The Interdisciplinary Centre for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour (ICArEHB) at the University of Algarve (UAlg) has just received two new grants from the European Research Council (ERC) totalling around €9.5 million in funding over the last two years.
In addition to the three grants already awarded to ICArEHB (Vera Aldeias, Starting Grant, 2022; Nuno Bicho, Advanced Grant, 2022; and João Cascalheira, Consolidator Grants, 2022), two more Starting Grants have now been awarded to researchers Jonathan Reeves, who comes from the Max Planck Institute (Germany), and Elisa Bandini, from the University of Zurich (Switzerland), worth 3 million euros, or 1,5 million for each of the researchers.
These results place ICArEHB as one of the main places to understand human evolution, with an exceptional concentration of excellent researchers, also demonstrating the attractiveness of Portugal and the Algarve for the development of a knowledge economy.
Jonathan Reeves sets out to investigate the importance of the use of stone tools for our hominin ancestors 2,6 million years ago.
“As a species, humans depend on the technologies we have created to live, thrive and modify the environments we inhabit. Our ability to do this appears to have begun with the production and use of simple stone tools, known as Oldowan technology,” he says.
Thus, he explains, “my project will investigate whether and how these stone tools provided our hominin ancestors with an advantage similar to that which the tools we make today offer us.”
The researcher further explains that “by being able to carry out this research, we will also begin to identify when our ancestors embarked on the path to becoming who we are today.”
Asked how he plans to achieve these results, Jonathan Reeves says he will carry out large-scale archaeological surveys in the Ledi Geraru area of Ethiopia, which has occupations dating back 2,6 million years.
“This site is particularly important because it preserves a remarkable record of early Oldowan stone tool use by hominins. Although these tools have been extensively studied in more recent periods, how they were used in this early period remains poorly understood.”
According to the researcher, this project will help answer one of humanity's most important questions about our evolution: "When did we become the technological species we are today?"
To carry out this project, the team, which will be led by Jonathan Reeves, will use a variety of methods from archaeology, paleoecology, digital microscopy and computational science.
«This ERC grant means a lot to me, not only for what it can help me achieve scientifically, but also for building a scientific career in the field of human evolution».
In addition to its contribution to science, he says, “the ERC grant is a unique opportunity to solidify my research career, as well as to establish new collaborations with researchers at the host institution, the University of Algarve”.
The unparalleled capacity to innovate and acquire new behaviors is a hallmark of human culture. This capacity has allowed humans to expand into almost every environment on the planet and build the cultural world we live in today. By identifying the conditions that drive innovation in both human and non-human primates, we can gain new insights into when and how humans developed this unique culture. Elisa Bandini’s project aims to answer these questions by identifying the catalysts for a defining behavior in our evolutionary history: the ability to make and use sharp stone tools.
“The intentional appearance of flakes in the human lineage marks the first clear divergence between animal and human technology. With tools to access high-value calories, such as those from animal carcasses, our early human ancestors now had the physical and cognitive resources necessary to begin building the foundations of our unique culture,” says the researcher.
This project will use a triangulation approach to follow the emergence of stone chipping in three primate species: wild and captive chimpanzees, capuchin monkeys, and Japanese macaques.
To this end, he explains, “the first objective of the project will be to define the basic and spontaneous motivations and propensities for stone manipulation in the three species, adopting and further developing, in a systematic way, methods of video coding with artificial intelligence”. The second objective will involve testing two main drivers of innovation: exposure and experience.
«An experimental paradigm, with built-in controls, large sample sizes and long-term testing protocols, will be used to empirically assess the roles of exposure and experience in the development of novel tool use behaviors in the three species».
The final objective will be to systematically compare the stone assemblages produced by primates during the experiments in objective two, as well as some of the oldest stone tools found in the archaeological record, allowing us to infer when cognitive capabilities differentiated between humans and other primates.
“By testing three species, combining and expanding experimental paradigms and implementing powerful modeling tools, the project led by Elisa Bandini will radically improve our understanding of the conditions inherent to innovations and, with it, the initiators of human culture,” he says.
When asked about the impact that her research could have on the community or on people's lives, the researcher explains that, among other aspects related to the evolutionary perspective, "by knowing what is necessary for innovations to emerge, we can be better positioned to create the ideal conditions for these potentially critical innovations to occur."
Elisa Bandini hopes to help better understand how humans innovate in terms of behaviors, especially those that have had a critical impact on our evolutionary trajectory, differentiating us from all other species in the animal kingdom.
Aware that the ERC Starting Grant is an important step in her journey as an early career researcher, and, more importantly, as a way of being able to create her own research group, Elisa Bandini also chooses as a primary factor the pleasure of guiding the next generation of researchers.
Finally, he adds, “my goal is also to support students and researchers from developing countries, who have traditionally had fewer opportunities to participate in this type of research projects and, in doing so, I hope to attract brilliant scientists from around the world to join UAlg, helping to raise the international and scientific profile of this University”.
According to the ERC, 494 Starting Grants were awarded to young scientists and academics from across Europe. The competition attracted 3.474 proposals, which were evaluated by peer review panels composed of internationally renowned researchers.
The ERC Starting Grant is awarded for five years to promising researchers, supporting cutting-edge research in a range of areas, from life and physical sciences to social sciences and humanities. The funding is part of the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and will enable researchers at the beginning of their careers to launch their own projects, build their teams and pursue their most promising ideas.
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