Course Essentials

What's ahead?

Our main goal in this class explore our own human history- the biology that creates us all, our primate cousins and finally our early human ancestors. There will be a lot of foreign concepts and lots of long, Latin names- but don’t worry- we’ll get through them together and we’ll have fun at the same time! I encourage you to share your thoughts, reflections and ideas during class sessions. My hope is that by the end of this course, you will have a new appreciation for primates and see how similar we are in our behaviors. I also hope that you will understand the fossil material in order to recognize the significance of new human ancestor finds. 

One very important issue that is currently being raised again is the apparent conflict between the evolutionary and biblical views of human origins. Our purpose in this class is not to present an evolutionary dogma, but to evaluate the evidence upon which the evolutionary interpretation is based. Please note that while we will be talking about evolution and evolutionary theory, I am not trying to “convert” you. My goal is to show you the evidence evolutionary scientists have, and allow to interpret them for yourself. If you walk out of this class believing in evolution- Great! If you walk out of this class questioning evolution- that’s fine too. One thing that I ask is for you to have an open mind.