EUR 1.7 mln grant secured for study of prehistoric fertility

BELGRADE - Belgrade-based scientist Sofija Stefanovic and her team have managed to secure a EUR 1.7 million European Research Council (ERC) grant for a scientific project of research into population growth in prehistoric times.

It is the first time ever in the history of Serbian science that the ERC has named a scientific project from Serbia as one of the most excellent scientific endeavours in Europe.

The research, titled BIRTH, will focus on an even better understanding of the Neolithic period between 10,000 BC and 5,000 BC, when the Earth's population grew demographically for the first time ever, Stefanovic - who works at the bioarchaeology laboratory of the Department of Archaeology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade - told Tanjug.

In the next five years, the Serbian scientist and her associates will attempt to explain what contributed to fertility rates multiplying several times over in one of the most significant periods of human evolution and produce direct data on the number of childbirths in prehistoric women, which would be a world first in the history of science.

Thus far, fertility research has been based on indirect indicators only, and we will work at individual level: since we will examine a large number of skeletons - around 500 of them - we will obtain a statistic of childbirths at prehistoric population level, Stefanovic said.

The project will also analyse prehistoric teeth, which, like skeletons, represent a very valuable source of information about the entire human life span, said the successful young scientist.

Lines of dental cement undergo certain changes during pregnancy and by analysing those lines we can count the childbirths at individual level, but also find out at...