Project description
Homo sapiens in Africa at the onset of the Middle Stone Age
Technological innovations in tool making and increased evidence of symbolic behaviour mark the beginning of the Middle Stone Age. This is when anatomically modern humans emerged in Africa and expanded into a wider range of ecosystems (including deserts, rainforests, and mountains) compared to previous hominins. To survive, early humans had to adapt their subsistence strategies to changing environments. The EU-funded PEOPLE project will focus on South African ecosystems to study human dispersal and adaptation to climate change across southern Africa. A key factor affecting this response is freshwater availability. The project will investigate how and when modern humans settled on the subcontinent by searching for archaeological deposits at rivers, springs, and dry lakes in the interior of South Africa.
Objective
Homo sapiens emerged in Africa in the Middle Pleistocene, and their appearance broadly overlaps with the onset of the Middle Stone Age (MSA). This period saw a persistent population expansion into a wide range of ecosystems, including deserts, rainforests, and mountains. To develop such ecological flexibility, early humans had to adapt their subsistence strategies to markedly different and dynamic environments that dramatically affected their lifeways. However, we know surprisingly little about the timing and modes of H. sapiens dispersal within Africa. To address this issue at subcontinental scale, PEOPLE will look at South African ecosystems that offer ways of assessing human response to climate change. One key factor affecting this response is freshwater availability. Water played a crucial role in human adaptation since it determined the foraging activities of people across the open landscape and thus had pervasive influence over their expansion on the continent. In the interior of South Africa, which features a mosaic of diverse grasslands and arid shrublands dissected by sporadic rivers, ancient water courses and wetlands provided early humans with favourable conditions and possible dispersal routes. To understand how and when humans settled on the subcontinent, PEOPLE will search geological deposits at rivers, springs, and dry lakes in the interior of South Africa, which offer long records of climate change. The aim is twofold: determine the role of changing environments in the adaptive strategies of MSA people, and establish a chronology for human palaeoecology based on absolute dating of palaeoenvironments and technological organisation. To achieve these goals, PEOPLE will adopt a multi-scalar geoarchaeological approach led by an interdisciplinary research team. The results of this project will change our understanding of human dynamics in southern Africa and have the potential to piece together how humans eventually dispersed throughout Africa and beyond.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences palaeontology paleoecology
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology ecosystems
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2021-STG
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75794 PARIS
France
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