Human Cognitive Evolution Workshop
Arusha, Tanzania

Nicholas Toth presents an assemblage of Olduvai Gorge stone
tools during the workshop at Leakey Camp, Olduvai Gorge.

Stone Age Institute researchers joined their international research partners in Tanzania in August of 2017 to participate in a set of workshops where they presented lectures, had discussion meetings, visited important sites, and examined prehistoric artifacts and fossils. Workshop activities took place in Arusha and at Olduvai Gorge.

The workshops are the third set of workshops that form a part of a three-year grant project “What Drives Human Cognitive Evolution?” The three-year project is funded by a grant awarded to the Stone Age Institute and Indiana University’s Cognitive Science Program by the John Templeton Foundation. This project brings together researchers from the U.S., Tanzania, China, and the Republic of Georgia.

The project’s researchers:
From the Stone Age Institute/Indiana University:
Kathy Schick (archaeology, paleoanthropology)
Nicholas Toth (archaeology, paleoanthropology)
Jackson Njau, (geology, paleoanthropology)
Tom Schoenemann (paleoneurology and paleoanthropology)
Kevin Hunt (primatology and paleoanthropology)
Peter Todd (cognitive science, informatics, and evolutionary psychology)
Colin Allen (philosophy)

From Tanzania:
Jackson Njau (paleoanthropology and geology, Indiana University)

From the Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China:
Guan Ying (archaeology and paleoanthropology)
Gao Xing (archaeology and paleoanthropology)

From Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia:
David Lordkipanidze (paleoanthropology and paleontology)
Giorgi Bidzinashvili (archaeology and paleoanthropology)

Research group look out over Olduvai Gorge near the
Second Fault, visible in the background.


Workshop participants tour Olduvai's famous FLK Zinj site where
Mary Leakey discovered the Zinjanthropus skull in 1959.