Center for the Human Past
Research
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UU researcher profile: Harald Hammarström documents languages on the verge of extinction
Read more →: UU researcher profile: Harald Hammarström documents languages on the verge of extinctionA professor of linguistics with a Master’s in computer science and a PhD in computational linguistics, Harald goes an extra mile to document the languages that head towards extinction. “Throughout time, smaller languages have always been swallowed up by larger ones. But now, with globalisation, this is happening at an incredibly accelerated pace.” Language has…
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Human Past SCAS Fellows 2026-27
Read more →: Human Past SCAS Fellows 2026-27We’re excited to announce the Human Past Fellows for the academic year 2026-27. We will welcome Jaison Jeevan Sequeira as the Junior Fellow (during the whole academic year 2026-27) and Sohini Ramachandran as Senior Fellow in the spring term. Jaison Jeevan Sequeira, PhD, Mangalore University, India Junior Fellow 2026-27 Deciphering the dual Steppe ancestry and…
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Call for the Human Past SCAS Fellowships 2027-28 is open
Read more →: Call for the Human Past SCAS Fellowships 2027-28 is openThe Human Past SCAS Residential Fellowship Programme is an initiative by the Center for the Human Past, administered by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS). The fellowships are designed to foster a collaborative environment where early-stage (postdoctoral-level) and established scholars can converge across a wide range of disciplines, such as archaeology, population genetics, and…
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Homo sapiens-specific evolution unveiled by ancient southern African genomes, published in Nature
Read more →: Homo sapiens-specific evolution unveiled by ancient southern African genomes, published in NatureMattias Jakobsson and Carina Schlebusch are two co-authors of the study on ancient South Africans that was just published. Abstract Homo sapiens evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago in Africa, later spreading across the globe, but the early evolutionary process is debated. Here we present whole-genome sequencing data for 28 ancient southern African individuals, including…
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Newly funded RJ program: Unexplored Linguistic Phenomena: Mapping and Documenting the Frontiers of Human Language Ability
Read more →: Newly funded RJ program: Unexplored Linguistic Phenomena: Mapping and Documenting the Frontiers of Human Language AbilityOne of the Center’s PIs, Harald Hammarström, starts a new project, funded by Riksbankensjubileumsfond. For the next 6 years, the team will dive headlong into the peripheries of human linguistic ability. It’s one of two RJ Programs funded this year. Big congratulations! Linguistic diversity: a manifestation of human capacities and a footprint of history Abstract…
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The Indo-European Cognate Relationships dataset is now published
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Read more →: The Indo-European Cognate Relationships dataset is now publishedAbstract The Indo-European Cognate Relationships (IE-CoR) dataset is an open-access relational dataset showing how related, inherited words (‘cognates’) pattern across 160 languages of the Indo-European family. IE-CoR is intended as a benchmark dataset for computational research into the evolution of the Indo-European languages. It is structured around 170 reference meanings in core lexicon, and contains…
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Hugo Reyes Centeno and Anthony Jakob are the current Human Past SCAS Fellows
Read more →: Hugo Reyes Centeno and Anthony Jakob are the current Human Past SCAS FellowsWe are pleased to welcome Hugo Reyes Centeno, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky, USA and Anthony Jakob, a historical linguist with a PhD from Leiden University as our new fellows. During the fellowship, Hugo will work on the project Genomic and archaeological approaches toward resolving the Austronesian problem, while Anthony…
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Book alert! Indo-European ecologies: Cattle and milk—snakes and water.
Read more →: Book alert! Indo-European ecologies: Cattle and milk—snakes and water.This is the second volume in the series Stockholm Studies in Indo-European Language and Culture (open access). Jenny Larsson, professor in Baltic languages, with a primary interest in the history of languages, is one of the co-editors. This volume brings together scholars from different fields, exploring how early Indo-European communities understood and mythologised their natural and social…
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He traces the genetic history of modern humans
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Read more →: He traces the genetic history of modern humansThe Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation has just published an update on the research by Mattias Jakobsson, one of the KAW scholars. Mattias Jakobsson’s focus in his new Wallenberg Scholar project is to track the development that occurred between 300,000 and 600,000 years ago, following the genetic line that leads to modern humans. The material…
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A new book on Indo-European research
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Read more →: A new book on Indo-European researchOur colleague, Axel Palmér has just published a book Indo-Slavic Lexical Isoglosses and the Prehistoric Dispersal of Indo-Iranian. Axel I. Palmér, Ph.D. (2024, Leiden University), is currently a Human Past Junior Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala, Sweden. His research focuses on the origin and development of the Indo-European languages…