Two lectures, one discussion. Archaeological evidence for the evolution of human culture. Two lectures, one discussion. Two lectures, one discussion. This course is designed to give beginning undergraduate students a comprehensive introduction to the living primates, including prosimians, monkeys, and apes.
Humans are more closely related to nonhuman primates than they are to any other group of animals.
As such, we share in common with them an array of important adaptive features such as high intelligence, complex communication systems, diverse feeding adaptations and diets, lengthened periods of infant attachment, strong mother-infant bonds, and a reliance on social groups. A solid understanding of the ecology, behavior, and evolution of non-human primates thus enables anthropologists to identify and interpret those features that are unique to the human primate, as well as those that represent continuities with the rest of the Primate Order. Throughout the course, discussion revolve around those behavioral and evolutionary features that define the Order Primates. We also learn the taxonomy and evolutionary history of the primates, and evaluate the ways in which anatomy and ecology shape primate behavior. Lectures include information from studies of primates in their natural habitats, and discussions are oriented to both evolutionary and ecological perspectives.