Descrizione del progetto
Studiare il massacro preistorico del lago Turkana
Circa 16 000 persone in tutto il mondo muoiono ogni giorno a causa di lesioni traumatiche. Incidenti stradali, omicidio e suicidio sono le cause principali di morte e lesioni traumatiche. È sempre stato così? Il progetto TRAUMOBITA, finanziato dall’UE, studierà il modo in cui la mortalità traumatica tra gli esseri umani preistorici ha dato forma al nostro comportamento durante il Tardo Plastocene e il Medio Olocene. Comprendere in che modo morivano gli esseri umani è fondamentale per specificare il ruolo della violenza nella formazione del nostro comportamento. Il progetto studierà fossili umani provenienti dal lago Turkana in Kenya. È lì che un gruppo di cacciatori-raccoglitori ha attaccato un altro gruppo circa 10 000 anni fa. I risultati consentiranno l’individuazione e la caratterizzazione della morte traumatica e offriranno informazioni sugli adattamenti comportamentali dell’essere umano.
Obiettivo
Traumatic death affects our daily life, but how did traumatic mortality affect human behaviour from an evolutionary perspective? TRAUMOBITA aims to understand how traumatic mortality among prehistoric humans shaped our behaviour during the Late Pleistocene to the Middle Holocene. Confirming that how we died had an enormous influence on our ancestors and represents an enormous change in how we understand human societies. Traumatic mortality has an enormous influence among non-human primate social life and environmental adaptations, but not much effort has been dedicated to the study of how such deaths affected the behavioural development of modern humans. Identifying and understanding how humans died is essential for determining the role of violence in shaping our behaviour and, it seems, an equally important factor among our primate relatives. The goal here is to study these behavioural adaptations on the basis of two analytical sections. The first will comprise analysis of human fossils from different key sites from Lake Turkana (Africa): the region is known as the cradle of humankind and the archaeopaleontological record is an essential one for reconstructing our own evolutionary path. The second will be dedicated to integration of forensic science into taphonomic study of human fossils, in addition to development of new non-invasive methods based on virtual analysis and experimentation. The data obtained from this approach will facilitate identification and characterization of traumatic mortality in the archaeological record, in order to integrate our results into the study of past societies to determine which behavioural changes are related to traumatic mortality. The research is an integrated analysis that guarantees the interdisciplinary and innovative nature of the project. Little is known on the role of traumatic mortality in human behavioural adaptations, and therefore the project will represent a major advance.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinatore
CB2 1TN Cambridge
Regno Unito