Frido Welker

Project title

MiddleEarth: Eurasian Hominin occupation history from the Middle to the Late Pleistocene

What is your project about?

We know that Neanderthals, Denisovans, and earlier populations of modern humans ventured into Central Eurasia at various moments in time across the last 500,000 years. There is sparse archaeological and ancient molecular data from the region, however, limiting our understanding of the palaeoecology, subsistence strategies, and hominin occupation histories across this vast geographic region. We will extract ancient proteins from mammalian fossils, and integrate the resulting proteomic data with zooarchaeological knowledge to characterise Pleistocene human subsistence strategies for a few key archaeological sites. From the same sites, we will recover ancient protein sequences from hominin fossils to determine which hominin populations were present. Together, this will allow us to start exploring the ebb-and-flow of hominin presence and behaviours across this vast area.

How did you become interested in your particular field of research?

Frustration! When I conducted a BA thesis involving ancient DNA, I got frustrated with the vast number of extractions that failed due to poor DNA preservation in the coprolites I was trying to study. When I then read about ancient proteins potentially preserving longer than ancient DNA, I decided to move to York in the United Kingdom for a MSc in Archaeological Sciences. There I had the opportunity to explore my curiosity in ancient protein analysis with my interest in human evolution, and it is this combination that has kept me captivated and motivated ever since.

What are the scientific challenges and perspectives in your project?

Protein preservation might, in some cases, not be ideal for all the samples that we wish to study, and the knowledge we therefore gain on human subsistence strategies and population genetic affinities might consequently be limited for some fossils. At the same time, the rewards are big for those fossils where preservation is good enough, or when we discover novel human bone specimens through proteomic screening approaches. We will therefore start obtaining new molecular data for a very interesting area of the world.

What is your estimate of the impact, which your project may have to society in the long term?

We know Neanderthals from Europe, and many of us know that our own species evolved largely in Africa. We tend to forget, though, both in the public eye and sometimes in scientific discourse, that the vast central areas of Eurasia were also occupied by Neanderthals, modern humans, and Denisovans, of whom we know so little but who were at least present in eastern Asia. By addressing this knowledge gap, the project will also provide fresh insights into the collective evolutionary history that we all share with our extinct nephews and nieces.

Which impact do you expect the Sapere Aude programme will have on your career as a researcher?

It is a great honour to receive the Sapere Aude: DFF-Research Leader-grant, and a recognition of the work that myself and my group have been doing to utilise palaeoproteomics in human evolution studies. Receiving the grant allows me to build collaborations in a region of the world in which I have worked very little so far, but that is central to understanding the dispersal, presence, and evolution of Neanderthals, Denisovans, and ourselves. The project also allows me to further develop myself as a research leader, and initiate collaborations involving our palaeoproteomic knowledge with communities where this technology is not available yet.

Background and personal life

Originally from the Netherlands, an academic wander through the United Kingdom and Germany brought me to Copenhagen. There I found the possibility to combine creativity and curiosity in our proteomic analysis of our shared evolutionary past. My partner and I have recently settled down in Brøndby Strand, where our 1-year old is exploring the complex life of being a toddler, and, when he allows us, we find some relaxation in gardening and birdwatching.