The project ISOLARIO investigates the impact of natural and anthropogenic changes to the insular environments and the importance of those changes to human culture. It is a multidisciplinary project, drawing on the expertise of an international team of scientists from different fields: Geosciences, Life Sciences and Humanities. The project is entitled Island biodiversity and cultural evolution: examples from the Eastern Mediterranean, Madagascar, Mauritius and Philippines during the past 800,000 years (in short ISOLARIO). ISOLARIO (MIS 375910, KA:70/3/11669) is funded by the European Union (ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Education and and Lifelong Learning of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF)-Research Funding Program THALIS-UOA. Duration 3 years. Coordinator: Professor Hara Drinia. In collaboration with institutes in Germany, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands and the USA.
In order to carry out the project, we selected islands from three different areas: the Eastern Mediterranean Sea (Crete, Karpathos and Cyprus), the Indian Ocean (Madagascar and Mauritius) and the western Pacific Ocean (Philippines: Luzon and Masbate). These areas have a different geologic, biogeographic and ethnographic background. Furthermore, these islands were colonized by humans during different periods in history (ranging from 800,000 years ago till the 17th century.)