Lecture

Human Evolution: From Fire Control to Global Conquest

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In course

AR-367: Environmental histories

Le cours vise à familiariser les étudiants avec l'histoire de l'environnement et des paysages, et avec la façon dont les différentes préoccupations environnementales, qui vont affecter de plus en plus fortement la conception des villes et de l'architecture ...

Description

This lecture explores the journey of humankind from the control of fire to the conquest of the globe, tracing the development of hunting, migration patterns, and the impact of big-game hunting on human culture. It delves into the origins of Homo sapiens' estrangement from nature and the adversarial relationship with the environment during Europe's glacial period. The speaker presents a new perspective on the ecological impact of human activities and offers insights into a more sustainable way of life for the future.

Instructor

Sébastien Jacques Marie Marot

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Human evolution

Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family, which includes all the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of traits such as human bipedalism, dexterity and complex language, as well as interbreeding with other hominins (a tribe of the African hominid subfamily), indicating that human evolution was not linear but weblike.

Cognitive revolution

The cognitive revolution was an intellectual movement that began in the 1950s as an interdisciplinary study of the mind and its processes. It later became known collectively as cognitive science. The relevant areas of interchange were between the fields of psychology, linguistics, computer science, anthropology, neuroscience, and philosophy. The approaches used were developed within the then-nascent fields of artificial intelligence, computer science, and neuroscience.

Human

Humans, or modern humans (Homo sapiens), are the most common and widespread species of primate. A great ape characterized by their hairlessness, bipedalism, and high intelligence, humans have a large brain and resulting cognitive skills that enable them to thrive in varied environments and develop complex societies and civilizations. Humans are highly social and tend to live in complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families and kinship networks to political states.

Cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental processes. It addresses the questions of how cognitive activities are affected or controlled by neural circuits in the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both neuroscience and psychology, overlapping with disciplines such as behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology, physiological psychology and affective neuroscience.

Homo heidelbergensis

Homo heidelbergensis (also H. erectus heidelbergensis, H. sapiens heidelbergensis) is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene. It was subsumed as a subspecies of H. erectus in 1950 as H. e. heidelbergensis, but towards the end of the century, it was more widely classified as its own species. It is debated whether or not to constrain H.

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