Department of Evolutionary AnthropologyOur Mission
Evolutionary anthropology is the study of humankind's place in nature. The central questions of this unique discipline revolve around reconstructing how humans arose from our primate ancestors, interrogating the attributes that make us distinct, and investigating how our evolutionary past shapes human diversity, health, and society today.
Our focus on these questions connects us with our colleagues in the other natural and social sciences and in the humanities – with everyone who is working at some level on what it means to be human. To address questions of human nature and human evolution, evolutionary anthropology focuses on morphology, physiology, genetics, ecology, behavior, and cognition of humans and non-human primates, as viewed from an evolutionary perspective. Central areas of research include evolutionary relationships among living and extinct groups of primates, the functional and adaptive significance of trait variation in humans and other primates, and the evolutionary mechanisms that have shaped human evolution.
