Section Paleoanthropology

The Section closely cooperates with the Research Centre ROCEEH of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and with New York University in the field of Human Paleobiomics.

The evolution of humans began around six to seven million years ago in Africa with the development of early Australopithecines. These Australopithecines differed from apes in that they were capable of bipedal locomotion, at least some of the time. Around two and a half million years ago, the first representatives of the genus Homo emerged from these precursor forms. This process is characterized by a whole series of changes. These include the development of fully uptight walking, the production and use of tools, the development of new food sources, changes in dentition and more. 1.8 million years ago, early humans left the African continent for the first time and colonized large parts of Eurasia. Their fossil remains can be found in the Caucasus, for example, but also on the Indonesian island of Java. These hominids are representatives of Homo erectus. Europe was colonized around one million years ago. Here, evolution apparently took an independent course that led to the development of Neanderthals. How many waves of dispersal the hominids underwent in the Pleistocene, i.e. from around 1.8 million to around 40,000 years ago, and which routes these waves of dispersal followed, is currently not known for certain. Around 300,000 years ago, the first representatives of Homo sapiens developed in eastern Africa. From there, they spread across the entire globe with the exception of Antarctica.

Early humans were not isolated creatures. The further we go back in human prehistory, the more direct their relationships with the animate and inanimate environment become. For a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of humans, it is therefore not enough to focus exclusively on hominid fossils; rather, we also investigate the evolutionary processes of other mammals. This enables us, for example, to answer the question of whether a certain step in the evolution of humans took place in a comparable way in other mammals or whether it only occurred specifically in prehistoric and early humans.

The expansion of early hominids is largely determined by the potential available to them, both naturally and culturally. The study of expansion processes in early hominids provides us with information about the capabilities that are decisive for advancing into new or unknown habitats.