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Human ancestors entered the underground world millions of years ago. Yet only recently have scientists realized the extent that our early relatives stretched their activities into the dark spaces beneath us. Starting from his own work in the Rising Star cave system of South Africa, Dr. John Hawks follows a track connecting extinct human relatives like Homo naledi with Neanderthals and early people in the caves of Africa, Europe, and Asia. The talk explores the long connections of ritual and art with underground space, through a consideration of the psychological and sensory effects of dark. John Hawks is an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He studies the bones and genes of ancient humans and has worked on almost every part of our evolutionary story, from the very origin of our lineage among the apes up to the last 10,000 years of our history. His work has taken him to Africa, Asia, and Europe. His most recent fieldwork as part of the Rising Star Expedition has shown the potential of open science approaches during paleoanthropological fieldwork. In 2013, his team recovered more than 1200 hominin specimens from the Rising Star cave system in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa, in an expedition led by Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand and National Geographic.
This talk is free and open to the public. Magic City Books will be on site selling copies of Hawks' book "Cave of Bones."
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
101 E Archer St, Tulsa, OK, United States, Oklahoma 74103
