Who were the first humans? Where did they come from? How did they live? These questions have traditionally been the domain of paleontologists and anthropologists studying fossils and pottery shards. More recently, molecular biologists, population geneticists, evolutionary biologists, evolutionary psychologists, paleoclimatologists, and even cognitive archeologists have added their unique scientific views to these questions as well.
Researchers in all these fields agree that within the past 200,000 years a group of people who resemble us anatomically emerged from Africa and spread across the globe, and that within the last 50,000 years a culture emerged that was very much like ours. These people created art, buried their dead, made musical instruments, and used fishhooks and spear blades. But it wasn’t until the last ice age subsided about 12,000 years ago that they abandoned their hunter/gatherer existence to take up farming and live in permanent settlements. By 7,000 years ago the first true cities appeared, as well as written language.
How do we know this? By studying mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes, molecular biologists have been able to trace the emergence of modern humans from Africa, across Asia, west into Europe, and east across the Bering land bridge into the Americas. Using ice cores, paleoclimatologists have been able to determine what living conditions must have been like. Linguists have also been able to trace the movements of early humans by examining the changing patterns of language. Although evolutionary biologists have emphasized genetically based changes, anthropologists and psychologists have been concentrating on memes rather than genes as the basis of culturally based transmission of cultures. And, neuroscientists have discovered key genes that are responsible for determining brain size but also have discovered “mirror neurons” that give clues about how mimicry may have been used by early humans to learn important survival skills and to experience the emotional state of others through empathy.
Applications of new scientific techniques have led to exciting recent discoveries about the history of the world and human existence. The 2008 Nobel Conference, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, October 7 and 8, 2008, on the campus of Gustavus Adolphus College, will explore the full range of new evidence about our changing world and how our ancestors adapted to these changes.
