Project description
Studying early human adaptations in the Western Rift
Early humans adapted to a wide range of environments, shaping their cultural and biological evolution. While open savannas have long been considered key to early Homo’s adaptability, recent research suggests a broader ecological influence. However, much of this work has focused on Eastern and Southern Africa, overlooking other diverse landscapes. The Albertine Rift in Uganda, a meeting point of tropical forests and savannas, offers a unique window into this past. In this context, the ERC-funded WRAP project seeks to uncover how Homo ergaster adapted to this ecotone. Through field surveys, excavations, and advanced scientific techniques, WRAP will reveal new insights into human evolution in this underexplored region.
Objective
Understanding the evolutionary journey of our species demands an exploration into the diverse environments that our earliest ancestors inhabited. This involves investigating the impact that these landscapes had on the cultural and biological adaptations of early Homo. The Western Rift Archaeological and Paleoenvironment (WRAP) Project directly addresses this important topic by answering the question: How and when did Homo ergaster adapt to the diverse ecotone environments of the Western Rift compared to the more open mosaic environments of the East African Rift? While historically, the unique adaptability of early Homo has been linked to open savanna grasslands, recent studies challenge this notion, proposing that a broader range of environments influenced their adaptive flexibility. However, these hypotheses heavily rely on geographically limited research areas biased toward mosaic open grassland landscapes in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Beyond these historically well-studied regions, lies the Albertine Rift in Uganda, a unique biodiversity hotspot and ecological ecotone between Central African tropical forests and East African savannah grasslands. During the Pleistocene, although increasingly arid, this region possessed a similar diverse range of tropical humid environments as today.
Recognizing the need to search beyond the intensively studied ecologically similar regions of Eastern and Southern Africa, to areas with evidence of Pleistocene hominin occupation in new, diverse environments, this innovative project will conduct extensive fieldwork to identify new archaeological sites within the Western Rift of Uganda. Through systematic surveys and targeted excavations, combined with cutting-edge remote sensing, biomolecular, and geochronological analyses the WRAP Project will, for the first time, provide a holistic understanding of Pleistocene hominins occupations and behaviour across the Western Rift’s diverse biomes.
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 biological sciences ecology ecosystems
- humanities history and archaeology archaeology
- social sciences sociology anthropology physical anthropology
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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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Topic(s)
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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.
Funding Scheme
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.
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
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
8005 139 Faro
Portugal
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.