Introduction to Human Evolution

Catalog description

We enjoy speculating about ourselves, our origins, 'how we got here', and 'human nature'. Anthropologists have a great deal of evidence about our biological selves and how we came to be as we are. We also have a powerful conceptual framework -- evolution by natural selection -- for organizing that evidence to identify the processes that forged our bodies, minds, and behavior. Students in this course will learn to apply the framework of evolution by natural selection and adaptation to evaluate and integrate evidence from many sources including human biology, genetics, primatology and the fossil record. We'll talk about what we know, how we know it, and what we would like to learn. The evolutionary perspective helps us understand who we are, where we came from, how, and why. Counts as a Human Diversity & Commonality course.