LAUSR

The study of deep and more recent human history in Africa requires a cross-disciplinary perspective. To better understand the origin of our species and the complex human diversity of current-day populations from this continent, paleoanthropologists, archeologists, historical linguistics, anthropologists, and geneticists participated in the “Africa, the cradle of human diversity” international conference during May 22–25, 2019 (https://africathecradleofhumandiversity.com), at Uppsala University, Sweden (Figure 1). Leading researchers presented and discussed new results and multidisciplinary approaches to address long-standing questions about human evolutionary history and population dynamics in Africa and beyond. The conference covered an extensive time range in human evolution, starting with the evolution of early humans in Africa to the complex cultural and genetic diversity of modern-day African populations (Table 1). The conference had broad geographic representation, with attendees from Sweden, the United States, South Africa, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Germany, Zimbabwe, Canada, India, France, Italy, Czech Republic, Uganda, Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey, Sudan, and Ethiopia (Figure 2). International participants were from a wide range of academic positions and had diverse academic backgrounds; 52% of attendees and 48% of invited speakers were female, and 31% were from underrepresented countries. The scientific content of the conference included two keynote lectures, nine plenary sessions, two workshops, two poster sessions, and four short-talks by young researchers (Table 1). Plenary sessions varied in focus from largely theoretical to completely empirical studies, while focusing on human populations from different geographic regions and time periods in Africa. Two independently organized workshops, before and after the conference, respectively, focusing on more in-depth discussions of African linguistics and on quantitative methods for excavating the past from genomes, enriched scientific discussions. The conference featured two keynote lectures by leading researchers. Marlize Lombard (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) presented a holistic approach to better understand the evolution of human cognition and hunting technologies in early humans, on the basis of the gene-culture co-evolution model, and Lluis Quintana-Murci