Anastasia Nikulina’s research on the earliest human impact on Europe’s landscapes was featured in the June issue of National Geographic France. The study shows that Neanderthals started vegetation changes, while Early Holocene hunter-gatherers transformed up to 47% of Europe’s landscapes well before the emergence of agriculture.

Last week, Anastasia travelled to Sofia to attend a summer school organised by the COST Action Open Palaeoecological Data. Ths summer school focused on quantitative methods for palaeoecological datasets and aimed to encourage knowledge exchange and collaboration among participants. On the final day, participants visited Vitosha Nature Park, where they learned more about the landscape history and protection of the area.

Jakub Senesi picked up fresh raw honey and other bee products from the Beekeeping Society in Leiden and Surroundings (Imkersvereniging Leiden en Omstreken). A special thank-you goes to Arjen Gerritsen for his generosity in providing us with enough materials to properly test our hypothesis about honey consumption by early hominins.

The FoodWays team got to explore the edible plants in a nearby park, and collected the first plants for the nutritional analyses. This will help uncover the potential of these plants for the diets of early hominins.

Amanda gave a talk in Vienna on the role of plant foods in human evolution, including a small teaser of the FoodWays project!