Ecology of the past

Mapping Ancient Africa: Schedule of events

INQUA congress Rome 2023

There will be an Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) session at the INQUA Rome congress in 2023. The session is entitled “Mapping Ancient Africa: Climate, Vegetation & Humans” this session is supported by the Palaeoclimate (PALCOM) and Human and Biosphere (HABCOM) commissions of INQUA. The session is being organised by the MAA team. For further details on the session click here. The session is open to people already linked with the MAA project and anyone who is interested to contribute and get involved. We aim to propose a special issue of Quaternary International based around (but not limited to) the papers that will be presented during the session.

Check out the INQUA Rome web pages (click here) for fully details, but key dates are:

• Deadline for submission of abstracts – 1 November 2022
• Deadline for early bird registration – 20 February 2023
• Deadline for registration – 20 March 2023

The MAA project is looking to financially support scientists travelling from Africa to INQUA Rome by assisting with registration fees and travel costs. Further details to be announced, however, if you think we can support you in this way then please get in contact.

Upcoming seminars

A series of online seminars associated with the Mapping Ancient Africa project will commence in 2021. The purpose of these seminars is to promote and stimulate discussion among participants, talks will be delivered via Zoom and are open to all. To obtain the Zoom link please contact one of the organisers.

Talks will be around 20 minutes followed by a discussion.

• Agreed but date to be confirmed – Céline Vidal (University of Cambridge) Age of the oldest Homo sapiens from eastern Africa; chaired by William Gosling.
• 6 October (17:00-18:00 CEST) – Verena Foerster (Universität zu Köln) Pleistocene climate variability in eastern Africa influenced hominin evolution; chaired by Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr.
• POSTPONED – NEW DATE TO BE CONFIRMED – Justin Pargeter, Tyler Faith and Brian Stewart “The potentials and pitfalls of linking climate and cultural change, with a focus on the archaeological record” followed by discussion of development of contributions for proposed MAA special issue of Quaternary International; chaired by Lynne Quick.

PAST EVENTS

Seminars 2022

• 11 April (17:00-18:00 CEST) – Sarah Ivory, Lynne Quick and Rahab Kinyanjui “The African Pollen Database, state of the art and best practices”. CLICK HERE TO WATCH RECORDING.
• 1 March 2022 (17:00-18:00 CET) – Minchao Wu (Uppsala University) “The impact of regional climate model formulation and resolution on simulated precipitation in Africa” followed by discussion of African climate systems function past and present. CLICK HERE TO WATCH RECORDING.
• 17 January 2022 (18:00-19:00 CET; 20:00-21:00 EAT) – Emmanuel Ndiema (National Museums of Kenya) “The Later Prehistory of South Eastern Lake Turkana basin” followed by discussion. CLICK HERE TO WATCH RECORDING.

Seminars 2021

• 16:00-17:00 CEST on 13 December 2021 – Tyler Faith (University of Utah) introducing his paper “Rethinking the ecological drivers of hominin evolution” (Trends in Ecology & Evolution, doi:10.1016/j.tree.2021.04.011); chaired by Lynne Quick. CLICK HERE TO WATCH RECORDING.
• 16:15-17:15 CEST on 6 December 2021 – Martin Trauth (University of Potsdam) introducing his paper “Northern hemisphere glaciation, African climate and human evolution” (Quaternary Science Reviews, doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107095); chaired by Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr

Kick-off meeting (October 2021)

The kick-off meeting of the Mapping Ancient Africa project took place on the 14 and 15 October 2021.

• Eastern Africa: National Museums of Kenya (Nairobi, Kenya)
• Southern Africa: Nelson Mandela University (Port Elisabeth, South Africa)
• Europe: University of Potsdam (Potsdam, Germany)
• Americas: Associated with the Geological Society of America congress (Portland, Oregon, USA)

This followed a hybrid (part face-to-face, part online) format, with part of the interaction taking place at each of the hubs and part online.

Pre-meeting information can be found at:

• Kick off meeting planning (14 and 15 October 2021)
• Paleo-ENSO, African climate and hominin evolution paper

In case you missed the kick off meeting, catch up with these videos of the cross-hub sessions: