Professor in School of Anthropology, University of Arizona School of Anthropology Professor Steven Kuhn will present "The Role of North Africa in Modern Human Origins: Perspectives from Morocco and Bizmoune Cave."

Abstract: Fossil and genetic evidence demonstrate that modern humans first evolved in Africa ca. 300,000 years ago, and subsequently dispersed across the rest of the globe, in several pulses. Features of the Middle Stone Age (MSA), associated with early African Homo sapiens, such as complex composite technologies and the use of material culture in symbolic expression, also point to evolutionary changes in cognition and behavior. However, the expression of these behavioral features varies across the African continent. The MSA record of South Africa, which currently dominates thinking about modern human origins, differs in important ways from the MSA record of North Africa. For example, North Africa appears to show much greater stability and continuity in material culture than South Africa. Research at Bizmoune Cave, and other sites in Morocco and the Maghreb, investigates these differences. Emerging evidence helps us understand whether the particular features of the North African MSA reflect unique cultural evolutionary trajectories, responses to local environmental conditions or perhaps even fundamental differences among hominin populations