Evolution: What Makes us Human?
TED Studies, created in collaboration with Wiley, are curated video collections — supplemented by rich educational materials — for students, educators and self-guided learners. in What Makes Us Human?, TED speakers tackle humanity’s oldest and deepest questions by playing with primates, excavating ancient remains, and DNA-mapping family trees. Explore how the next chapters of our own evolutionary story will be written thanks to new technologies that trace our origin. Relevant areas of interest, study and coursework include: Evolutionary Anthropology, Primatology, Ethology, Genomics, Population Genetics, Phylogenetics, Genetic Engineering, Nanotechnology, Bioinformatics and Bioethics.
Learning outcomes
TEDs' What Makes Us Human? will enable learners to:
- Explore behaviors once thought to be 'uniquely human' that we now see in primates and other mammals
- Understand the shared characteristics of extinct and modern hominin species
- Explore the tools and techniques used by paleoanthropologists
- Understand how molecular anthropologists investigate the evolution of human diversity by using genetic markers
- Explore the roles of genetic variants and the environment in producing physical variation among humans
- Research the debate between multiregionalism and the theory of recent African origin
- Explore anthropological perspectives about race
- Investigate how modern technologies may alter the course of human evolution.
Relevant Talks
Frans de Waal
Moral behavior in animals
Harvey Fineberg
Are we ready for neo-evolution?
Jane Goodall
What separates us from chimpanzees?
Nina Jablonski
Skin color is an illusion
Spencer Wells
A family tree for humanity
Svante Pääbo
DNA clues to our inner neanderthal
Zeresenay Alemseged
The search for humanity's roots
About the educator
James Calcagno is a biological anthropologist with research and teaching interests in paleoanthropology, dental anthropology, primate behavioral ecology, and evolutionary anthropology. He is an advocate of holistic, biocultural approaches to the study of humanity.
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