Technology, Behavior, and Human Evolution

HEB 45 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

When does human history begin? We now know that some of the first Homo sapiens appeared over 315,000 years ago. Looking back to even earlier human species, around 2-3 million years ago, we would perhaps be surprised to encounter familiar behaviors: people walking upright, cooperating and socializing, hunting, and using technology. Everything that exists as written history represents less than 2% of what has happened since we emerged as a species, and less than 0.3% of what has happened since archaic humans first emerged. If we want to understand who we are, and why we do the things we do, we need to take a closer look at our relatives in the Paleolithic.

     Technology, Behavior, and Human Evolution is an introductory course which offers primatological, fossil, environmental, genetic, and archaeological perspectives on human evolution. Starting with the earliest hominins, each week we will examine central themes and developments in human evolution over the last 6 million years. Students will consider how the emergence and spread of new technologies, biological capacities, changing social dynamics, symbolic behaviors, and cultural complexity shaped human evolutionary trajectories. The behavioral repertoire of modern humans at the end of the last ice age will form the final part of the lecture course.

Course Notes

Class visit to the Peabody Museum collections, details to be announced.