Professor Christopher Henshilwood is one of the University of Bergen’s ERC Advanced Grant holders and also one of the most cited researchers from Bergen. He is principal investigator of the research group, TRACSYMBOLS, which is a world-leading group of international researchers in its field spanning Europe and Africa. His colleague and co-PI in the research group, Professor Francesco d’Errico of the University of Bordeaux, published a paper in Nature in December 2014 about sensational archaeological discoveries in Java.
In the National Geographic article “Origin of Arts” published in January 2015, Professor Henshilwood and his groundbreaking research at the very tip of Africa, an hour’s drive from Cape Town, is featured in a very fascinating story about the invention of symbolic expression by the first Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals. As the article in Natioanl Geographic begins:
“The greatest innovation in the history of humankind was neither the stone tool nor the steel sword, but the invention of symbolic expression by the first artists.”
