Human Biology and the Origins of Homo : Wenner-Gren Symposium Supplement 6 Author(s): Leslie C.

Aiello Reviewed work(s): Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 53, No. S6, Human Biology and the Origins of Homo (December 2012), pp. S267-S268 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/667709 . Accessed: 27/01/2013 10:53
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Current Anthropology Volume 53, Supplement 6, December 2012

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Human Biology and the Origins of Homo

Wenner-Gren Symposium Supplement 6 by Leslie C. Aiello
Human Biology and the Origins of Homo is the 143rd WennerGren Symposium and the sixth to be published as an openaccess supplement of Current Anthropology. The symposium was organized by Susan C. Anto n (New York University) and Leslie C. Aiello (Wenner-Gren Foundation) and was held March 411, 2011, at the Tivoli Pala cio de Seteais in Sintra, Portugal (g. 1). Wenner-Gren symposia are intensive week-long workshop meetings that traditionally focus on big questions in the eld of anthropology, and the origin of Homo is currently one of the biggest questions in the eld of hominin paleontology. Although Homo erectus has been known since the 1890s (Pithecanthropus erectus; Dubois 1894) and Homo habilis was announced almost 50 years ago (Leakey, Tobias, and Napier 1964), new fossil discoveries in the last decade have complicated our understanding of early Homo and challenged our long-held assumptions about its similarities and differences to the australopiths as well as to later members of our genus. This necessarily inuences our interpretations for the origin and evolution of Homo and also highlights the need for a new framework for interpretation of the hard evidence. The purpose of this symposium was to meet this challenge. The aims were to assess what is currently known about the fossil evidence and the environmental context of early Homo and to set the stage for integrated, multidisciplinary studies to provide a framework for interpretation of the hard evidence. The basic premise of the meeting was that it is essential to have a solid understanding of how and why modern humans and other animals vary in order to understand the adaptive shifts involved with the evolution of Homo. Participants in the symposium included paleoanthropologists, human biologists, behavorialists, and modelers, and, to our knowledge, this is the rst time that such a varied multidisciplinary group has gathered to focus attention on a major question in hominin evolution. The collection of papers is introduced by Aiello and Anto n (2012), who summarize the current state of our knowledge about the origin of Homo, integrate the varied contributions, and give a taste of the potential that this approach has for
Leslie C. Aiello is President of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (470 Park Avenue South, 8th Floor North, New York, New York 10016, U.S.A.).

human evolution. The concluding paper by Anto n and Snodgrass (2012) draws from the wealth of ideas in this collection and provides a fresh perspective on three important shifts in human evolutionary history: (1) the emergence of Homo; (2) the transition between non-erectus early Homo and H. erectus; and (3) the appearance of regional variation in H. erectus. It concludes with a new positive feedback model for the origin and evolution of Homo that involves critical elements such as cooperative breeding, changes in diet, body composition, and extrinsic mortality risk that drive life history. This symposium builds on the long history of the WennerGren Foundation with hominin evolution. Foundation interest began in the 1940s with The Early Man in Africa program (19471955) that was initiated by Fr. Teilhard de Chardin to call attention to the extraordinary signicance of the human origins in southern Africa, to date the southern Africa cave deposits, and to facilitate multidisciplinary team research. The Origins of Man program followed (1965 1972), under the guidance of Walter William (Bill) Bishop, C. K. (Bob) Brain, J. Desmond Clark, Francis Clark Howell, Louis Leakey, and Sherwood Washburn, and the Foundation continues to be an enthusiastic supporter of human origins research (see Wood 2011 for a history of this support). Since the late 1950s, the Foundation has held a number of paleoanthropological symposia that have led to landmark publications. These include Social Life of Early Man (Washburn 1961), African Ecology and Human Evolution (Howell and Bourlie ` re 1963), Classication and Human Evolution (Washburn 1964), Background to Evolution in Africa (Bishop and Clark 1967; Clark 1967), Man the Hunter (Lee and Devore 1968), Calibration of Hominoid Evolution: Recent Advances in Isotopic and Other Dating Methods as Applicable to the Origin of Man (Bishop and Miller 1972), After the Australopithecines: Stratigraphy, Ecology, and Culture Change in the Middle Pleistocene (Butzer and Isaac 1975), Earliest Man and Environments in the Lake Rudolf Basin: Stratigraphy, Paleoecology, and Evolution (Coppens et al. 1976), and Early Hominids of Africa (Jolly 1978). To continue this tradition, the Wenner-Gren Foundation is always looking for big questions and innovative new directions in all areas of anthropology for future Foundationsponsored and Foundation-organized symposium meetings and eventual CA publication. We encourage anthropologists to contact us with their ideas for future meetings. Information

2012 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2012/53S6-0001$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/667709

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Current Anthropology Volume 53, Supplement 6, December 2012

Figure 1. Participants in the symposium Human Biology and the Origins of Homo. Front: Laurie Obbink, Susan Anto n, Leslie Aiello, Rick Potts, Andrea Migliano, Jonathan Wells, Peter Ungar. Middle: Katie MacKinnon, Jennifer Smith, Karin Isler, Karen Steudel, Susan Pfeiffer. Back: Josh Snodgrass, Trent Holliday, Gary Schwartz, Tom Schoenemann, Herman Pontzer, Carel van Schaik, Mike Plavcan, Chris Kuzawa, Chris Rainwater, Rick Bribiescas. A color version of this photo appears in the online edition of Current Anthropology.

about the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Symposium program can be found on the Foundations Web site (http:// wennergren.org/programs/international-symposia).

References Cited
Aiello, Leslie C., and Susan C. Anto n. 2012. Human biology and the origins of Homo: an introduction to supplement 6. Current Anthropology 53(S6): S269S277. Anto n, Susan C., and J. Josh Snodgrass. 2012. Origins and evolution of genus Homo: new perspectives. Current Anthropology 53(S6):S479S496. Bishop, Walter William, and J. Desmond Clark, eds. 1967. Background to evolution in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bishop, Walter William, and J. A. Miller, eds. 1972. Calibration of hominoid evolution: recent advances in isotopic and other dating methods as applicable to the origin of man. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. Butzer, Karl W., and Glynn L. Isaac, eds. 1975. After the australopithecines: stratigraphy, ecology, and culture change in the middle Pleistocene. New York: de Gruyter.

Clark, J. Desmond, ed. 1967. Atlas of African prehistory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Coppens, Yves, Francis Clark Howell, Glynn L. Isaac, and Richard E. F. Leakey, eds. 1976. Earliest man and environments in the Lake Rudolf Basin: stratigraphy, paleoecology, and evolution. Prehistory Archeology and Ecology Series. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dubois, Eugene. 1894. Pithecanthropus erectus, eine menschenaehnliche Uberegangsform aus Java. Batavia: Landesdruckerei. Howell, Francis Clark, and Franc ois Bourlie ` re, eds. 1963. African ecology and human evolution. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, no. 36 (Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research). Chicago: Aldine. Jolly, Clifford J. ed. 1978. Early hominids of Africa. New York: St. Martins. Leakey, Louis S. B., Phillip V. Tobias, and John R. Napier. 1964. A new species of the genus Homo from Olduvai Gorge. Nature 202:79. Lee, Richard B., and Irven DeVore, eds. 1968. Man the hunter. Chicago: Aldine. Washburn, Sherwood L., ed. 1961. Social life of early man. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, no. 31 (Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research) Chicago: Aldine. . 1964. Classication and human evolution. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, no. 37 (Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research) Chicago: Aldine. Wood, Bernard. 2011. Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of human evolution. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

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