Partners
- Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra -Università di Pisa
- Bologna University
- Siena University
- Haifa University
Duration:6 years 1/6/2024-31/5/2030
Budget (€): 12.920.328,00
ERC field: SH6_04 Prehistory, palaeoanthropology, palaeodemography, protohistory, bioarchaeology.
ERC subfields: PE10_06 Palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology; PE10_12 Sedimentology, soil science, palaeontology, earth evolution; PE10_15 Geomagnetism, palaeomagnetism; LS8_10 Ecology and evolution of species interactions; LS8_15 Theoretical developments and modelling in environmental biology, ecology, and evolution
Keywords:Middle Paleolithic, early Upper Paleolithic, Homo sapiens, ancient DNA, Neanderthal, western and central Asia
Scope – Our closest relatives, the Neanderthals, abruptly disappeared 40 thousand years ago (ka) after having endured for 350 thousand years in a territory ranging from the Iberian Peninsula to southern Siberia. Decades-long research attempted to address the cultural aspects and the demographic and environmental factors that triggered their demise. Yet, there are no widely accepted scenarios that satisfactorily explain the extinction of the Neanderthal. These shortcomings are in part because the data available originated from a limited number of sites mainly in western and central Europe, which we now know were peripheral to the range of the last Neanderthals. To compellingly reconstruct the chain of events that led to Neanderthal’s extinction, the scientific community needs new extensive archaeological data, possibly from the core regions of the last Neanderthals’ range. Areas of western and central Asia and eastern and southeastern Europe were at the core of this range, served as gateways to marginal areas, and witnessed Neanderthals’ bio-cultural interactions with Sapiens and Denisovans. For the first time, three PIs with vast expertise on Neanderthals’ culture, biology, and paleoenvironments will synergistically attempt to bridge the knowledge gap between the core and the periphery of their range at the time of their decline between 60-40ka. Project LAST NEANDERTHALS will:
1) accurately collect, date, integrate, and model new high-resolution cultural, bio-genetic, and environmental data from understudied areas in western and central Asia and eastern and southeastern Europe; 2) provide an unprecedented perspective on the last Neanderthals’ population dynamics; 3) offer a comprehensive and compelling explanation of the mechanisms that led to their extinction by integrating data from their entire range and formulating and testing nuanced hypotheses using new models and simulations; 4) serve as a proxy for the fate shared by all archaic human groups.
Other UniPisa participants: Giovanni Zanchetta; Cheli Colmanet.
External webpage: https://www.erc-lastneanderthals.eu/