Robin Dunbar at the 2008 Nobel Conference

Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota hosted a conference last October focused squarely on the idea of “The Human Spark.” In fact, throughout our travels, the show’s production team met with many of the conference’s speakers! Webcasts of each presentation are available online for the general public.

Robin Dunbar from the University of Oxford discusses the social brain theory and what sets human beings apart from other apes.

Curtis Marean from Arizona State University talks about the implications of his archaeological work along the coast of South Africa for our understanding of human origins – not just anatomically modern humans, but modern behavior too.

Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology presents the implications of his work sequencing the Neanderthal genome.