SFB 806:  Our Way to Europe: Culture-Environment Interaction and Human Mobility in the Late Quaternary

• Subject Area: Geosciences ; Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine ; Humanities
• Term: from 2009 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 57444011

The cultural-environmental context of the spread of anatomically modern humans (AMH) from their cradle in Africa to one of their “sinks” (Central Europe) is the focus of the CRC 806 (SFB 806) “Our Way to Europe”, since its start in 2009. With archaeological and geoscientific methods the projects follow the main migration routes of our ancestors out of Africa and into Europe in order to reconstruct past climates, cultures, population changes and living conditions to better understand the push and pull factors of the dispersal and retreat of our ancestors. Similar to the first two phases of the CRC 806 (the last seven years) the complete timeframe (MIS 6 to MIS 1) to be studied in our project differs by region: In East-Africa it started about 190,000 years ago (during MIS 6) with the first appearance of AMH in Ethiopia. Their dispersal into in the Middle East (and to other African regions) followed – based on results from different research fields outside the CRC 806 - during MIS 5 to MIS 3 in several “waves”, which did not all end successfully: i.e with the long-lasting dominance of our ancestors in these new regions. Especially in the Middle East they might have been hampered by Neanderthals first, but came back during MIS 4 to MIS 3 when they managed to move onwards into SE-Europe. At our Western corridor MIS 5 to MIS 2 are relevant time frames while in Central Europe the spread of AMH happened during MIS 3/4 until MIS 1.What were the main triggers supporting or preventing this mobility? So far, we have indications that it was a set of reasons working in concert that certainly differed in time and space: climate, environment and cultural contexts as well as population densities. It has been discussed (Stringer 2011: 221) that population growth is one of the critical factors in building up and conserving behavioural novelties in ancient human communities. These new behavioural strategies should have also pushed people to be best adapted to new challenges in new regions.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Completed projects

• A01 - Out of Africa - Late Pleistocene Rock Shelter Stratigraphies and Palaeoenvironments in Northeast Africa (Project Heads Bubenzer, Olaf ;  Kindermann, Karin ;  Richter, Jürgen ;  Vogelsang, Ralf )
• A02 - Late Quaternary High-Resolution Climate Archives in the Sahara (Project Heads Kröpelin, Stefan ;  Melles, Martin ;  Tezkan, Bülent )
• A03 - Ethiopian lakes - Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction in the Source Region of Modern Man (Project Heads Schäbitz, Frank ;  Vogelsang, Ralf ;  Wagner, Bernd )
• B01 - The "Eastern Trajectory": Last Glacial Palaeogeography and Archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean and of the Balkan Peninsula (Project Heads Hauck, Thomas ;  Lehmkuhl, Frank ;  Richter, Jürgen )
• B02 - Climatic and Environmental History of the Balkans during the Last Glacial Cycle (Project Heads Schäbitz, Frank ;  Staubwasser, Michael ;  Wagner, Bernd )
• B03 - Environmental Response to Climate Events in the Levant, Near East and SE Europe during the last 200 ka based on Long Continental Records (Project Heads Hense, Andreas N. ;  Litt, Thomas ;  Staubwasser, Michael )
• B04 - Climatic Evolution of the Marmara Region during the past 50,000 years (Project Heads Litt, Thomas ;  Melles, Martin )
• C01 - Settlement Patterns and Climate Change in the Late Pleistocene of the Western Mediterranean – A Synthesis (Project Heads Brückner, Helmut ;  Reicherter, Klaus ;  Weniger, Gerd-Christian )
• C02 - Continuity or Discontinuity? Upper Pleistocene to Middle Holocene Contracts between North Africa and Iberia and their palaeoenvironmental context (Project Heads Brückner, Helmut ;  Weniger, Gerd-Christian )
• C03 - Climatic and Environmental Changes in the Upper Pleistocene - Middle Holocene of the Iberian Peninsula (Project Heads Brückner, Helmut ;  Melles, Martin ;  Reicherter, Klaus )
• D01 - Analysis of Migration Processes due to Environmental Conditions between 40,000 and 14,000 a BP in the Rhine Catchment and Adjacent Areas (Project Heads Hauck, Thomas ;  Kunow, Jürgen ;  Lehmkuhl, Frank ;  Radtke, Ulrich ;  Richter, Jürgen )
• D02 - The Rise of the Cultural Landscape in Central Europe: Mobility and Human-Environment Interaction since the Neolithic (Project Heads Amelung, Wulf ;  Gerlach, Renate ;  Meurers-Balke, Jutta ;  Zimmermann, Andreas )
• D03 - Human Impact on Colluvial Sediment Storages in Europe since the Neolithic (Project Heads Dikau, Richard ;  Hoffmann, Thomas )
• D04 - Chronology, site concentrations, cultural differentiation, and mobility patterns as basis for comparing human-environment interaction (Project Heads Scharl, Silviane ;  Zimmermann, Andreas )
• D06 - Black Carbon in Soils and Sediments as an Indicator for Human-Environment Interactions in the last 190,000 years (Project Heads Amelung, Wulf ;  Brodowski, Sonja ;  Lehndorff, Eva )
• E01 - Population dynamics: Land use patterns of populations between the Upper Pleistocene and Middle Holocene in Europe and the Middle East (Project Heads Scharl, Silviane ;  Zimmermann, Andreas )
• E03 - Anthropological Models for a Reconstruction of the First African Frontier (Project Heads Bollig, Michael ;  Widlok, Thomas )
• E06 - Palaeoclimate and Palaeoenvironmental Reconstructions Using a Computational Regional Environmental Modelling System and Statistic Methods (Project Heads Hense, Andreas N. ;  Melles, Martin ;  Shao, Yaping )
• E07 - Black Carbon as Indicator for Human Environment Interactions in the last 190,000 Years (Project Heads Amelung, Wulf ;  Lehndorff, Eva )
• E08 - Faunal assemblages and biomes at the anthropological frontier around 50-40 ka BP (Project Heads Litt, Thomas ;  Richter, Jürgen )
• E09 - Materiality and Agency: New Paradigms in the Study of Human Development, Culture, and Cognition (Project Head Breyer, Thiemo )
• F01 - Setting the Time Frame - Application of Cosmogenic Nuclide (Radiocarbon, Beryllium) Dating in the Construction of High-Resolution Archaeological Chronologies (Project Heads Melles, Martin ;  Staubwasser, Michael ;  Weninger, Bernhard )
• F02 - Application of Luminescence Dating Techniques in Geoarchaeological Studies (Project Heads Brückner, Helmut ;  Hilgers, Alexandra ;  Radtke, Ulrich )
• F04 - Climate Change in the Northern and Western Black Sea Region based on U-Th Isochron Dated Stalagmites from the Crimean Peninsula and Eastern Romania (Project Head Staubwasser, Michael )
• F05 - Refining Chronologies by new Radiocarbon Dating Methods: Towards Molecular Isotope Archaeology (Project Heads Dunai, Tibor J. ;  Kusch, Stephanie ;  Rethemeyer, Janet )
• F06 - Palaeomagnetic Dating and Environmental Magnetism of Sedimentary Record (Project Head Melles, Martin )
• Z01 - Central Administration and Coordination (Project Heads Richter, Jürgen ;  Schuck, Werner )
• Z02 - Data Management and Data Service (Project Heads Bareth, Georg ;  Bubenzer, Olaf )
• Z03 - Integrated Research Training Group (IRTG): Quaternary Science and Geoarchaeology (Project Heads Melles, Martin ;  Richter, Jürgen ;  Schäbitz, Frank )
• Ö2 - Migration – Nobody Has Always Been Here (Project Heads Richter, Jürgen ;  Weniger, Gerd-Christian )
• ÖZ04 - Comparisons Based on Argumentation in Geography Classes using the Example of Culture-Environment Interactions (Project Heads Budke, Alexandra ;  Schäbitz, Frank )

• Applicant Institution: Universität zu Köln
• Participating University: Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen; Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
• Participating Institution: Neanderthal Museum; Addis Ababa University ; School of Earth Science
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Jürgen Richter