CARTA - Anthropogeny (Audio)

Closing remarks for CARTA’s Evolutionary Origins of Art and Aesthetics symposium held in March 2009. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Show ID: 16440]...

Christopher Boehm is Professor of Biological Sciences & Anthropology and Director of the Goodall Research Center at the University of Southern California. He is a cultural anthropologist with a subspe...

Christophe Boesch is Director of Primatology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. His research takes an inclusive approach, addressing the biology of chimpan...

Patricia Smith Churchland is Professor of Philosophy at UC San Diego. The central focus of her research has been the exploration and development of the hypothesis that the mind is the brain. Series: ...

Steve Frank is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. One of his current research projects is centered on microbial life history and sociality. The th...

Peter Hammerstein is a theoretical biologist at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. Given his background in game theory and economics, he is interested in conflict and cooperation at the leve...

Sarah Hrdy is currently professor emerita at the University of California, Davis. She is a renowned anthropologist and primate sociobiologist who seeks to understand, step by Darwinian step, how apes...

Donald Pfaff, head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior at The Rockefeller University, upends our entire understanding of ethics and social contracts with an intriguing proposition: the Gold...

Peter Richerson, Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis, focuses on the processes of cultural evolution. Series: ...

Elaine Mardis, Associate Professor of Genetics at Washington University and Senior Research Scientist at Bio-Rad Laboratories, explores the orangutan genome. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Resea...

Richard “Ed” Green, Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at UC Santa Cruz, explains how and what we know about our relation to Neandertal Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and T...

Evan Eichler is an Associate Professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. The long-term goal of his research is to understand the evolution, pathology and mechanisms of recent gene d...

Alysson Muotri, Assistant Professor at UC San Diego, focuses on human brain development and evolution, exploring mobile elements as generators of neuronal diversity. He is also interested in modeling...

Katherine Pollard, Associate Investigator at the Gladstone Institutes and Associate Professor of Biostatistics at UC San Francisco, specializes in evolutionary genomics, in particular identifying geno...

Yoav Gilad is Associate Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago. He studies genetic and regulatory differences between humans and our close evolutionary relatives, with the long-term...

Genevieve Konopka is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at UT Southwestern Medical Center. The focus of her research is elucidating how developmental signaling pathways are disrupted in neuropsyc...

Ajit Varki, Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Cellular & Molecular Medicine, Co-Director of CARTA, and Co-Director of the Glycobiology Research and Training Center at the Univ...

Human beings show a range of emotional attachment, affection, and infatuation often referred to as “love”. Love promotes long-lasting and secure relationships that involve nurturing and support. Biolo...

Human fathers exhibit hormonal shifts in testosterone, prolactin, and oxytocin, enabling flexible responses to parenting. In species with costly paternal care, these shifts balance mating and parentin...

Grandmothers play a key role as alloparents in human families. A leading hypothesis suggests that the inclusive fitness benefits of grandmaternal care selected for an extended female lifespan after re...

Close relationships help us shape both our other social interactions as well as our internal physiology. Do these close relationships, also known as pair bonds, look and function similarly in species ...

Dr. Theofanopoulou studies neural circuits behind sensory-motor behaviors like speech and dance, aiming to develop drug- and arts-based therapies for brain disorders. Her brain imaging research reveal...

Humans are an intensely social species. We experience social interactions as rewarding from infancy, and the social cognitive skills that we develop in the context of our earliest interpersonal attach...

Oxytocin is a peptide molecule with a multitude of physiological and behavioral functions. Based on its association with reproduction, including social bonding, sexual behavior, birth and maternal beh...

Human beings show a range of emotional attachment, affection, and infatuation often referred to as “love”. Love promotes long-lasting and secure relationships that involve nurturing and support. Biolo...

Ancient texts warn of love turning into hatred, as seen in stories like Cain and Abel or “Et tu, Brute?” This talk explores the neurobiology of hatred based on the biology of love: the oxytocin system...

At a global level, Homo sapiens have reshaped the planet Earth to such an extent that we now talk of a new geological age, the Anthropocene. But each of us shapes our own worlds, physically, symbolica...

The symbolic tools we use to design and construct our environments have been transformed by the so-called Cybernetic revolution and the innovations in materials technology that have accompanied them. ...

This talk explores the needs of the poor and homeless around the world, charting the interplay between formal and informal settlements. The key example for this talk will be the favelas of Saõ Paulo i...

The site of Göbekli Tepe is well known as a settlement of the transitional phase in SW-Asia, in which the greater mobility of the Palaeolithic increasingly gave way to the more permanent settlement of...

This presentation will briefly trace 70,000 years of cultural evolution from the ancient crossing from Sunda to Sahul, via the swift continental colonization during the Ice Age, through the severe imp...

The transition from Neolithic villages to early cities marked the greatest social transformation faced by our species before the Industrial Revolution. Our ancestors had to learn how to live in new se...

Humans construct their physical worlds in part by designing and constructing new tools, habitations, and in due course diverse buildings and, in some cases, towns and cities and construct their symbol...

This talk provides a deep time perspective for assessing the behavioural implications of the creation of the earliest known structure and the technologies used in its making. Evidence for the earliest...

As distinct from the buildings of termites (interesting though these are), bird nests offer a more apropos point of comparison for human buildings – they are conducted by single vertebrate (or a few) ...

At a global level, Homo sapiens have reshaped the planet Earth to such an extent that we now talk of a new geological age, the Anthropocene. But each of us shapes our own worlds, physically, symbolica...

Every building – from the Parthenon to the Great Mosque of Damascus to a typical Georgian house – was influenced by the energy available to its architects. This talk offers a historical perspective on...

Human "place-making" began over a million years ago when early humans made the hearth the center of social life. By 450,000 years ago, they were using caves in southwest Asia and sometimes buried thei...

Lucy is one of the most famous fossils of all time. The discovery of this species had a major impact on the science of human origins and evolution. Why? What was that impact? The symposium speakers—ea...

The discovery of a 3.2-million-year-old hominin skeleton named Lucy revolutionized human evolutionary studies. Her Linnean classification as Australopithecus afarensis sparked debates on taxonomy, hig...

Lucy, discovered in 1974, revolutionized paleoanthropology, sparking interest in Africa's fossil-rich regions. This led to significant discoveries, pushing human origins records beyond six million yea...

Lucy's 50-year legacy as a superstar in human evolution is undeniable. Yet, with newer, older fossils and a growing understanding of her ancient world, her status as our ancestor is questioned. This t...

Since Lucy's 1974 discovery, African heritage management and paleoscientific research have evolved significantly. Partnerships with international organizations have supported these efforts, leading to...

Humans are a spectacular outlier among the millions of species of life on planet earth, with incredibly unique biological success. Slowly, scientists have begun to understand the traits that interacte...

The connection between paleoanthropology and primatology began with Darwin's theory of human origins. Lucy's discovery challenged existing ideas, coinciding with observations of wild primates. This sp...

Lucy's 1974 discovery reshaped our understanding of early hominins. Geological studies dated her to 3.21 million years ago. Questions arose about her life and death, leading to investigations into her...

Lucy's discovery in eastern Africa reshaped human origins research, highlighting our ancestors' diverse habitats. Initially thought vegetarians like chimpanzees, Lucy's group were adaptable omnivores....

The discovery of Lucy in 1974 gave insight into early hominin body form but lacked hand bones. Subsequent findings revealed Australopithecus afarensis hand morphology. New discoveries and research sin...

Lucy is one of the most famous fossils of all time. The discovery of this species had a major impact on the science of human origins and evolution. Why? What was that impact? The symposium speakers—ea...

Paleoanthropology is booming with discoveries, reshaping our understanding of human evolution. Lucy's 1974 find stands as a milestone, providing crucial insights into early hominins. Her species, Aust...