2008 Nobel Conference

Who Were the First Humans?

Nobel Conference XLIV, October 7–8, 2008 

Study of the first humans, where they came from and how they lived,has long been the sphere of knowledge attributed to archaeologists and paleoanthropologists. During the last couple of decades,however, biologists, climatologists, geneticists, mathematicians,and psychologists, among others, have been adding to the scientific database. Using new techniques and state-of-the-art technologies, they have both aided the painstaking work of extracting skeletal remains and artifacts from ancient sites around the world and bolstered the physical findings.