Center for the Human Past
interdisciplinary research
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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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Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Cultural Creolization in Ostrobothnia, Finland: An Interdisciplinary View on Burials, Exchange, and Social Identity
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Read more →: Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Cultural Creolization in Ostrobothnia, Finland: An Interdisciplinary View on Burials, Exchange, and Social IdentityAbstract This talk explores a remarkable Iron Age burial from Pukkila in western Finland, dating to around AD 700, where a cremated individual was laid to rest in a boat alongside weapons, ritual objects, and artefacts from across Scandinavia, eastern Europe, and the north. Rather than fitting neatly into a single cultural or ethnic category,…
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Human Past Interdisciplinary Retreat – Impressions
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Read more →: Human Past Interdisciplinary Retreat – ImpressionsThe primary purpose of the retreat was to strengthen collaboration between geneticists, archaeologists and linguists in exploring the last 10,000 years of human history. The retreat, networking and team-building event at Sigtuna Stiftelsen offered an opportunity to learn about each other’s research through presentations and discussions and to lay the groundwork for future joint projects.The…
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Human Past Journal Club
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Read more →: Human Past Journal ClubDiscussion paper: Antonosyan, M., Maurer, G., Mkrtchyan, S., Boxleitner, K., Saribekyan, M., Hovhannisyan, A., … Amano, N., … & Yepiskoposyan, L. (2025). A biomolecular perspective on mobile pastoralism and its role in wider socioeconomic connections in the Chalcolithic South Caucasus. iScience, 28(6). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.112544 Abstract Mobile pastoralism is widely evoked when discussing technological developments, resource procurement, trans-regional interactions, and…
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Human Past Interdisciplinary Retreat
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Read more →: Human Past Interdisciplinary RetreatThe main goal of the retreat is to strengthen collaboration between different disciplines and to learn about each other’s research through presentations and discussions. We hope this retreat will lay a solid foundation for future joint interdisciplinary projects and scientific publications. The day plan includes short(-ish) talks, primarily by junior researchers and PhD students, as…
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New ENLIGHT Incubator Grant for the Center!
Read more →: New ENLIGHT Incubator Grant for the Center!The collaborative project Genetics, Linguistics and Archaeology in the Digital Age is one of 23 applications that will receive funding from ENLIGHT. ENLIGHT stands for European university Network to promote equitable quality of Life, sustaInability and Global engagement through Higher education Transformation. It is a network of ten European universities that supports academics and students in creating innovative teaching and learning…
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Human Past Journal Club
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Read more →: Human Past Journal ClubDiscussion paper: Yakov Pichkar and Nicole Creanza (2026). The Evolution of Language. Editor(s): Jason B. Wolf, Claudia Augusta De Moraes Russo, Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology (Second Edition), Academic Press, Pages 409-420, ISBN 9780443157516, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-443-15750-9.00030-6 Abstract The evolution of modern humans has led to the proliferation of traits that are learned from other individuals, instead of…
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Ideas that change the world.
Read more →: Ideas that change the world.Human Evolution was the focus of the latest episode (Season 6, Ep. 112) in the Nobel Prize Museum’s podcast series, Ideas that change the world, with Mattias Jakobsson. We all carry the entire history of humanity in our genes. When researchers examine the DNA of people living today and compare it with the genetic material…
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The Center starts own YouTube channel
Read more →: The Center starts own YouTube channelIn our quest to disseminate knowledge and educate about interdisciplinary research on human prehistory, we add selected recorded seminars (Talks of the Past open seminars in particular) and other related and relevant videos on YouTube.
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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…