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SMP 10/24/09 | Protein, Fat, or Politics? Big-Game Hunting in Human Evolution | Speaker: John D. Speth

Saturday, October 24, 2009
12:00 AM
170 & 182 Dennison Building

Speaker: Professor John D. Speth (U-M Museum of Anthropology)

Ever since publication of The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin’s classic treatise on human evolution, paleoanthropologists have assumed that the protein provided by big-game hunting played a pivotal role in transforming a small-brained quadrupedal ape into the brainy bipeds that we are today. Surprising new discoveries, however, are beginning to cast doubt on the traditional “man the hunter” view, and suggest instead that the importance of hunting lay more in the realm of politics than nutrition.

This lecture is part of the LSA Museums Theme Semester.