H2020Индивидуална стипендия2018–2020

aWARE · West Africa's Role in Human Evolution

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2018-08-01 → 2020-07-31
Финансиране от ЕС: 171 461 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF

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Накратко на български

Еволюцията на хомо сапиенс се проучва чрез теренни проучвания в Западна Африка, за да се провери дали целият континент е участвал в произхода на човека. Това помага да се разбере общата история на всички хора.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

West Africa's Role in Human Evolution

The pan African model of human evolution proposes that all of the African continent may have played some role in the origin of our species. However investigating this model further is hampered by the fact that currently about 75-80% of the African continent has been barely explored for what it can contribute to the story of human origins. The aWARE project proposed to address this problem and contribute towards understanding the character of our pan African evolution through a fieldwork programme in West Africa, one of the most poorly understood regions of the continent for this field of research. This research is therefore both important scientifically, but also important for society because our shared origins concern all humans. The overall objectives of the project, therefore, were to first make the pan-African evolution model as explicit as possible in order to test hypotheses through West African fieldwork, generate new data from fieldwork in West Africa, and use these to test the hypotheses posed. In terms of training, my aims were to learn better computational methods of data analysis, in order to better integrate multiple sources of evidence and use a simulation approach to resolve different possible interpretations of the results.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Recent evidence indicates that the roots of our species, Homo sapiens, do not trace back to a single population, but to morphologically diverse group living over an extensive geographic area from Morocco to South Africa. The range of environments and regions in Africa that played a role in shaping our species is therefore rapidly emerging as central to unravelling human origins. However, thanks to the lack of fieldwork in many regions of Africa, these important parameters are not well understood.The aWARE project will therefore undertake a timely investigation into the role of Africa’s western forests, and their neighbouring ecozones, in modern human origins. Genetic and fossil studies have associated poorly known West Africa with complex evolutionary processes thought to have played a key role in shaping our species. Such processes include admixture between our species and late-surviving archaic humans, and long-term isolation of H. sapiens populations in forested zones. Significantly, research in West Africa by the applicant has also identified a unique late persistence of stone tool technology typical of much older periods, while at the same time demonstrating that human populations were present in currently forested regions close to the time of H. sapiens speciation. aWARE builds on this pilot work and sets forth a series of explicit, testable hypotheses to explore the time depth and environmental context of human populations in West Africa as a window into our pan-African origins. To adequately address these hypotheses, an interdisciplinary approach is taken, combining information from archaeology and palaeoecology. By exploring major theories in recent human origins through Africa’s poorly known western region, the project offers an opportunity to radically change our understanding of recent human evolution. The results will be broadly communicated through open access resources, including an online database and targeted public outreach activities.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTEN EV · MUNCHENКоординаторГермания