The new ScienceCampus, approved yesterday by the Senate of the Leibniz Association, will therefore start to take a closer look at caves and their sediments in order to investigate long-term demographic changes and relationships between humans, animals, plants, and 

microorganisms, both inside and outside of the immediate cave environment. To achieve this goal, the ScienceCampus will also develop new molecular, computational, geochemical, and geoarchaeological methods for analyzing sedimentary ancient DNA from caves. One of the caves under investigation is the UNESCO site “Hohle Fels” in the Swabian Jura, where excavations are currently taking place under the direction of Professor Conard. This cave provides an ideal platform to study the interactions between humans and other organisms from the last Ice Age to the present use for the purpose of “cave tourism.”

The Leibniz ScienceCampi provide Leibniz institutions and universities with the opportunity for topically focused cooperation in terms of a regional partnership. The aim is to create networks in order to further develop the respective research areas and strengthen the scientific environment. Leibniz ScienceCampi conduct strategic research, promote interdisciplinarity in topics, projects, and methods, raise the global visibility of the respective locations, and strengthen their research profile. Researchers at the new ScienceCampus in Tübingen will have access to an annual sum of one million euros over a period of four years.

“Our new Leibniz ScienceCampus in Tübingen shines a light into the darkness of caves! We are extremely excited about the multidisciplinary collaboration in this unique and innovative research field,” says Prof. Dr. Klement Tockner, Director General of the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, and he continues, “In Tübingen, archaeologists, geneticists, bioinformaticians, microbiologists, geochemists, geoecologists, paleontologists, and paleoclimatologists will collaborate to increase our understanding of the interaction between humans and ecosystems in the past and the impact of humans on the ecosystems over time, based on DNA analyses. We are transcending disciplinary and institutional boundaries to create a creative scientific environment that will provide new and undoubtedly surprising insights into human history.”

Website of the Leibniz ScienceCampi