Leverhulme Trust awards £1.2m for study of earliest Britons
Submitted by Alun on Wednesday, 26 September 2001 Page Views: 826
DiscoveriesThe Leverhulme Trust has awarded The Natural History Museum and partners a grant of over one million pounds for a five-year study of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB).Scientists from The Natural History Museum, The British Museum, Royal Holloway and other institutes will work together to investigate such questions as: when people first arrived in Britain, why people were apparently absent between 170,000 and 70,000 years ago, and what factors led to their survival or local extinction.
Although human occupation of Britain extends back at least 500,000 years ago, environmental impacts on human populations must often have been serious and even catastrophic, as human occupation has only been continuous for the last 12,000 years.
Old and new material and the latest scientific methods will be used to examine what circumstances allowed early human survival, and what factors interrupted it. Actual fossils of humans are very rare in Britain, but evidence of human occupation is scattered over the landscape, preserved in ancient river deposits, and stored in caves, in the form of stone tools and animal bones. Fossil remains can tell us what the people looked like, stone tools can reveal details of their behaviour and adaptations, while associated sediments and animal remains can be analysed to unlock the secrets of ancient climates and environments.
‘This is the most ambitious project ever attempted to examine the early human occupation of Britain. Through the AHOB study we hope to achieve significant breakthroughs in understanding when people were here and how they were able to adapt under challenging conditions.’
Professor Chris Stringer, Head of Human Origins, The Natural History Museum
During the five-year study AHOB will maintain a public website that will be accessible via the NHM’s website: www.nhm.ac.uk/science/index.html from late 2001.
Press Release from the NHM
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