News

PhD on HESCOR-topic awarded with distinction

Congratulations! Max Brockmann, long-standing cooperation partner and team member of HESCOR, completed his PhD with distinction! His interdisciplinary research on topics related to HESCOR presents a novel mathematical approach to tracing human migration during the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods.
HESCOR news

Virtual Exhibition Opening

Finally, after one year of continuous work, the HESCOR Virtual Exhibition opens today, 23 October 2026, at 16:00.

If you cannot join us in person, you are very welcome to follow the opening online via Zoom. The programme begins with welcoming words by the project leads Prof. Andreas Maier and Prof. Nikki Vercauteren … [read more here]
HESCOR News

Early Farming societies made settlement choices by more than just the environment

Settlement patterns of early farming communities are closely related to specific environmental parameters. However, these patterns change over time and vary regionally. To gain a deeper understanding of these dynamics, this study examines regional and diachronic differences in the site selection of Neolithic settlements during the 6th and 5th mill. BCE in North Rhine-Westphalia and Northwestern Bavaria.
HESCOR News

Animals as agents of environmental learning and adaptation

A new open-access paper reviews overlooked evidence for how nonhuman animals shape human environmental perception and knowledge, developing a novel theoretical framework for studying its consequences in the past.
HESCOR News

Learning about past earth systems through continental drilling!

WG5 member Dr. Elena Robakiewicz has been a true whirlwind of an international tour summer, through her association with the ICDP.
HESCOR news

HESCOR Featured on Forschungsförderung NRW

Forschungsförderung NRW has published a new feature on HESCOR, introducing the project’s interdisciplinary research, collaborative structure, and approaches to communicating science to a wider audience.
HESCOR news

HESCOR guest-edited special issue announced in the Journal of Quaternary Science

HESCOR project leads Andreas Maier and Nikki Vercauteren are guest editing a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Quaternary Science on human-Earth system interactions, population dynamics, and cultural evolution during the Pleistocene and Holocene. HESCOR subprojects are preparing contributions, and the call is also open to external submissions.
HESCOR @ conferences

Three EGU 2026 contributions from HESCOR

At EGU26 in Vienna, HESCOR members presented three projects linking palaeoclimate data, archaeology, vegetation modelling, and machine-learning approaches to study past Human–Earth system dynamics.
New publication

Human occupation of the Afroalpine Bale Mountains at the onset of the African Humid Period

What are the reasons for the intermittent human use of harsh Afroalpine environments in prehistory? High-resolution glacial and archaeological chronologies from Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains now offer insights into landscape change and human adaptations at high altitudes.
New publication

Bachelor’s Thesis on Efficient Least-Cost Path Modelling

How can large topographic datasets be reduced while still producing realistic least-cost paths? In her Bachelor’s thesis, HESCOR research assistant Lena Perlberg explores how wavelet-based compression can be combined with graph-based routing to enable more realistic and computationally efficient least-cost path analyses.
New publication

Lessons from deep drilling in the Chew Bahir basin

How can continuous environmental records be recovered from the southern Ethiopian Rift? This study presents the Chew Bahir drilling campaign, showing how overlapping sediment cores enable high-resolution reconstructions of past climate and human evolution.
HESCOR news

Seminar: Interdisciplinary perspectives on Human and Earth system coupled research

Curious about how humans and the Earth interact in complex, dynamic systems? Explore cutting-edge research and modelling approaches from climate science, archaeology, mathematics, and the humanities - all in one seminar!
New publication

Simulating Neanderthal–modern human dynamics in Ice Age Iberia

A new open-access study in PLOS ONE presents a high-resolution simulation of population dynamics during the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic Transition (roughly 50,000–38,000 years ago) on the Iberian Peninsula.
Student Perspectives

Überleben und Wissenschaft im Wandel

Von Großwildjagd zur Polykrise: Student der HESCOR Ringvorlesung Tristan Boente erklärt, warum wir für die komplexen Herausforderungen unserer Zeit neue wissenschaftliche Denkansätze brauchen!
Student Perspectives

Is climate change natural?

What makes Earth Scientists so sure that the current climate crisis is man-made? HESCOR Ringvorlesung student Bethan Callow explains why scientists have a lot of certainty about our role in current global climate changes!
New publication

A cautionary tale about replication

Archaeologists have recently started to argue that replicating observations and results is key to their science. Dr. Krist Vaesen and Dr. Shumon T. Hussain take a critical look at this emerging debate and argue that replication needs to also serve the diverse knowledge goals of the discipline and should thus not narrow the scope of archaeological inquiry.
New publication

Stone Age clothing reveals human-animal relationships

We often think of clothing in early human evolution as "dress", "haute couture" or simply as functional (protection against the cold, etc.). Dr. Shumon T. Hussain argues that this has fundamentally clouded our view for the role of clothing in negotiating past human-animal relationships.
Upcoming Event

A Human and Earth Systems Database Beyond HESCOR

Upcoming HESCOR Vision Forum Session on expanding and collaborating on an Human and Earth Systems Database post-HESCOR!
New publication

Reconstructing 35,000 Years of Hydroclimate at Lake Nakuru

Dr. Elena Robakiewicz and her colleagues used a multi-proxy record to better understand changes at Lake Nakuru in Kenya starting about 40,000 years ago. They found that multi-proxy records are especially necessary in highly alkaline soda lakes and that Lake Nakuru's chemistry may have changed with short-term changes in climate related to the Northern Hemisphere.
New publication

Minding difference and diversity in the past

The study of human-animal relationships in the deep past is fraught with anachronisms and present-day stereotypes and thus requires careful calibration of archaeological concepts and observations in order to avoid backprojection.
HESCOR news

HESCOR’s Knowledge Transfer

HESCOR’s presence across major national and international conferences highlights the project’s role in advancing knowledge transfer, methodological innovation, and interdisciplinary exchange in Human–Earth system research.
HESCOR news

BLE & HESCOR Workshop

Join researchers from the BLE and HESCOR profile-building projects for a joint workshop exploring how interdisciplinary collaboration can shape future university structures.
New publication

Reconstructing European’s Ice Age Landscapes

New publication reconstructing European vegetation from 60–20 ka BP, revealing glacial–interglacial shifts in land cover and offering new tools to explore past ecosystems and their dynamics.
Upcoming Event

Transitions and Networks During the Neolithic in Europe

Upcoming HESCOR Vision Forum Session on European Neolithic Transitions, Networks, and Beyond.
New publication

Convivial Heritage

New publication on the need to investigate convivial forms of species coexistence in the deep past and to engage with questions of convivial co-living in heritage and museum spaces.
Upcoming Event

Politics of more-than-human life and Earth System Science

Upcoming Vision Session on planetary habitability, multispecies politics and a humanities-induced Earth System Science co-organized with MESH.
New publication

The Animal Within

Theoretically informed review of Late Pleistocene rock art in Europe and South America reveals how the agency of nonhuman animals and the materiality of rock shaped early art-making practices.
New publication

Foxes and Humans: Dietary Choices at Isturiz

The analysis of stable isotopes from Early Upper Palaeolithic foxes points to possible human-mediated feeding patterns at Isturitz (Southwestern France).
HESCOR researchers

Drilling into Deep Time

HESCOR Researcher, Dr. Elena Robakiewicz, was one of 65 scientists from all over the world who gathered in Potsdam from July 12-15 to discuss ideas for scientific drilling of Lake Kinneret in Israel.
New publication

Living Encyclopedia

Shumon T. Hussain was invited to write an authoritative overview of core themes, findings and research frontiers in the emerging field of Palaeolithic human-animal studies.
HESCOR news

ZOOGESTURES

A new project on the role of other animals in human technological evolution has been funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung.
HESCOR news

HESCOR Comics Coming Soon

Our collaboration with Dr. Frederik Reumont from the Institute of Geography Education aims to create educational comics about the interdisciplinary scientific process for a broad audience. Watch a sneak preview here.
New publication

A Blueprint for Integrating Environmental and Cultural Systems

An interdisciplinary study with Co-Author Andreas Maier from HESCOR explores how an archaeology of climate change can help to bridge the current gap between cultural and Earth system models. The researchers outline a conceptual framework for developing integrative models for future research.
HESCOR news

HESCOR Workshop: Network Analysis and Graph Databases

Join us on May 23, 2025 for the HESCOR Workshop on Network Analysis and Graph Databases—explore methods and applications for HESCOR research questions. Register to participate online or in person.
New publication

Climate Change and Human Populations

A new study led by HESCOR researchers Isabell Schmidt and Andreas Maier reveals eastwards shifts in prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations as a response to extreme climate changes in Europe 12,000 years ago.
HESCOR news

Lecture Series: A Journey Through Time and Scientific Disciplines

HESCOR researchers present their interdisciplinary work on exploring deep-time human–environment interactions and the potential of computational modelling. The six-part series starts on April 14, 2025, and is open to all.
HESCOR @ conferences

HESCOR @ Kiel Conference

HESCOR researchers host session on Approaches to Coupling Earth and Human System Data at the Kiel Conference this year.
HESCOR news

Yaping Shao Receives ISAR Distinguished Career Award 2025

Professor Yaping Shao has been awarded the prestigious ISAR Distinguished Career Award 2025. This accolade recognizes his exceptional contributions to aeolian research, his mentorship of emerging researchers and his significant impact in teaching and international collaborations.
HESCOR news

ECOLITHIC

New Project on the Macro-Evolution of Palaeolithic Stone Artefact Technologies.
HESCOR researcher Shumon Hussain is awarded with prestigious funding by the VolkswagenFoundation (0.5 million) to conduct novel research on the long-term evolution of palaeo-technospheres in Western and Central Europe.
HESCOR @ conferences

Using Math to Map Stone Age Migrations

Two mathematicians associated with HESCOR – Max Brockmann and Lena Perlberg – will present their methodologies to reconstruct human dynamics in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic of Europe at the 34th Rhein-Ruhr-Workshop.
HESCOR news

HESCOR at KölnerKinerUni

The KölnerKinderUni invites young explorers (3rd to 6th grade) to experience the excitement of university research firsthand. This year, the young scientists will have the opportunity to explore the interdisciplinary research of HESCOR in an exciting role play.
New publication

Human Behaviour Shaped Past Scavenger Dynamics

A team of researchers from the universities of Tübingen and Cologne examined long-term changes in human impacts on the composition of Late Pleistocene scavenger guilds.
HESCOR news

Parameterising the Human System

The 3rd HESCOR Workshop will commence on November 25th at the University of Cologne, focusing on technical perspectives in human-system processes, parameterization, and modeling approaches.
New publication

Toward „Animal Prehistory“

Shumon Hussain discusses a new field of research in the making and its key challenges, especially the historical changeability of animal behaviour.
New publication

Our Way to Europe – A New Model

The research paper by Yaping Shao et al. provides a detailed reconstruction of the dispersal process of the first anatomically modern humans into Europe, combining large climate and archaeological datasets.
HESCOR news

Learning from Human Data

Our workshop brings together experts working with data at the interface of the humanities and the environmental sciences, seeking new approaches to bridge disciplinary barriers. It will be held in July 2024 at the University of Cologne.
HESCOR news

Blog-Writing Workshop

To empower and promote outreach competencies among the HESCOR team, WP5 invited Dr. Mathew Stiller-Reeve for a two-day seminar on how to write texts that can cross disciplinary, institutional and educational barriers.
HESCOR news

Advisory Board Complete

Our HESCOR Advisory Board is now complete and may provide advice and support to the project and its members.
New publication

Animals Adapted to Human Environments

Shumon Hussain explores how animals developed novel behaviours when living in human-shaped environments (palaeo-synanthropy), in turn influencing the evolution of human societies in the deep past.
New publication

Early Warning Signals

The Sahara changed from a humid green to today’s hyperarid environment about 5.500 years ago. A new study with Verena Förster and Frank Schäbitz shows that there were possible early warning signals.
HESCOR researchers

Because Facts Are Not Enough

Kate Rigby and Roman Bartosch explore how we can share the planet with other creatures - and why humans are the only hope and the biggest obstacle to climate protection.
HESCOR @ conferences

Introducing the Project to Colleagues

The HESCOR-Project was presented to colleagues working on Pleistocene archaeology at the 65th Annual Meeting of the Hugo-Obermaier Society in Weimar in April 2024.
HESCOR researchers

The Weather Is Pure Chaos

Meteorologists Nikki Vercauteren and Susanne Crewell use data and algorithms to understand what is happening in the Earth's atmosphere. This is complicated, for the past and future.
New publication

The Human Side of Biodiversity

By looking at archaeological evidence from the deep past, Shumon Hussain and Chris Baumann argue that humans increase the heterogeneity and complexity of ecosystems, with positive effects on biodiversity.
HESCOR news

HESCOR Is Funded

The state government announced that HESCOR has succeded in the new funding round for innovative research of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
CONTACT
Universität zu Köln
Weyertal 125
50931 Köln
Germany
Dr. Isabell Schmidt
Coordination
Phone: +49 221 470-3385
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Mo.-Fr.: 9–15 Uhr
Funded by:

University of cologne