For the seventh year, the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) is celebrating White Night, organized by the Ayuntamiento de Burgos, with guided visits to the laboratories, and the launch of the second season of “Sapiens Dialogs”, thanks to the collaboration of the Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT) - Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.

This podcast brings together researchers from the CENIEH and other centers of scientific renown to discuss topics of interest in human evolution. The first dialog of this second season, and the seventh of the podcast, entitled “Human evolution, the brain and the Anthropocene”, was recorded at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN-CSIC) and is released this Saturday May 20th, at 10 pm. 

The participants are the CENIEH paleoneurologist Emiliano Bruner and Fernando Valladares, research professor at the MNCN-CSIC, who will talk about topics as varied as technology in its widest sense, the human influence on our environment, mindfulness, and the survival strategies of Homo sapiens.

Full house

The CENIEH has already put up the “full house” sign for the guided visits, which will take place on White Night in Burgos. Over 800 people will pass through the premises to see the Experimental Archaeology, Conservation and Restoration, Geochronology, and Microscopy and Micro-Computed Tomography laboratories at first hand. They will also be able to discover the osteological collection of large mammals from the European Pleistocene, which includes spectacular reproductions such as the skulls of a steppe bison and a scimitar-toothed cat.

New for this seventh year, the visits to each of the laboratories are extended to 30 minutes, making the total duration of the tour through all five spaces two and a half hours. This change is prompted by the repeated requests in the satisfaction surveys conducted at the end of each open day for longer to be spent in each laboratory so visitors can learn more about their work.