This consortium brings together geoscientists, paleontologists, archaeologists, and computer scientists to study human ecology over the Pleistocene using state-of-the art proxies and analytical methods as well as tailored machine learning approaches. The project is set to provide new perspectives about human niche and the place of humans within the mammal community by reconstructing and analyzing early human environments at one of the one of the key locations to study early human evolution outside Africa, the Nihewan basin in North-East China. The broader aim of the project is to contribute to understanding how the ecological niche of early humans and the energy requirements of the human population changed over time, and when humans started to dominate large mammal communities in terms of control of natural resources. Reconstructing the dynamics of energy appropriation will allow us to reason about early humans from the border evolutionary theory perspective.

2021

2025