Event Details 

Science Pop-Up Talks - Visiting the Ancestors - A Night Out with the Neandertals
Fred Smith, University Professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences Emeritus, Illinois State University
	“A Night Out with the Neandertals”
ABSTRACT:  Neandertals have long been considered the epitome of the dumb cave man.   Early ideas emphasized not only their physical, but also their
perceived behavioral and intellectual, inferiority compared to modern humans.  Among the differences emphasized were those relating to language, symbolic
behavior, and technology.  Recent discoveries find no evidence to assume inferior language abilities in Neandertals nor the absence of symbolic behavior. 
Early modern Europeans were certainly technologically advanced compared to Neandertals, but the differences are not as great as was previously thought. 
Much of evidence concerning Neandertal behavior has emerged since 2010, when the genetic contribution of Neandertals to modern Eurasians was established. 
We will explored what these early Europeans were really like during our “night (or afternoon) out with the Neandertals.”
BIO:   Fred H. Smith is a paleoanthropologist who has studied Neandertals, other archaic people, and the origins of modern humans for more than 50 years. 
Trained in zoology, anthropology and German as an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee, he received his Ph.D. in biological anthropology from the
University of Michigan in 1976. Currently, he is University Professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences Emeritus at Illinois State University and an
Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  His primary research has focused on Central Europe, where he began work when
much of this area was behind the “Iron Curtain.” However, he also has carried out extensive research on fossil humans from other areas of Europe, West
Asia and Africa.  The author of some 300 scholarly articles, chapters, books and monographs, Smith is a AAAS, Alexander von Humboldt, and Fulbright Fellow
and has received awards for his work from several institutions in the U.S. as well as in Croatia, Germany, and Ireland.  He has taught at the University of
Tennessee, Northern Illinois University, Loyola University Chicago, ISU, and internationally at the Universities of Hamburg, Tübingen and Zagreb.