutionary genomics analyses to help test hypotheses concerning hominin meat eating behavior and potential tapeworm adaptation to withstand heat stresses associated with hominin food cooking behavior. [more]

West Africa and the Origins of Humankind - A Deep Time Perspective

Conference from the Human Palaeosystems Group
This event will be the first major conference dedicated to exploring human evolution and the deep human past in West Africa. [more]

Long Night of the Sciences 2024

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Tracking the features of hominin groups from their footprints: biology, locomotion, behaviors

Human Palaeosystems in Focus Seminar Series
Footprints open a window onto brief moments in life, a unique time scale that is inaccessible from skeletal remains or archaeological artefacts. Through this particular temporal scale, footprints provide original information about the groups who left them, and offer another point of view for understanding human evolution. Using several examples from the fossil record, this presentation will focus on the development of experimental methods used to study footprints. It will also demonstrate the diversity of information, but also its limitations, that can be obtained from this unique material, offering a unique perspective on human evolution. [more]

Canaries in a Coal Mine: The Global Decline of Wildlife since 1970

Despite the advent of significant wildlife protection laws since the early 1970s global populations of wildlife have fallen precipitously in the last 50 years. This talk explores why wildlife populations have declined, why wildlife protection laws have proven to be ineffective against and why narratives of successful wildlife protection have persisted despite overall population declines. [more]

Guest Lecture: Digitalization in the Andes. An ethnographic study of the incorporation of digital technologies in rural and Indigenous communities of NW Argentina

Join this talk from Martina Di Tullio, an anthropologist from the University of Buenos Aires who works with Indigenous communities in the Andes. Di Tullio is part of isoTROPIC's Argentinian partner team and is currently pursuing her PhD on the impacts of digital technology incorporation into the everyday lives of Indigenous communities, particularly in the areas where we are conducting research on agricultural landscapes. [more]

Berlin Science Week Decision Theater: Water Scarcity Phoenix and Berlin

Berlin Science Week
This event will showcase some tools that have been developed by ASU’s Decision Theater to support public deliberations and decision making under conditions of water scarcity. [more]

Berlin Science Week Decision Theater: Improving Education

Education systems face myriad challenges that can be addressed by data driven comparative analyses. [more]

Berlin Science Week Decision Theater: Regional Economic Transformation

Explore solutions for regional disparities and the Lausitz coal transition. Discover models for equitable economic development and social responsibility at our upcoming event. [more]

Berlin Science Week CAMPUS Exhibition

Located in the impressive Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, the Berlin Science Week CAMPUS is our festival hub in the heart of the city. Dedicated to dialogue, engagement, and exchange, CAMPUS will bring together scientists, innovators, and explorers for two full days on 1-2 November 2024. [more]

Evolutionary consequences of human multilevel social structure

Prof. Migliano will discuss her work over the past 15 years on extant hunter-gatherers social structure and how the human foraging niche has shaped patterns of hunter-gatherers mobility, cooperation and cumulative cultural evolution. [more]

Evolutionary Ecology of Hominins

Human Palaeosystems in Focus Seminar Series
Given that hominin evolution covers around seven million years, multiple taxa, many significant changes in range distribution, population size, habitat preference and diet, as well as increasing dependence upon technology, it is necessary to consider more precisely the way in which environment and resources influence evolutionary processes and outcomes. This talk will explore how different elements of the ecological context shaped macroevolutionary processes in hominin evolution. [more]

Human Palaeosystems in Focus: Niches, diseases & island ecosystems

This online series explores past human, social, cultural and environmental systems in deep time through the lens of various ecological niches. Leading scholars will present cutting-edge research, providing critical insights into a suite of processes that shaped the early prehistory of our species at different times and places. [more]

Domesticating Earth — The Beginnings of Agriculture Revisited

The “Domesticating Earth” symposium at Ringberg Castle in Bavaria aims to bridge these disciplinary divides by bringing together a diverse mix of senior and junior scholars from around the world, fostering direct discussions among archaeologists, ecologists, and geneticists. The goal is to break down barriers and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration to advance understanding of the cultural and biological processes that led to agriculture. [more]

Workshop: Linguistic Prehistory and Ecology in the Northern Pacific Rim

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Lecture: The Invention of Nature - Alexander von Humboldt’s New World

In this beautifully illustrated talk, award winning and bestselling author Andrea Wulf tells the story of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the great scientist and intrepid explorer who has more things named after him than anyone else. [more]

Crossing Boundaries 2024: The Anthropocene - Addressing its challenges for humanity - crossing the boundaries of science

A joint conference with the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
This conference will be hosted by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology (MPI GEA) in Jena and will mark the new direction of the institute in addressing issues of the Anthropocene. It will feature three days of lectures and panels with leading researchers from a range scientific disciplines. [more]

Voices of the Global South on the Anthropocene: Archaeological, Historical, and Ancestral Perspectives

By assembling young scholars together with a panel of specialists from diverse backgrounds, we hope to shed light on the complexities of the Anthropocene with a multifaceted methodological approach. Our mission is to underscore how dialogue between archaeology, history, palaeoecology, and Indigenous knowledge can yield insights into relationships between human land use, environmental stewardship, and the Earth system across space and time. [more]

Tag der Vielfalt 2024 in Jena

  • Date: May 28, 2024
  • Time: 03:00 PM - 07:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Location: Holzmarkt Jena
Jena celebrates diversity and we are part of it: Meet us at the stand of the network JenaVersum and test your knowledge with an exciting quiz on internationality and interculturality in our science location. [more]

From Molecules to Millennia: Advances & Challenges in Phylogenetic Dating

As high-throughput sequencing techniques continue to advance, an increasing amount of genetic information across all branches of the tree of life is being generated. With the introduction of the molecular clock hypothesis, we are now capable not only of making inferences about genetic divergence based on the number of differing mutations between sequences but also of estimating divergence in terms of absolute time units. Since then, numerous conceptual and methodological advancements have facilitated bridging the gap between genetic data and temporal divergence, jumping from molecules to millennia. Nevertheless, many challenges still remain that need to be addressed to form a more comprehensive understanding of evolution as a function of time. [more]

Conference: The language of Extreme Events

The notion of ‘extreme events’ is widely discussed in various disciplines, and is a topic of increasing academic research. Rapid and dramatic environmental and climatic events are particularly prominent in this – including heat waves, volcanic eruptions, droughts, earthquakes, floods, etc. Several of these are forecast to increase in frequency and severity given current anthropogenic climate change, as widely discussed by organisations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [more]

Flora and Fauna in the Afterlife: Japanese Decorated Tombs and their Symbolism

Claudia Zancan specialises in the art and archaeology of Japan, particularly in the funerary art of the decorated tombs of Northern Kyūshū. Her fields of research include: Kofun period, iconography and iconology in Kyūshū decorated tombs, Yellow Sea interactions, identity, style, symbolism, social meaning of pre-protohistoric visual art, and hybridization theory. [more]

Long-term sea-level commitment and reversibility of ice loss from Antarctica

The evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is of vital importance given the coastal and societal implications of ice loss, with a potential to raise sea level by up to 58 m if melted entirely. However, future ice-sheet trajectories remain highly uncertain. In fact, current estimates range from a slight mass gain to a mass loss of the Antarctic Ice Sheet by the end of this century. What is more, due to ice-sheet inertia and potentially self-sustained mass loss when exceeding critical thresholds or tipping points, the bulk of sea-level rise is expected to arise beyond the end of this century as sea-level commitment. Here, we systematically assess this long-term committed sea-level contribution from the Antarctic Ice Sheet in response to warming projected over the next centuries under lower- and higher-emission pathways, as well as the reversibility of the committed large-scale ice-sheet changes when reducing warming to relatively colder climate conditions. [more]

Human evolution of, in and beyond the Anthropocene

Modern ecological crises can be seen as resulting from human social and technological evolution. However, research on human evolution is not sufficiently developed to address global environmental issues or our species’ future on Earth. Theories of human evolution are numerous, poorly integrated, and are fractioned within subdisciplines. Human evolution can be better understood with a set of simple principles from current research in human sociality, cultural evolution, and group interactions. From these I sketch an integrated theory of long-term human evolution that provides a logical and testable pattern of change across the span of our species existence and integrates contrasting theories in anthropology and biology. This theory, and the principles on which it builds, can be used to address our current ecological crises more effectively. I propose a global research agenda of applied cultural evolution for beneficial social change and analyze the example of cultural adaptation to climate change. I review open questions and ethical issues in this line of inquiry. Finally, I issue an urgent call for help in developing applied evolutionary research for addressing human sustainability on our finite planet. [more]

Exhibition: Let's talk about inclusive language

The exhibition takes visitors through the historical evolution of inclusive language in Germany. It aims to ignite discussion and offers solutions in the German context. It also delves into how other languages have tackled the same challenges, enriching your understanding of inclusive language across cultures. Brought to you by the Equal Opportunity Office at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, it opens on 8 March 2024 as part of International Women’s Day. [more]

Distinguished Lecturer Series: “Were Ancient Cities Resilient To Shocks? How Would We Know?”

Because they offer deep temporal perspectives, the historical and archaeological records of past cities have potential to make a unique contribution to understanding of urban resilience and urban adaptations to climate change today. I single out two approaches that illustrate the potentials and pitfalls of this kind of past-to-present transfer of knowledge: shocks and persistence. The responses of urban residents and institutions to diverse types of shock is a kind of specified resilience (i.e., resilience to what, who, when, and where), whereas the temporal fates of cities over time—persistence—provides insights on the general resilience of early cities. I explore reasons for the great difficulty in applying past knowledge to contemporary urban settings, particularly the near-complete disjunction between research on past resilience and research on past urbanism. [more]

Genealogies of Anthropocentrism

How did we end up in the Anthropocene? In the human and social sciences, a growing consensus holds anthropocentrism responsible for setting human societies and the Earth System onto a collision course, typically defining anthropocentrism as human exceptionalism in viewing nature and other lifeforms as objects of human mastery and means to human ends. The nature of anthropocentrism and its exact role in driving the Anthropocene are, however, seldom subjected to thorough research. [more]

Environments, Land Use, and Urbanization in Ancient Central Asia

The conference aims to explore what we know and what we would like to know about cultural dynamics and human-environment interactions in ancient Central Asia and Mongolia. The cross-disciplinary event will bring together local and international scholars with expertise in archaeology, archaeobotany, and palaeoenvironmental sciences in Central Asia and adjacent regions. It will be an excellent venue to present and exchange new research results and to encourage new research projects. [more]
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