How weird was human evolution?

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• Laura van Holstein (University of Cambridge)
• Friday 02 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Zoom or in-person at Sainsbury Laboratory, 47 Bateman St, Cambridge CB2 1LR.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Emilio Aldorino.

In the early 1970s, Milford Wolpoff suggested that a trait then considered unique to humans and their ancestors—‘culture’—must have meant that evolutionary processes happened differently in our own lineage compared to all other animals. Although culture has now been documented in many different species, Wolpoff’s underlying question remains, given our extreme reliance on culture—and other traits that may change how evolutionary processes operate, such as tool use. To what extent do the processes that drove the evolution of our own lineage operate in the same way as they do in other animal groups? How weird is human evolution?

In this talk, I examine this question with regards to between-species competition. Whilst competition is known to play an important role in the evolution of nearly all other animal groups, surprisingly little explicit attention has been given to this process in our own lineage. I will discuss results from my work applying methods from vertebrate evolutionary biology to the human fossil record, which suggested that our own genus, Homo, is characterised by a completely unique pattern not documented in other vertebrates. I also introduce my field site in the Nimba Mountains, at which I study competition between chimpanzees, monkeys, and pigs, as a model for how competition may have operated between fossil humans and other fossil competitors.

This talk is part of the Branching Out Talk Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Branching Out Talk Series
• Zoom or in-person at Sainsbury Laboratory, 47 Bateman St, Cambridge CB2 1LR

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