Database with 2,400 prehistoric sites

Map showing the distribution of African, Asian and European sites in ROAD. Examples of the different types of finds ROAD contains are shown clockwise from lower left: stone handaxe, grinding stone covered in red ochre, shell ornament, stone projectile point, bovid skull, pollen grain, human cranium, double bone point, and piece of orange ochre. (Objects not shown to scale) Human history in one click: For the first time, numerous sites relating to the early history of mankind from 3 million to 20,000 years ago can be accessed in a large-scale database. Scientists from the research center ROCEEH ("The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans") have compiled information on 2,400 prehistoric sites and 24,000 assemblages from more than 100 ancient cultures. The digital data collection is available for free to scientists and amateurs and was recently published in the journal PLoS ONE. ROAD, the -ROCEEH Out of Africa Database-, represents one of the largest digital collections of information about archaeology, anthropology, paleontology and botany based on 150 years of research history, says Dr. Andrew Kandel, University of Tübingen. By joining information about cultural remains, human fossils, animal bones and plants into a unified geographical and chronological framework, the team created a tool that helps analyze the complex aspects of human evolution.