Center for the Human Past

The Center for the Human Past (CHP) seeks to bridge the three disciplines Archaeology, Genetics and Linguistics that investigate the same history of the same world populations in the last 10,000-years.

The CHP will educate a new generation of scholars to (i) understand the data of the other disciplines, (ii) understand the models and analytical techniques of the other disciplines, (iii) make use of large databases of all three disciplines and (iv) address novel research questions prompted by the immersion into the other disciplines.

The CHP´s mix of junior and senior scholars meeting across disciplines will foster short- and long term collaborations.

The CHP will research the human dispersals in the Holocene, when a new way of life – food-producing – emerged, which laid the foundations of civilizations.

The dominant view has been that the spread of farming occured as a "package" of migrating people, languages, animal/plant domesticates, tools and cultures. This paradigm is currently starting to become questioned.

The CHP will go beyond the curent state-of-the-art by jointly analysing large sets of genetic data from prehistoric individuals, with corresponding archaeological data, combined with genetic data from today´s populations and their languages.

The CHP will investigate three major migrations: The Indo-European-, Bantu- and Austronesian expansions — three complementary episodes shaping the current world landscape for which the five PIs have particular expertise.