Recent studies of Neandertal body mass and skin surface indicate raised energetic requirements in this lineage compared to anatomically modern humans.

As the flagship journal of the National Academy of Sciences USA, PNAS publishes several special features each year highlighting topics that are expected to engage the interest of the journal’s broad readership. Archaeologist Wil Roebroeks was invited by the Editors of PNAS to contribute a paper on the…

On March 21 2018, a study was published in Nature, co-authored by Professor M. Soressi from the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University, announcing the sequencing of five new Neandertals, raising the number of high-coverage sequenced Neandertals from two to seven. A tooth lost by a Neandertal woman…

The research contained in this dissertation explores the origins of fire making in prehistory, focusing primarily on the fire use practices and fire production capacities of Neandertals.

A fragment of a human skull discovered in sediments extracted from the bottom of the North Sea, 15 km off the coast off the Netherlands, has been identified as belonging to the extinct Neandertal group.

Lecture

The transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic is a major biological and cultural threshold in the construction of our common humanity. Technological and behavioral changes happened simultaneously to a major climatic cooling, forcing human populations to develop new strategies for the exploitation…

The analysis of protein residues extracted from the storage containers of circa 50,000 year old bone-tools reveals Neandertal strategic selection of bovid ribs to make some of their “lissoirs”.

New finds demonstrate that Neandertals were the first in Europe to make standardised and specialised bone tools – which are still in use today. These firndings are reported by Leiden reseachers together with an international team of archaeologists in the PNAS journal (Proceedings National Academy of…

Three Leiden researchers will each receive a Vici grant of 1.5m euros. They are historian Cátia Antunes, cell biologist Dennis Claessen and archaeologist Marie Soressi. This grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) will give them the opportunity to form their own research group over the next five…

Scientists remain puzzled by the sudden extinction of Neanderthals, some 40,000 years ago. New research by scientists from Eindhoven University of Technology, Leiden University and Wageningen University now suggests we might have been too quick in attributing the demise of Neanderthals to invasions…

Lecture

Lecture, Studium Generale

This project focuses on the study of Neanderthal and early modern human behavior, primarily on the basis of stone tools, fauna and spatial patterns

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

The Altai region has yielded a cluster of Middle and Upper Paleolithic stratified sites that have been recently excavated using a multidisciplinary approach.

Les Cottés is one the rare site in western Europe with occupations in sequence by the very last Neandertals and the first anatomically modern humans.

When do fire making tools appear in prehistory, and how might the use of these tools manifest in the archaeological record?

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

Extinct hominin DNA extracted from >40,000 years old sediment

Correctly interpreting the patterns of fire evidence in the archaeological record will illuminate the origin of human fire use.

The Palaeolithic period extends from the earliest stone tools (and in Europe, earliest occupation) to the beginning of the current warm period.

NWO Humanities and the Humanities Regieorgaan have awarded a PhD grant to Andy Sorensen under the joint funding program PhDs in the Humanities. Andy will start his research on how long humans already have the ability to make fire on July 1st. 2013.

At the 7th annual meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution (ESHE) conference held here in Leiden September 21-23 Andy Sorensen won the Pecha Kucha presentation prize.

From July 25th till August 7th, a team led by Professor Marie Soressi went to France and worked at La Grande Roche de Quinçay, a cave site located in a forested area close to the city of Poitiers. The corona outbreak triggered the need to rethink the organisation of the excavation.

The world’s oldest known glue was made by Neanderthals. But how did they make it 200,000 years ago? Leiden archaeologists have discovered three possible ways. Publication in Scientific Reports, 31 August.

Lecture

Archaeologists often use the percentages of heat-affected stone or bone artifacts found at archaeological sites as a way to determine how frequently fire was used by the inhabitants. Andrew Sorensen and Fulco Scherjon have come up with a computer model called 'fiReproxies' to simulate how fires used…

Debate

Lecture

Neanderthals were able to make fire on a large scale with the aid of pyrite and hand-axes. This means they could decide when and where they wanted fire and were not dependent on natural fire, as was thought earlier. Archaeologist Andrew Sorensen has discovered the first material evidence for this. Publication…