Teaching

The Human Animal Course Cluster

The teaching component of the Human Animal Lab features the Human Animal Course Cluster. This interconnected set of online courses examines our species as a culture-using animal, with an emphasis on symbolic and aesthetic behaviors such as storytelling, visual and temporal arts, body decoration, and play. From a biological perspective, these activities appear to have no practical function, yet humans devote a large amount of time and energy to them: why? The Human Animal suite of courses approaches this question in terms of the ecological niche to which our species is adapted: to a greater degree than other animals, humans survive by generating, applying, and transmitting information. The cognitive capacities that make this possible evolved tens of thousands of years ago, when all humans made their living by hunting and gathering. Thus, to understand the function of cultural behaviors, we need to understand the challenges of hunter-gatherer life that drove their evolution in the first place. To this end, the Human Animal Course Cluster seeks to provide students with a holistic, cross-disciplinary understanding of the human species, from evolution, ecology, and life history to cognition, behavior, and culture.

Courses in the cluster examine a wide array of universal human cultural phenomena in terms of the social and ecological conditions under which humans evolved. The series currently includes ANTH 110 Introduction to Traditional Ecological Knowledge, ANTH 163 Origins of Storytelling, ANTH 330 Hunters and Gatherers, ANTH 332 Human Attraction and Mating Strategies, and ANTH 349 Origins of Art. Courses in development or being adapted for online instruction include ANTH 225 Evolution of Play and ANTH 284 Evolution of Warfare.

Talking Stories Textbook

The Human Animal Course Cluster includes an open educational resource (OER) called Talking Stories. OERs are digital (online) open-access (free) educational materials that help reduce the costs of attending college by providing students with an alternative to traditional, costly textbooks.

Talking Stories explores the evolution of cultural transmission and symbolic behavior in humans. For most of their evolution, humans have made their living by hunting and gathering, which requires extensive ecological knowledge. In the oral cultures in which humans evolved, symbolic behaviors provided mnemonic frameworks for storing this knowledge, rules for faithfully copying it, and regular occasions for refreshing and transmitting it. Talking Stories presents an overview of this important milestone in human evolution.