Angela A. Bruch

Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften · Research Centre ROCEEH 'The role of culture in early expansions of humans'

Microvertebrates are generally well suited for drawing inferences on past environmental conditions because they are closely bound to the areas in which they lived. In this paper, we discuss palaeoecological implications of two microvertebrate concentrations in the Middle Pleistocene site Qesem Cave in Israel. The ecological preferences of the neare...

The Early Pleistocene deposits of the Iberian Peninsula provided some of the oldest hominin fossil sites of Western Europe. Evidence also shows that early Homo thrived in the Mediterranean peninsulas during the Early Pleistocene ‘interglacial’ phases. To assess the role of climatic conditions on early human environments, the present work features a...

The Guadix-Baza Basin, in SE Spain, harbors hominin fossils and lithic artifacts dated to ca. 1.4–1.3 Ma, representing the first hominin habitat in the Iberian Peninsula and possibly in Western Europe. Recent palynological studies have described a high diversity of plant taxa and biomes existing in the basin at the time of hominin presence. However...

West Georgia is part of the Caucasus biodiversity hotspot and hosts the Colchic vegetation, a ‘Tertiary’ refuge, with many endemic and relic species. Based on fossil pollen records from 21 localities in west Georgia quantitative climate reconstruction has been carried out covering the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene periods. Further, major shift...

The 24th newsletter begins with the story of how ROCEEH began, describing the friendship and scientific circumstances that led to the project’s conception. We then describe how ROCEEH applies agent-based models to examine whether early human expansions included the ability to cross sea straits. Next, we describe how ROCEEH’s collaboration with...

The article is available with full open acces at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950475924000017

In this 23rd newsletter, we report on PlantBITES, a database of plants that were useful to early humans. Next, we explore the remains of a prepared meal from Shanidar Cave in Iraq, which tells us a story about the interaction of Neanderthals with their environment. We describe how the recent discovery of an additional piece of an ivory figurine...

Due to global climate cooling and aridification since the Paleogene, members of the Neogene flora were extirpated from the Northern Hemisphere or were confined to a few refugial areas. For some species, the final reduction/extinction came in the Pleistocene, but some others have survived climatic transformations up to the present. This has occurred...

In this study, we develop a spatial reconstruction of the environmental and climatic conditions under which Homo erectus in the eastern part of Java lived based on present-day analogue, which polarized based on the palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimatic data available.

Large scale databases are critical for helping scientists decipher long-term patterns in human evolution. This paper describes the conception and development of such a research database and illustrates how big data can be harnessed to formulate new ideas about the past. The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans (ROCEEH) is a transdisciplina...

In this 22nd newsletter we report on the entry of Chinese sites into the ROAD database. Next, we provide new insight into ROCEEH’s ongoing work at excavations in South Africa‘s KwaZulu-Natal province. Finally, the research center also considers how machine learning can be used to design climate models that help explain prehistoric climatic cond...

Understanding the changing plant ecosystems that existed in East Africa over the past millennia is crucial for identifying links between habitats and past human adaptation and dispersal across the region. In the Horn of Africa, this task is hampered by the scarcity of fossil botanical data. Here we present modelled past vegetation distributions in...

As the southern Caucasus is extremely rich in archaeological sites, understanding the palaeoenvironmental conditions there is critical for interpreting the behavior, subsistence, and settlement patterns of the many and varied groups of hominins that occupied the region throughout the Pleistocene. Phytoliths can serve as valuable indicators of past...

In the Caucasus, peat deposits exposed near Lake Sevan (Armenia) provide a Middle to Late Holocene record of lake level fluctuations. The Tsovinar-1 section at the southern shore of Lake Sevan in the Armenian Highlands reveals a well-dated and divers pollen and carpo-flora covering a time span from 6000 BC to 900 AD. The abundances of pollen of for...

Background: Understanding the relationship between human evolution and environmental changes is the key to lifting the veil on human origin. The hypothesis that environmental changes triggered the divergence of humans from apes (ca. 9.3-6.5 million years ago, Ma) has been poorly tested because of limited continuous environmental data from fossil l...

Due to global climate cooling and aridification since the Paleogene, the members of the Neogene flora were extirpated from the Northern Hemisphere or were confined to a few refugial areas. For some species, the final reduction/extinction came in the Pleistocene, but some others have survived climatic transformations up to the present. This has occu...

The 21st newsletter presents the latest study on Big Data Visualization. Next we take you on a flight to the beginning of human history with the TimeFlies app. We report on the Modes – Forms – Structures-Conference in Karlsruhe and the annual meeting of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution in Tübingen. Finally we present our ne...

Current knowledge about Paleolithic human plant use is limited by the rare survival of identifiable plant remains as well as the availability of methods for plant detection and identification. By analyzing DNA preserved in cave sediments, we can identify organisms in the absence of any visible remains, opening up new ways to study details of past h...

Studies on possible plant food and its availability for different groups of early humans so far usually consider only a pre-selected set of plant species often based on the scarce archaeobotanical record. In contrast, the database PlantBITES is a tool to consider the full range of potentially available, dominant plant species in vegetation units. I...

In this 20th newsletter, ROCEEH takes you on a little trip around the world. We tell the story of stone technologies in southern Italy at the transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic, the paleoenvironment of Homo erectus in Indonesia, and a unique eyed needle from the Armenian Highlands. We hope you enjoy!

In the 19th ROCEEH newsletter, we look at geographic methods for the study of habitat change, the analysis of stone artifacts from the Upper Paleolithic in Armenia, the research history of one of the most important Paleolithic sites in Germany (the UNESCO World Heritage site Geißenklösterle in the Swabian Jura), and the cognitive abilities of o...

The 18th newsletter focuses on the diet of Paranthropus boisei and how environmental conditions and technical capabilities affected it. We report on ROCEEH‘s collaboration with ARIADNEplus, a large-scale European project on the scientific infrastructure of archaeological data. We also announce the opening of the exhibition “Being Human // The Origi...

At the end of December 2020, Volker Mosbrugger retired, after 15 years, from his position as Director General of the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturkunde, 2 years after he turned 65, the official age for retirement in Germany. During the last 40 years, Volker has built up an international reputation not only as a leading palaeobotanist, but also...

To assess the pattern of climatic evolution during the late Miocene to early Pleistocene in the largest fluvio-deltaic sedimentary system on the Earth, the Bengal Basin (BB), a quantitative palaeoclimatic reconstruction was made, based on 20 fossil wood floras. Those floras show that moisture-loving taxa have decreased considerably since the Miocen...

Die Forschungsstelle ROCEEH (The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans) ist ein Projekt der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften* mit dem Ziel, das frühe kulturelle Erbe der Menschheit zu erkunden, in einen Kontext zu stellen und zu bewahren. ROCEEH erforscht die Geschichte der Menschheit und ihrer frühen Ausbreitungen von drei Millione...

The research center ROCEEH (The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans) is a project of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities* whose aim is to discover, contextualize and preserve the deep past of humankind’s cultural heritage. ROCEEH explores the history of humanity and its early expansions between three million and 20,000 years...

Databases are ubiquitous in the natural sciences and can include anything from a simple, thematically restricted table to a complex, interdisciplinary network. Despite their widespread use, many questions remain unresolved about their growth, analytical function, interoperability, and sustainability. To examine current trends in this dynamic field,...

In this study comprehensive palaeofloristic data of lower Miocene deposits from the Soma Basin, western Anatolia is presented considering the stratigraphical concept. The sediments of the basin, derived from outcrop sections, were deposited in the terrestrial environment. The basin includes three different successions: lower and middle lignite succ...

Evidence from various climate proxies provides us with increasingly reliable proof that only in the past 10 millennia were natural systems more or less as we see them at the present (without considering human impact). Prior to 10,000 years ago, natural systems repeatedly changed under the influence of an unstable climate. This is particularly true...

This 17th issue of the ROCEEH newsletter focuses on early human migrations in Island Southeast Asia by examining microscopic traces of use-wear on stone artifacts. Next, we introduce the ROAD Summary Data Sheet, which provides an overview of locality data stored in the ROAD Database. Finally we discuss the latest developments in an agent-based mode...

The palynomorphology of 19 modern species of the genus Quercus L. native to Armenia and adjacent regions, including the Caucasus and Transcaucasia, the Mediterranean region (especially Turkey), as well as Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, was studied using light microscopy (LM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The work revealed two main types of a...

Between the late Tortonian and the Middle Pleistocene, a shallow but large (up to 800 km2) lacustrine system existed in the Baza Basin. During the Early Pleistocene, the marginal area of this lake was occupied by humans that arrived from Africa. With 1.3 Ma, these fossils and archaeological finds represent the oldest evidences of humans in Europe....

The basin of Baza is located in the central area of the Betic Range (SE Spain) with a catchment area of over 4000 km2. It contains a continuous and well preserved lacustrine sedimentary record from the Late Miocene to the Middle Pleistocene. The basin encloses numerous Miocene to Pleistocene mammal fossil sites that include some of the oldest homin...

A recently recovered site of plant macrofossils, Ludvíkovice, in the České středohoří Mts. is situated on Sokolí vrch hill, belonging to the Děčín Formation (radiometrically dated to 30.8–24.7 Ma), according to regional stratigraphy. The flora has yielded a fern, Rumohra recentior, and several angiosperms, but no conifers. The prevailing foliage is...

As a result of expeditions carried out in 2018-2019 the research team has discovered a monocotyledonous plant (Ruppia maritima L., Ruppiaceae) from the bottom of Lake Sevan. This taxa is a new family, genus and species for the flora of the Republic of Armenia. The plant is quite widespread throughout the lake: it has been found at two localities in...

The 16th issue of the ROCEEH newsletter focuses on the climate of the Iberian Peninsula during the first wave of human expansion into Western Europe. We also take a closer look at Paleolithic mobile art in Central Europe and present a session report from INQUA 2019 in Dublin, Ireland. All ROCEEH newsletters are available on www.roceeh.net

The Pontocaspian (Black Sea - Caspian Sea) region has a very dynamic history of basin development and biotic evolution. The region is the remnant of a once vast Paratethys Sea. It contains some of the best Eurasian geological records of tectonic, climatic and paleoenvironmental change. The Pliocene-Quaternary co-evolution of the Black Sea-Caspian S...

In the 15th issue of ROCEEH’s newsletter, we address the difficulties in defining Aurignacian industries and their spatio-temporal variability. We present our latest findings on the final phase of the Middle Stone Age in southern Africa. Finally we report on geomorphological field work associated with Sibudu Rock Shelter in South Africa and a ROAD...

The pollen and foraminifera of Meotian deposits of Abkhazia were studied with the samples taken from the sections Gedjiri, Galidzga, Otapi and Gudou dated by molluska and micro-fauna. The Meotian flora of Abkhazia consists of nearly 190 elements, belonging to 82 families and 124 genera. Their distribution was connected with a vertical zonality of r...

To judge the role of the environment on the first appearance of humans in southern Europe requires fundamental understanding of the dynamics of Early Pleistocene regional environments in this area. The Orce region (Baza Basin) in southeastern Spain is well known for its important findings of artefacts attesting the presence of early Homo earlier th...

In this 14th issue of ROCEEH’s newsletter, we begin by examining the origin of ocher use in Africa. From there, we establish a definition of what cumulative culture means and explore when it began. These articles are followed by reports about three conferences co-organized by ROCEEH: 1) “KULT-UR-MENSCH”; 2) “Computer Applications in Archaeology”; a...

In its first brochure about ROAD, the ROCEEH research team described the technical aspects of its large-scale, multidisciplinary database which contains data about the last three million years of human history. In this second brochure, we follow up by focusing on the practical applications that ROAD offers its users. ROAD provides a synopsis of pre...

The tribe Microtoscoptini, comprising the genera Microtoscoptes from Eurasia and Paramicrotoscoptes and Goniodontomys from North America, is an enigmatic group of microtoid cricetids, which was widespread during the Late Miocene. Although fossil remains have been reported from 33 localities, their evolutionary and dispersal history is still poorly...

The tribe Microtoscoptini, comprising the genera Microtoscoptes from Eurasia and Paramicrotoscoptes and Goniodontomys from North America, is an enigmatic group of microtoid cricetids, which was widespread during the Late Miocene. Although fossil remains have been reported from 33 localities, their evolutionary and dispersal history is still poorly...

The Eocene was an interval of climate evolution, when the extreme high temperatures of the earliest Cenozoic gave way to a global cooling trend. Fine-grained lacustrine sediments of Eocene age from northeastern China represent an excellent archive to study long-term environmental and climatic changes at high-resolution. The Huadian Basin is a Cenoz...

In the thirteenth issue of ROCEEH’s newsletter we announce the inscription of six Swabian caves onto UNESCO’s World Heritage List, where several ROCEEH members have conducted research for many years. Humboldt Foundation Senior Research Fellow Martin Porr talks about the difficulties that irrational and nonutilitarian objects present for the study o...

Relying on the ability of pollen assemblages to differentiate among elevationally stratified vegetation zones, we assess the potential of a modern pollen-climate dataset from the Darjeeling area, eastern Himalaya, in past climate reconstructions. The dataset includes 73 surface samples from 25 sites collected from a c. 130e3600 m a.s.l. elevation g...

With its well-preserved archaeological and environmental records, Aghitu-3 Cave permits us to examine the settlement patterns of the Upper Paleolithic (UP) people who inhabited the Armenian Highlands. We also test whether settlement of the region between ∼39–24,000 cal BP relates to environmental variability. The earliest evidence occurs in archaeo...

The precise Eurasian chronostratigraphy of the Neogene-Quaternary period is still hampered by the existence of numerous regional stages often lacking independent and absolute age constraints. Therefore, detailed paleoclimatic reconstructions of areas like the Caucasus are still poorly constrained and the influence of climate variability on faunal i...