About Evolutionary Anthropology

Mission and Vision

Our 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.

 

Our Vision

In The Descent of Man (1871), Charles Darwin proposed that insight into human origins requires a thorough understanding of biological variation in our species, and of our own species’ biology relative to other organisms. This proposal still resonates 150 years later and defines the research and teaching program of evolutionary anthropologists. Evolutionary anthropology is dedicated to bridging gaps — between humans and other animals, between biology, civilization, and culture, and across academic disciplines ranging from mathematics to psychology. In an age of increasing specialization, our discipline commits us to seeking connections across all the scales of human organization, from genes to tissues to organisms to societies and cultures, and from the past to the present.

Never before have we had such a diversity of tools for exploring human evolution and ecology. The discoveries and new techniques available to study human nature are transforming the way we think about the physiology, anatomy, behavior, cognition, genomics, and evolution of human and nonhuman primates. In this context, our departmental mission – examination of humans in an evolutionary context – has never been more important. We prepare students – future leaders in many arenas – for a critical evaluation of themselves and their role in the natural world.

The Department of Evolutionary Anthropology is at the forefront of a broad and comparative exploration of human evolution and has established Duke as a world leader in research on the evolutionary biology of human and nonhuman primates, including genetics and genomics, evolutionary history, physiology, ecology, and behavior. Our department at Duke has helped set the direction for the field. Our departmental vision commits us to continuing to do so. We will leverage the existing strength of our faculty research programs, enhance it with key hires in human biological variation, and take advantage of the natural interdisciplinary collaborations that exist at Duke. This vision will allow us to both contribute to and capitalize on recent discoveries and new techniques, advancing a research program to decode human evolution.