Hallam L. Movius, Jr. Lecture
Most recent public lectures are video-recorded. Click the title for the speaker name, a full description of the talk, and a transcript.
Video: Exploring Human Origins at Kenya’s Lake Turkana
2025 Hallam L. Movius, Jr. Lecture by Louise Leakey, Director, Koobi Fora Research Project; Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook University; National Geographic Explorer at Large Kenya’s fossil-rich Turkana Basin has been—for over...
Video: Homo sapiens Meets Neanderthals: The End of a World
Hallam L. Movius, Jr. Lecture Series Lecture by Jean-Jacques Hublin, Professor at the Collège de France (Paris), Emeritus Professor at the Max Planck Society The arrival of Homo sapiens in the mid-latitudes of Eurasia 48,000 to 45,000 years ago and the...
Video: Modern Humans’ Earliest Artwork and Music: New European Discoveries
The earliest evidence of artwork made by modern humans, Aurignacian art, was created more than 35,000 years ago and has been found in French, German, and Romanian archaeological sites. Randall White will discuss the rich corpus of Aurignacian painting...
Audio: The Evolution of Big-Game Hunting: Protein, Fat, or Politics
Our ancestors hunted big game for the same reasons some of us drive fancy cars or carry a designer handbag: status. The hunters were hungry for prestige, and the meat was a bonus. The Evolution of Big-Game Hunting: Protein, Fat, or Politics Hallam L...
Video: Exploring Humanity’s Technological Origins
Human evolutionary scholars have long assumed that the earliest stone tools were made by members of the genus Homo, 2.4–2.3 million years ago, and that this technological development was directly linked to climate change and the spread of savannah...
Video: Love and Death in the Stone Age
Humans are the only animal species that bury their dead, and this practice is preserved in Paleolithic sites as early as 120,000 years ago. The emergence of burial traditions in this time period implies that both Neanderthals and early humans had already...