Press

We warmly congratulate our colleague Marjolein D. Bosch on her newly acquired ERC Starting Grant. Her COPE project will investigate the influence of climatic changes on human behaviour during the last Ice Age. The onset of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) 30–25,000 years ago was marked by extreme climate fluctuations in Europe. Nevertheless, people lived near glaciers and adapted their behaviour to the harsh living conditions. As part of the ERC Starting Grant project entitled »The role of climate change on past human living conditions: Resource acquisition strategies and landscape use in eastern Central Europe from the Gravettian Golden Age to the Last Glacial Maximum« (COPE), Marjolein D. Bosch will now investigate the challenges faced by Ice Age hunter-gatherer groups. For example, which animals and plants humans used when resources became more and more scarce and what strategies they developed to survive in such an extreme climate. Material for the planned analyses comes from the Grub-Kranawetberg I and II sites in Lower Austria. These sites offer exceptionally well-preserved organic remains from the period leading up to the Last Glacial Maximum. Using the latest methods in the fields of sediment biomarkers, stable isotope analysis and palaeogenetics, COPE will reconstruct the local environmental conditions in terms of palaeotemperatures, plant vegetation and prey availability in the landscape. A new focus is on water…

During excavation work in Hallstatt (on the property of the Kocsar-Riezinger family in the Seestraße), archaeological layers of scientific importance were uncovered: Medieval terracing walls, a burnt layer with coins, bricks and fragments of vessels of the Roman period, as well as up to one meter thick layers from the Latène period (Late Iron Age, c 450-15 BC). Around 1,000 artefacts from different epochs have recently been recovered. The archaeologists of the NHM Vienna also identified spectacular finds pointing to older epochs: Neolithic fragments of stone tools for wood working, flint blades, animal bones and ceramics emerged under a prehistoric rock fall – about 7,500 years old. These are the oldest known traces in Hallstatt and its surrounding areas to date, which prove that the place was inhabited much earlier than previously thought. The earliest farming communities with settled lifestyles, praciting agriculture and animal domestication first appeared in Central Europe from 5,600 BC onwards. This is the first time that we have evidence that those communities, coming across rivers such as the Danube and Traun, also reached areas deep into the region of Salzkammergut and even to the Apls. The reason for this was presumably the salt deposits. On Tuesday, 12 August 2025, the NHM Vienna, together with the Museum Hallstatt, the municipality Hallstatt and the UNESCO World Heritage Management…

Title: Earliest members of genus Homo may have ditched hard foods on the road to becoming human   Subtitle: New study finds Homo habilis was biomechanically limited in producing high bite forces— forcing scientists to re-think the timing of dietary shifts in human evolution   Body: New work by an international team of researchers suggests that the earliest member of the genus Homo, a species known as Homo habilis (“handy man”), was limited in its ability to bite forcefully into hard foods—offering new insights into the dietary and evolutionary shifts that helped shape the human lineage.   The study, published this week in Royal Society Open Science, uses advanced computer simulations to analyze bite force mechanics in Homo habilis. Results show that Homo habilis was structurally constrained in its ability to crunch into hard foods with its molars—a limitation that persists in modern humans.   “Our results point to a fundamental change in feeding behavior with the appearance of Homo habilis,” said Dr. Justin Ledogar, assistant professor in ETSU’s Department of Biomedical Health Sciences and the study’s lead author. “The ability to process exceedingly hard or tough foods with high bite forces was reduced in Homo habilis compared with earlier hominin species.”   The research team created a biomechanical model of the Homo habilis skull and subjected it to simulated…

CSI methods show: Skull from the collection of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology is not from Arsinoë IV An interdisciplinary research team led by anthropologist Gerhard Weber from the University of Vienna, together with experts from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, has analysed a skull that was found in the ruins of Ephesos (Turkey) in 1929. It was long speculated that it could be the remains of Arsinoë IV, the sister of the famous Cleopatra. However, the latest anthropological analyses show that the remains are those of a boy between the ages of 11 and 14 who suffered from pathological developmental disorders. His genes point to an origin in Italy or Sardinia. The results are currently being published in Scientific Reports. In 1929, the Austrian archaeologist Josef Keil and his colleagues discovered a sarcophagus completely filled with water in the ruins of the once magnificent "Octagon", a splendid building on the main street of Ephesos (Turkey). No significant grave goods were found in it, but a complete skeleton. Josef Keil only took the skull with him before the researchers closed the tomb on the important "Curetes Street" (Kuretenstraße) again. After his initial analysis in Greifswald (Germany), he assumed that the burial was that of "a very distinguished person" and probably a 20-year-old woman. Keil was unable to provide any hard…

Rapa Nui (Easter Island) with its gigantic statues and treeless landscape has fascinated researchers for centuries. A new genetic study published in this week's Nature disproves the popular theory that the Rapanui population collapsed as a result of an "ecocide"—a human-caused environmental suicide—and shows that the Rapanui admixed with Indigenous Americans centuries before Europeans arrived on the island.   Rapa Nui or Te Pito o Te Henua (the navel of the world), also known as Easter Island, is one of the most isolated inhabited places in the world. Located in the Pacific, it lies over 1,900 km east of the closest inhabited Polynesian island and 3,700 km west of South America. Although the island, its inhabitants and their rich culture have been extensively studied by archaeologists, anthropologists and geneticists, two key elements of Rapanui history remain very controversial to this day. One of these is the theory of population collapse through "ecocide" or "ecological suicide" in the 1600s, thought to be the result of overpopulation and resource mismanagement. The other major contention is whether the Polynesian ancestors of the Rapanui interacted with Indigenous Americans before contact with Europeans in 1722. This week's issue of Nature features a genetic study that sheds light on these two debates related to Rapanui history by examining the genomes of 15 Rapanui individuals who lived…

Time for essential changes The Middle Stone Age (MSA) in South Africa during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 marks a crucial phase in human cultural evolution. Using a broad methodological repertoire, the sites Bushman Rock Shelter, Rose Cottage Cave and Sibhudu Cave are investigated to draw conclusions about technology, techno-economy and land use as well as the emergence of innovations and group networking. The MSA of MIS 5, dated to approximately 130,000 to 75,000 years ago, is characterized by the emergence of new behaviors typical of modern hunter-gatherer societies and regionally distinct technological traditions, manifesting significant changes in human cultural evolution. Although for a long time there was a lack of scientific attention and only certain regions were studied in this regard, the focus of research has increased significantly, especially in the last decade, and more and more evidence is being presented that underlines the unique, inventive and creative character of this period. Increasing data from archaeology, paleoanthropology, paleogenetics and paleoclimatology point to a complex mosaic scenario of small-scale structured and widely interconnected populations within Africa during the MSA, which successively gave rise to cognitively modern humans with specific cultural characteristics. MIS 5 appears to be the period in which new ideas were tested and behavioural complexity emerged due to various internal and external circumstances before being consolidated in the…

From the Stone Age to today: Genetic analyses reveal history of domesticated sheep. Through the statistical analysis of hundreds of DNA samples from Stone Age and modern sheep, an international research team with the participation of the ÖAI has reconstructed the domestication, distribution and population development over the last 12,000 years. The results were published in the journal "Science Advances". Sheep are among the first animals to be domesticated by humans. Excavations of the Stone Age settlement of Aşıklı Höyük in Central Anatolia (present-day Turkey), which is around 10,300 years old, show early traces of sheep being kept as livestock. An international research team has succeeded in isolating mitochondrial DNA from the bone remains and comparing them with samples from other regions and later eras. Sheep populations reconstructed over 10,000 years ago Aşıklı Höyük was inhabited for 1,000 years, which means we have an incomparable treasure trove of genetic information about a very early, domesticated sheep population. The genetic experts isolated mitochondrial DNA, which is only passed on from the mother, from bones and combined it with samples from other archaeological sites in Anatolia, the Levant, the Caucasus and Europe. By comparing it with the mitochondrial DNA of modern sheep from 15 countries, we were able to reconstruct the development of sheep populations in Europe and Asia over the past…