This project focuses on the study of Neanderthal and early modern human behavior, primarily on the basis of stone tools, fauna and spatial patterns

In Nature researchers at Leiden University and Utrecht University show how 47 teeth from Southern China indicate that anatomically modern humans where present at least 80,000 years ago in the region. This is 40,000 years earlier than in Europe.

This volume, edited by Erika Kuijpers, Judith Pollmann, Johannes Müller and Jasper van der Steen, discusses practices of memory in early modern Europe.

An international team of researchers including Leiden archaeologists has produced convincing evidence that 300,000 years ago pre-Neanderthal people had a high level of cognitive complexity. New insights into early human capabilities and behaviour.

The routine assumption that Upper Palaeolithic early modern humans in Europe were regular fire users who produced fire at will has never been tested against the archaeological record. Utilizing literature, database and microwear analytical approaches, this project seeks to establish the role and forms…

Neanderthals and modern humans in Belgium, a bone story

Nederland ligt in de periferie van het verhaal van menswording. De evolutie van onze familie vindt lang exclusief in Afrika plaats. En, als Europa eenmaal bewoond wordt door mensachtigen, ligt het zwaartepunt ten zuiden van onze streken. Toch heeft ons land een aantal interessante vindplaatsen en vondsten…

This book project explores the changing dynamics of marriage and family life in postwar Japan based on an examination of the life histories of single mothers.

Drawing on a broad array of sources, this project examines modern retrievals of Bacon’s idols, thereby testing Justus von Liebig’s intriguing observation, back in 1863, that Bacon’s name lived on mainly in mottos or stereotypical phrases. More importantly, it examines the rhetorical purposes served…

Scientist looked for the genetic footprint of fire use in our genes, but found that our prehistoric cousins - the Neanderthals - and even the great apes seem better at dealing with the toxins in smoke than modern humans.

The factors that dynamically sculpt the inter-regional correlation of brain patterns are poorly understood. Here, we test the hypothesis that they are shaped by the catecholaminergic neuromodulators norepinephrine and dopamine.

The Western Mediterranean is a key region to understand human dispersal events within and out of the African continent as well as for the eventual replacement of Neanderthals by anatomically modern humans during the Pleistocene. Central to any conclusive interpretation of archaeological and palaeoclimatic…

Collecting as much information as possible about administering a new medicine to people can save a lot of money.

One way for governments to conduct foreign policy and promote national interests is through direct outreach and communication with the population of a foreign country. This is called public diplomacy. Historians such as Helmer Helmers and William T. Rossiter have shown that printed media were already…

How have British cities changed in the years since the Second World War? And what drove this transformation? This innovative new history traces the development of the post-war British city, from the 1940s era of reconstruction, through the rise and fall of modernist urban renewal, up to the present-day…

The Altai region has yielded a cluster of Middle and Upper Paleolithic stratified sites that have been recently excavated using a multidisciplinary approach.

According to Thomson Reuters’ 2014 Journal Citation Reports® (JCR) and the Washington & Lee University School of Law 2014 Journal Rankings, 22 journals published by the University of Chicago Press rank at the top of their subject categories.

The genetic material of currently living Europeans is partly of Neandertal origin. Were our ancestors successful because they were hybridising and interacting with the local populations they encountered when migrating into new places? Reconstructing our evolutionary trajectory is key for rethinking…

Single-celled organisms have stiffer DNA than multicellular lifeforms like humans and rice. Theoretical physicists managed to simulate the folding in full genomes for the first time to reach this conclusion. Publication in Biophysical Journal on February 7.

PhD defence

This project investigates the causes of the major archaeological change in the period of 40.000-20.000 BC in South Africa.

Fascinating images, articles of clothing and other unique objects from the past four centuries of the history of Leiden University can now be seen in the ‘Celebrating Curiosity’ exhibition in the hall of Rapenburg 70.

With this thesis the PhD-candidate aims to enrich the body of evidence concerning the relation between stress and health, and the mediating role of (un)conscious perseverative cognitions, which is captured in the extended perseverative cognition hypothesis.

On October 14, the first symposium of the university-wide initiative SAILS took place. Scientists from Leiden University and other Dutch universities came together to share their enthusiasm and expertise in the field of Artificial Intelligence in a festive symposium, in the atmospheric Museum of Eth…

Conference

At the beginning of the corona pandemic, our Faculty appointed student mentors to guide first-year and international students. What drives these mentors, and what is it like to be back at the Faculty again? Mireia and Marten tell us all about it.

Medicines can work even if they have no active ingredient. The first international scientific conference on placebos will take place in Leiden from 2 to 4 April. Placebo researcher Andrea Evers, who is also chairing the conference, answers some pressing questions.

Lecture, China Seminar

Jos F. Brosschot has been appointed as a professor by special appointment on the chair ‘psychophysiological mechanisms of stress in daily life’. This chair has been created by the Foundation for Research into Psychosocial Stress.

Our vision of stress is starting to change fundamentally. We can suffer stress without even being aware of it, while sleeping as wall as during the day. Professor of Psychology Jos Brosschot will discuss this phenomenon in his inaugural lecture on 2 December.

Andrea Evers has received an NWO research talent grant with Jelle van Leusden as the PhD candidate. This grant enables them to start a research project to examine whether automatically regulated responses, such as the circadian rhythm, can be conditioned during sleep.

To relieve a patient's pain, it can be effective to induce expectations. This finding is promising for optimising the effectiveness of treatments, conclude Kaya Peerdeman and colleagues in their article in PAIN.

Receiving positive support and seeing yourself as being a quitter may help smokers quit, say Eline Meijer and colleagues. The health psychologists published their study in Social Science & Medicine.

A new health programme will reward patients with - or at risk of developing - cardio-vascular diseases for keeping to a healthy lifestyle. A research group including psychologist Andrea Evers has been awarded 2.5 million euros by the Dutch Heart Foundation and the Ministry of Public Health, Welfare…