WINNIPEG, MB – The University of Winnipeg presents a lecture on Africa, Neandertals, & the Origin of Modern Humans by Fred Smith on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 4:00 pm, 4M47 (Theatre B, Manitoba Hall), 515 Portage Avenue.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Supporting data from genetics strongly point to Africa as the region of origin for modern humans. The majority perspective is that modern humans spread “out of Africa” as a new species, essentially replacing all archaic people they encounter throughout Eurasia with the idea of total replacement. This lecture will examine pertinent theoretical and biological evidence indicating that “total replacement” is not so robust an explanation as many paleoanthropologists suggest.
World’s Leading Expert
Fred H. Smith is a human paleontologist with specific interests in Neandertals and the broader question of the origin of modern humans. Smith earned his PhD in biological anthropology from the University of Michigan. Currently, Smith is Professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Illinois State University, where he teaches courses in human paleontology, human osteology, and vertebrate biology and evolution. The author of over 150 scholarly publications, his 1984 book, The Origins of Modern Humans, was named the best book in the life sciences that year by the American Association of Publishers. His most recent book, The Human Lineage, was published this year by Wiley-Blackwell.
Smith continues to pursue active fieldwork in Germany and Croatia. He has researched human fossil remains from throughout Europe, West Asia and Africa. A past-president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, he received the first annual Hermann Schaaffhausen Prize (Germany) for research on Neandertals in 2006 and the Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger Medal from the Croatian Academy of Sciences in 2009.
