For the second week of September Jakub visited laboratories at the University of Turin (Italy). He spent his time preparing dental calculus samples for shotgun proteomics and learning the workflow for ZooMS bone samples preparation and MALDI-TOF spectral acquisition. The upcoming results from this work could tell us more about detection of bee larvae proteins from dental calculus. Stay tuned for updates!
Amanda and Wei Ping attended a conference celebrating 135 years since the first discovery of Homo erectus* with a gathering of experts, hosted by the Georgian National Museum. Amanda was invited to give a talk on the Hominin Foodways project and to participate in the closing discussion panel for the conference. Wei Ping presented a poster on her study of edible plant taxa in the Early Pleistocene. They were joined by RMA student Francesca Scotti who also gave a poster. Included in the agenda were exciting site visits to Orozmani and Dmanisi!
In August, Wei Ping attended a workshop organised by COST Action PalaeOpen. Participants were introduced to Tilia software's functions for managing and visualising ecological data and as an interface to the Neotoma Paleoecology Database. Participants visited the Botanical Gardens at the University of Bonn. The curation of useful plants, especially the edible ones, was of particular interest!
Check out our new logo designed by project team member Wei Ping!
Across the summer, Wei Ping began the first round of nutritional analysis of collected edible plants in the Food and Quality Design labs in Wageningen University, supervised by Prof. Vincenzo Fogliano. Nutritional data of the edible parts of identified plant taxa will be collected over the next two years.
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!
