Studying 'the origin of ourselves'
In search of humanity
Archived article from Nov 13, 1998
By Sandra Lanman
In a tranquil, tree-shaded corner of the Douglass campus, the nine members of Rutgers' Center for Human Evolutionary Studies (CHES) are preoccupied with no less a subject than the origins and evolution of humankind. Here, research is a calling that evokes as much reverence for the process as for the prize; as much delight in baby steps as in giant leaps of knowledge.
"The real joy is just going out there and making systematic observations you think will be meaningful for answering some small part of a big question about our origins," says CHES Director Robert Blumenschine, a professor of anthropology who also co-directs human-origins research at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.
Established in 1996, CHES brings together under one umbrella anthropologists, biologists and geologists. This multidisciplinary approach distinguishes the center from other groups doing similar work, notes Blumenschine.
"The only way we can understand the roots of humanity and what it means to be human is if we approach human evolution from as diverse a perspective as possible," he says. "Many programs will emphasize the hominid fossil record, but that's only a very small part of it. We want to understand the behavior that distinguishes us and the circumstances under which these traits evolved."
Training students in this broad evolutionary perspective is at the core of the CHES mission. It is an important responsibility, says Blumenschine, as the field becomes increasingly specialized and potentially limiting academically.
"We try to expose students to the whole perspective so they can do cutting-edge research," he says. "We are trying to foster a new academic generation that conducts human evolutionary studies in a manner envisioned by the field's founders, yet uses the modern tools of the specialist."
Most CHES members spend summer and winter breaks on research projects in the world's most breathtaking and anthropologically sacred locales in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Israel, Jamaica, South America and elsewhere. They also work with undergraduates at the six-week Koobi Fora Field School in northern Kenya, a cooperative project between Rutgers and the National Museums of Kenya, and advise graduate students, who often remain at sites year-round to complete research for their dissertations.
In recent years, CHES members have had major roles in a series of high-profile discoveries, including a 2-million-year-old hominid jawbone found by Blumenschine at Olduvai and the oldest stone tools found in Gona, Ethiopia, by a team that included anthropology Chair John W.K. Harris and geologist Craig Feibel. Feibel also was a key researcher on a team that identified fossils belonging to a new species, the oldest prehuman to walk erect.
Such attention-grabbing discoveries are exciting, but not the essence of their work, says Blumenschine. Feibel, for example, has spent years helping to reconstruct the paleogeography of the Turkana Basin in Kenya during a three-million-year period. Though virtually unknown outside the academic community, the work is tremendously significant.
"That's the kind of solid science upon which hinges our ideas about human evolution," Blumenschine says. "It doesn't make a big splash because it happens over a long period of time."
Primatologist H. Dieter Steklis has spent many "tedious, repetitious days" observing mountain gorillas in Rwanda -- research that could eventually lead to a breakthrough in understanding the origin of human communication, Blumenschine says.
CHES members also include research associate Helen Fisher, whose work on the chemical and biological bases of love and attraction are expanding our understanding of human emotions; Associate Professor Susan Cachel, who investigates both human and nonhuman primate evolution; and Lionel Tiger, the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology, who studies behavior. Both Fisher and Tiger will have major books published in 1999.
Others are Robert Trivers, a leading theorist in the evolution of social behavior who is studying correlations between bilateral asymmetry of the body and different aspects of human behavior and health, and primatologist Ryne Palombit, who joined the anthropology department this fall and is studying monogamy and pair bonding in South American monkeys. CHES associate John Cavallo has studied leopards and other modern wildlife in the Serengeti to learn how their behaviors may have impacted the origin of meat eating by early humans.
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