Inauguration of the Center for the Human Past
Centrumets huvudansvariga, fr v professor Karl-Johan Lindholm, professor Mattias Jakobsson, professor Jenny Larsson, professor Harald Hammarström och professor Carina Schlebusch.
On 26 April 2024, the Center for the Human Past will be inaugurated at Uppsala University. The centre brings together the three research areas of archaeology, genetics, and linguistics in order to provide an overall picture of human development over the past 10,000 years.
“Language is an important part of understanding human history during these years,” says the centre’s director, Mattias Jakobsson, a professor at the Department of Organismal Biology.
The centre is one of five centres of excellence at the university that have received funding from the Swedish Research Council. The new centre will serve as a virtual hub where researchers from Uppsala University and Stockholm University can develop collaborations on human prehistory, culture and language. A graduate school will also offer education and research in the fields of archaeology, population genetics, and historical linguistics.
At the same time, a physical collaboration environment will be established at Uppsala’s Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS), an interdisciplinary research institute. A visiting researcher programme will also be established there.
Integrating large data sets and methods
Today’s access to growing databases has increased researchers’ opportunities to integrate collected data and methods from different subjects into their analyses, explains Mattias Jakobsson.
“We can now use advanced computational tools to understand human prehistory, which seems to be far more complex than previously believed.”
Discerning patterns
The last 10,000 years have been shaped by agricultural food production, population growth and linguistic changes, and the emergence of early civilisations. It is hoped that the new centre will bring together insights into human prehistory and provide glimpses of the larger patterns.
“We don’t know what language the people who lived 5,000 years ago spoke, but we can map their DNA to see how they are related to those of us alive today. With the help of genetics, we can then link together the archaeological artefacts that have been described.”
Anneli Björkman
Center for the Human Past
- The inaugural event will take place on 26 April 2024, from 10:00 to 12:00, in Friessalen at the Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University.
No pre-registration needed; first come, first served… - The Center for the Human Past is one of five excellent research environments at Uppsala University that have received grants from the Swedish Research Council in the 2022 call. Each research environment is receiving SEK 4–6 million per year over a five-year period, with the possibility of extension after evaluation.
- The funds will go to long-term programme activities in which researchers from different disciplines collaborate on a theme or issue. This is the core around which they will build a centre for research and education activities.