Tracing Ancient Journeys into Underground Spaces
Feb. 6, 2025 at 7 p.m.
101 Archer North Gallery

John Hawks is an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He studies the bones and genes of ancient humans and has worked on almost every part of our evolutionary story, from the very origin of our lineage among the apes up to the last 10,000 years of our history. His work has taken him to Africa, Asia, and Europe. His most recent fieldwork as part of the Rising Star Expedition has shown the potential of open science approaches during paleoanthropological fieldwork. In 2013, his team recovered more than 1200 hominin specimens from the Rising Star cave system in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa, in an expedition led by Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand and National Geographic.Hawks’ research has been featured in documentaries from Netflix, PBS Nova, PBS Secrets of the Dead, National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, History Channel, Science Channel, and the BBC. Learn more about Hawks’ research before the talk by checking out the trailer to his Netflix special, UNKNOWN: Cave of Bones.
This talk is free and open to the public. Magic City Books will be on site selling copies of Hawks’ book, Cave of Bones, and Hawks will be signing them after the talk. For more information about OCH exhibits and events, bookmark our homepage at humanities.utulsa.edu or follow us on social media.