Life Matters: The Stony Brook Human Evolution Symposium and Workshop

Convened by Richard Leakey September 27, 2005 "Out of Africa I: Who, Where, and When" Genetic and paleontological evidence indicates that the human lineage diverged from that of the African Apes sometime between 5 and 10 million years ago. For most of our history, human evolution has been an African phenomenon. Until recently, all evidence seemed to indicate that hominids first left Africa approximately one million years ago. However, in the past decade, discoveries in many parts of the world now indicate that the initial dispersal of hominids out of Africa took place nearly a million years earlier. There is now evidence for early hominids or hominid behavior in Israel, the Republic of Georgia, Indonesia, and China between 1.5 and 2.0 million years ago, very soon after the first appearance of the genus Homo in the African fossil record. Stony Brook University Planning Committee Richard Leakey Committee Chair Visiting Professor Anthropology