The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI EVA) was founded in 1997. Researchers from over 30 countries and different disciplines work in seven departments. Their common goal is to explore the history of humanity from an interdisciplinary perspective. This involves comparative analyses of the genes, cultures, cognitive abilities and social systems of past and present human populations, as well as those of closely related primate groups. Of particular note is the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to the Institute’s founding director, Svante Pääbo, for his discoveries of the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.