Closing Symposium

ERC starting Grant project „Page“

Paleoanthropology at the Gates of Europe

Despite long study, European paleoanthropology continues to produce unexpected and surprising findings. Such discoveries have radically changed our ideas about human presence in Europe. The short chronology of Europe, once the dominant view of the human settlement of the continent, is challenged by evidence indicating colonization at over one million years ago. Nevertheless, the identity of the earliest colonizers, their place of origin, their adaptations enabling their dispersal and their relationship to later hominins remain unresolved.
The post 500 ka European paleoanthropological record is more abundant, but still difficult to interpret: the number of species present and their relationship to each other and to African/Asian contemporaries is not well understood. Finally, the arrival of modern humans, Homo sapiens, in Europe and the potential interactions with Homo neanderthalensis remain topics of debate. In this discussion crucial information that would decisively help resolve these problems is lacking. Such evidence would come from the gateway through which both archaic and early modern people likely entered Europe, the Balkan peninsula. This region lies directly on the most likely route of dispersal between Africa, W. Asia and Europe, and is one of the three major European refugia for fauna, flora and likely also human populations during glacial periods. Paleoanthropological research in the area, however, has generally been sparse.

PaGE (Paleoanthropology at the Gates of Europe) is an European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project, awarded to Prof. K. Harvati in 2011. Its goal is to help close this last research gap in European paleoanthropology and test our hypotheses about dispersals, refugia and systematics of European hominins. Over the course of the last five years (2012-2016), PaGE has conducted long-term field exploration, focusing on in situ recovery, in Greece, in collaboration with a number of institutions and partners in Greece: the Ephoreia of Paleoanthropology and Speleology of Southern Greece, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
PaGE has also focused on the (re-) interpretation of the known fossil record from Greece and the Balkans, and on promoting collaboration and networking among research teams working in South-Eastern Europe. The closing PaGE conference brings together multiple collaborating scientists from all the projects undertaken under PaGE and showcases the results and achievements of this landmark project.