Nobel Conference XLIV


07-Oct-2008 - 08-Oct-2008

On Tuesday and Wednesday, October 7 and 8, we will convene Nobel Conference XLIV, /The First Humans/, featuring Robin I. M. Dunbar, Marcus W. Feldman, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Curtis W. Marean, Svante Pääbo, and Dennis Stanford. This panel hopes to address questions such as: Who were the first humans? Where did they come from? How did they live? Questions that have traditionally been the domain of anthropologists and paleontologists, but have more recently received input from molecular biologists, population geneticists, cognitive
archaeologists, and even paleoclimatologists. Using new techniques and state-of-the-art technologies, they have both aided the painstaking work of extracting skeletal remains and artifacts from ancient sites around the world and bolstered the physical findings. Together, these scientists have produced a host of exciting, far-reaching discoveries. While they are still debating the exact relationships among the species of hominids, the genus from which modern humans arose, they are getting
closer and closer to finding the very first of our kind with research that is rewriting our history and informing us in dramatic ways. [ more ]