Symposium: Diversifying Networks. How Culture Infuses the Environment, 8-10 October 2025, Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt am Main

Hominins are exceptional constructors of their ecosystems. Over the course of human
evolution, their achievements increasingly impacted the environment on a global scale,
transforming the conditions for development and evolution in unprecedented ways. Like some
animal species, hominins used tools to access resources—but they did so on a much broader
scale. They shifted their role in the carnivore guild from small game catchers and active
scavengers to big game hunters, thus providing food for other consumers. They expanded the
diversity of available food resources through the use of new technologies. They utilized raw
materials that their ancestors had previously ignored. They enriched their resource space with a
wide array of artifacts, which became part of the learning environments for future generations.
They diversified their social relationships and developed new forms of complex interaction.
Cultural achievements enabled them to penetrate areas that were previously unappealing or
inaccessible. The ecological consequences of this expansion were unpredictable.
In doing so, hominins created new conditions for individual performance and development, for
social learning, and for evolutionary processes—not only within their own species but also for
synanthropic niches of other species.
With the ROCEEH Symposium “Diversifying Networks – How Culture Infuses the Environment”,
we aim to explore and discuss the interplay between cultural achievements and environmental
aspects. How has the interconnection between hominins and their environment evolved? What
impact did hominins, through their cultural innovations, have on their surroundings and their
resource spaces? How did these resource spaces change—and how, in turn, did these changes
affect the evolutionary path of hominins and their cultural accomplishments?
At this international conference, we aim to bring together researchers who examine, from
various perspectives, the material, social, and ecological aspects of hominin achievements,
their macro- and micro-environments, and the mutual dependencies that have shaped human
evolution. By jointly assessing the current state of knowledge, we hope to gain a more
comprehensive and diachronic understanding of the diversifying ecological networks within
which human evolution has taken place.