Nicolas Martin

2026 is off to a great start 🚀 Some exciting new results on northeastern Africa have just been resubmitted, and a brand-new postdoc project is launching with @nhm-london.bsky.social, supported by the @fondationfyssen.bsky.social.

Stay tuned for more soon ✨

Open access alert! 📝

Our paper is now free to read. Take a look if you haven't yet: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Well... here we are, I guess! Just submitted my PhD and it feels pretty unreal! So proud of this journey!

More exciting data on the Nile Valley is coming, plus some new projects to announce soon.

Stay tuned, this adventure is far from over! 👀

@isabellecrevecoeur.bsky.social @pacea.bsky.social

Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dates suggest multiple origins of ceramic technology in Early Holocene Africa Nature Communications - Several possible points of origin have been proposed for the spread of ceramic technology in Saharan Africa between 11–10,000 years ago. Here, the authors...

⚠️Paper Alert!⚠️
Excited to share this paper with @roccoro.bsky.social where we examined whether ceramic technology in Saharan Africa was the result of a single or multiple episodes of innovation & diffusion
rdcu.be/eJi3g

#ESHE2025
Super talk by @nclsmartin.bsky.social ‘Bony labyrinth morphology reveals 40,000 years of settlement history and population isolation in NE Africa’
Nile Valley: pop discontinuity in late Up Ple – endogamy?
AHP pop connectivity
Horn: also ~biol isolation, pathologies! huge variation

Thrilled to be once again at #ESHE2025, this year in Paris! 🇫🇷
Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be presenting our latest findings on the population history of Northeastern Africa 🌍 — with new data on continuity, isolation, and the inner ear. 👂
Stay tuned!

‼️📣Extremely proud to see this great collaborative work out!

Oldest Shell Ornament Workshop in Western Europe at Saint-Césaire: www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1...

#Prehistory #Archaeology #Chatelperronian #Shells #Beads #Homosapiens #Neandertal #Ornament

Details of discovery & implications ⏬ 🧵 1/20

Cultural, economic, and settlement shifts over the last 9,000 years at Kakapel Rockshelter, Western Kenya The spread of food production in sub-Saharan Africa involved multi-directional dispersals of domesticated plant and animal species, often associated with major migrations. The Lake Victoria Basin of e...

New paper out! journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Jaroslav Brůžek at the SAP conference

It is with deep sadness that the SAP announces the passing of Jaroslav Brůžek, Professor at the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague and Emeritus Research Director at the CNRS.

The scientific community has lost a pillar; the SAP has lost a dear friend.

SAfA 2025 in Faro is starting in 2 days! I will be presenting our preliminary results from Hattab II Cave on Tuesday afternoon at session 43. Come see my presentation if you are interested in the possible late persistence of the Iberomaurusian at this site :) #AncientDNA

ANNOUNCEMENT INTERNATIONAL TENDER FOR THE RECRUITMENT OF A POST-DOCTORAL ASSOCIATE RESEARCHER recruit one (1) ) post-doctoral assistant researcherresearcher to perform duties in the scientific area of Geochronology / Plio-Pleistocene Geology or related areas, under the research project “

Very happy to announce that a new postdoctoral position on the New ERC funded Western Rift Archaeology and Palaeoenvironment Project is open - if you're a geologist or geochronologist come and join us at @icarehb.bsky.social euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/358068 Feel free to share it around.

🦷 A common embryological, developmental, and genetic background is shared between dentine and cortical bone. @mathilde-augoyard.bsky.social and team found coordinated variation between their volumes in human limb bones and teeth, suggesting shared factors influencing their postnatal development 🦴

Enamel–dentine junction morphology reveals population replacement and mobility in the late prehistoric Middle Nile Valley | PNAS Transitions from foraging to food-production represent a worldwide turning point in recent human history. In the Middle Nile Valley this cultural s...

🚨14.000 years of population history revealed!🚨

What happened to the late prehistoric populations in the Nile Valley?
Our new study uncovers major migrations, population replacement and regional mobility at the Neolithic transition!

1/7🧵 👇

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Pictured is a mustached monkey (Cercopithecus cephus) at ZooParc de Beauval, France. Rayhane Nchioua et al. investigated the origins of unusually high cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) dinucleotide levels in simian immunodeficiency viruses found in mustached monkeys and mona monkeys (Cercopithecus mona). CREDIT: ZooParc de Beauval.

Read highlights in this week’s issue of PNAS: We uncover the prehistoric population history of the Middle Nile Valley, explore Pacific cupped oysters and hitchhiking invaders, and analyze how an antibody prevents fertilization at the egg-sperm interface. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Enamel–dentine junctions of late prehistoric individuals from the Nile Valley. CREDIT: Nicolas Martin

A look at the enamel–dentine junctions of the teeth of ancient Egyptians suggests that foraging people were replaced by farmers during the 6th millennium BCE, rather than taking up farming themselves. Some foragers persisted in Sudan. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Ancient genomes from the Green #Sahara. Study led by @nadasalem.bsky.social, @hringbauer.bsky.social & Johannes Krause reveals a long-isolated North African human lineage in the Central Sahara during the African Humid Period over 7,000 years ago. tinyurl.com/43maxc7k & www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A great summary of our latest article has just been published by our colleagues at the @unikarlova.cuni.cz. Thanks so much for this!

www.ff.cuni.cz/2025/04/food...

📃Access to the original paper 📃: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

@isabellecrevecoeur.bsky.social @pacea.bsky.social

#RésultatScientifique🔎
Une étude menée par le laboratoire PACEA révèle des découvertes inédites sur le peuplement de l'Égypte et du Soudan, grâce à l'analyse de dents humaines vieilles de 4 000 à 18 000 ans.
▶️ www.inee.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/...

HEAS Seminar - Human Evolution and the Palaeolithic - HEAS As part of the HEAS Seminar Series in Human Evolution and the Palaeolithic, Matthew Skinner from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology will give a talk on How hidden structures of bones a...

We are looking forward to welcoming Matthew Skinner @matthewskinnerphd.bsky.social to Vienna next week for a #HEASSeminar in #HumanEvolutionandthePalaeolithic. Registration for online and in-person participation is on our website 🔗👇

www.heas.at/events/heas-...

This work results from a long-term collaboration of researchers from international institutions and support by the local authorities.

Thanks so much to all co-authors, including @isabellecrevecoeur.bsky.social, @clement-zanolli.bsky.social, @fredericsantos.bsky.social !

This research was funded by @univbordeaux.bsky.social, @cnrs.fr, @cnrsecologie.bsky.social, @agencerecherche.bsky.social, @unikarlova.cuni.cz, Czech Science fondation, @ncn.gov.pl

@pacea.bsky.social

7/7

Enamel–dentine junction morphology reveals population replacement and mobility in the late prehistoric Middle Nile Valley | PNAS Transitions from foraging to food-production represent a worldwide turning point in recent human history. In the Middle Nile Valley this cultural s...

Want to read more about these exciting new data? Read the full paper here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 📃

6/7

Map showing the location of the mid-Holocene samples included and their respective population (colors) and cultural affinities (dashed lines). Mobility and interactions along the Wadi Howar

We also discovered evidence of mobility along the Wadi Howar river during the Neolithic period: some individuals from the desert show a "Nilotic-like" signal, while individuals from the Southern Dongola Reach (along the Nile) show a forager/desert-like ancestry - suggesting regional exchanges.🚶‍♂️🚶‍♀️
5/7

Schematic synthesis of the settlement processes and population history of the Nile Valley from the Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene

Interestingly, while the new food-producing population replaced the previous hunter-gatherers along the Nile, we identified a forager-related population in the Eastern Sahara.

This suggests that Neolithic newcomers did not extend further into the desert margins and settled along the Nile only.
4/7

Schematic representation of the chronological variation in the morphology of the enamel-dentine junction (UM1)

We found significant morphological differences between the last foragers and first food-producers in the region.
Considering the extremely high phylogenetic signal of the EDJ, this provides clear evidence of biological discontinuity and migration towards the valley at the Neolithic transition 🔄
3/7

Digitization of a first upper molar (Left) and views of the enamel dentine junction of two individuals (Right)

We analyzed the enamel-dentine junction (EDJ) -a highly reliable proxy for population affinities- of 88 individuals from Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene sites in Sudan and Southern Egypt. We focused on the first and second upper molars of these individuals. 🦷

2/7

Enamel–dentine junction morphology reveals population replacement and mobility in the late prehistoric Middle Nile Valley | PNAS Transitions from foraging to food-production represent a worldwide turning point in recent human history. In the Middle Nile Valley this cultural s...

🚨14.000 years of population history revealed!🚨

What happened to the late prehistoric populations in the Nile Valley?
Our new study uncovers major migrations, population replacement and regional mobility at the Neolithic transition!

1/7🧵 👇

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Cfp for Sudan studies conference

Are you a PGR or ECR working on research to do with Sudan, South Sudan or Egypt?

The Sudan Studies Research conference cfp is open for abstract submissions!

Deadline is the 31st March

www.sudan-conference.com

#sudan #southsudan #egypt #law #policy #education #science #heritage #archaeology

🧵 1/2 PhD Opportunity! Join my new HEAR lab
@ the University of Zurich (Sept 2025) to research hominin hearing evolution. 4yr contract, SNSF funded. Focus: cochlear anatomy, computational modeling, fossil hearing. shorturl.at/ohH44

ESHE 2025 goes to Paris, France! Join us in person for talks and posters from Sept 25–27, with a public keynote on Sept 24. Excursion details are coming soon. More info on the meetings page this March! #ESHE2025