Date/Time
Date(s) - February 15, 2022
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Categories No Categories
Department of Anthropology and Geography faculty will lead and participate in the panel session, “Human Adaptation to Environmental Change: Then and Now,” on Tuesday, February 15, 1-1:50 p.m., as part of the 2022 CSU International Symposium. This will be a virtual session via Zoom, and is open to the public.
SESSION DESCRIPTION
Human evolution was not a gradual, linear process as hominins adapted to change in surprising ways, then and even now. Regardless of whether it has been individual biological adaptations or community behavioral/social adaptations, they are adjustments to conditions and opportunities. Understanding how hominins adapted to environmental change in the past requires accurate reconstructions of the relationship between hominin spatiotemporal distributions and paleoenvironmental data, both of which are biased during the formation of the fossil and geological records. Humans respond to our dynamic modern world in many ways, including through the social milieu in which ideas are generated. The papers here tell different but connected stories of complex human adaptations.
PRESENTER BIOS
Mica Glantz is a professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology and Geography at Colorado State University. She has conducted Paleoltihic fieldwork in Central Asia in order to examine the qualities of the preferred niche spaces of Neandertals, Denisovans, and modern humans during the late Pleistocene. Her work is focused on reconstructing the times and places these populations overlapped and admixture occurred.
Michael Pante is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and Geography at Colorado State University. He studies the behavior and ecology of the genus Homo at the UNESCO world heritage site Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. His research tracks the evolution of human carnivory from 1.8-0.8 million years ago, a period that saw the evolution of a new human species (Homo erectus) and a more advanced stone technology (the Acheulean).
Andrew Du is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and Geography at Colorado State University. He is interested in the ecological context of human evolution in the Plio-Pleistocene of eastern Africa. His research topics include analyzing the spatiotemporal distribution of ancient hominins and how different means of reconstructing ancient environments and ecologies do so at different spatiotemporal scales.
Emily Wilson is an instructor in the Anthropology Department and the Honors Program at Colorado State University. She focuses primarily on the archaeology of ancient trade, religion, and identity in the Mediterranean and has excavated extensively in Italy, Greece, and Turkey.
Kathleen Galvin is a professor and director of The Africa Center at Colorado State University. She has conducted interdisciplinary social-ecological systems research in the drylands of Africa. Galvin works with local communities on issues of land-use change, biodiversity conservation, food security, and climate change impacts and adaptations. She works with local communities, ecologists, modelers, remote sensing and GIS experts to understand human-environmental interactions.