Biography:

Birth date: 19th of May, 1962 Citizenship: Portuguese Biologist ( Univ. Coimbra, 1984); Phd in Sciences, Physical Anthropology, Univ. of Coimbra, 1994. Main scientific interests: forensic anthropology, human evolution, skeletal biology, paleopathology. Since 2003: Full Professor, Professora catedrtica, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Coimbra, Portugal President of the Department of Anthropology, Univ. Coimbra National Consultant for Forensic Anthropology of the National Institute of Forensic Medicine (Portugal) President of Forensic Anthropology Society of Europe (FASE) She is the coordinator of the Masters on Human Evolution, University of Coimbra, since 1998 ( since 2008 2nd cycle on Evolution and Human Biology) She supervised/ supervises 60 masters thesis and 17 PhD thesis on Human Evolution, Biological Anthropology and Forensic Anthropology and 5 post-doc in Biological Anthropology. Since 1993 she gave some 70 conferences in several Universities such as USP (So Paulo), Federal Rio de Janeiro; PUC Porto Alegre (Brasil) , Universidad Autonoma (Barcelona); Universidad de Granada, Universidad da Extremadura (Caceres), University of Kansas (USA), Universitat degli Studi di Milano; among others. Since 1985 she published around 115 articles in Proceedings, Chapter books (mainly international), in national and international journals such as Am. J. Phy. Anthropol, Journal of Human Evolution; Forensic Science International; International Journal of Legal Medicine, Int. Journal of Osteoarchaeology; Compte Rendue de lAcademie des Sciences, Journal of Forensic Sciences. She is Referee of the several journals Book editions: Schmitt,A.; Cunha,E.; Pinheiro,J. (ed.) 2006. Forensic Anthropology and Medicine: From recovery to cause of death. NJ. Humana Press. (www.humanapress.com ) Further details: http://www.uc.pt/en/cia/people/cvgena

Abstract:

WHAT MAKES US HUMANS, before and after Darwin

What makes us humans? This is a frequent question, which has been asked since the beginning of times, inclusively by Darwin, and which has to go through several sciences to find the appropriate answer; yet, it is one of the biggest challenges of anthropology and biology. It takes us through an inevitable and fabulous trip both through our mind and through time. Yet Darwin choose to avoid all talk about human evolution in his The Origin of Species in spite of considering the subject the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist. Only later, in 1871, on The Descent of Man did he dare to develop the issue. But it has to be emphasized that from the very first moment, Darwin considered human beings as any other living creature, without making any kind of reference to God and this was one of the basis of his proposal. He was determined to demonstrate that every single human trait, such as language, moral, had an animal origin. He also introduced one of the most famous metaphors of his career, the tree of life. These crucial Darwins contributions created a before and after Darwin in terms of mans place in nature. This is the key issue of this presentation. The understanding of where we came from teaches us about where we are going to. In the exercise of plunging into the past, we have to go back 7 million years to find out the most probable candidates of first/early hominids. From then on, until now, we go through an amazing chain of ancestors, some direct, others not, which we try to place in our evolutionary tree, a very dense one and of which we only know some of the dwellers. We will talk about some of them, where, how they arise and how they are related with us. The puzzle pieces come through with the new discoveries and with the reevaluation of others. Each of these pieces tells us a story. But, more and more, fossils are not the only elements to reconstruct our natural history. The access to our genome, as well as the one of other primates, has brought us to a new age where we try to identify the genes and genetic alterations which make us unique. Our singularity inevitably carries us to the more complex organ of the universe: our brain. Recently it has been suggested that a certain gene, the HARF1, could help us to understand why we are the more encephalized of all primates. Simultaneously, we have to recognize that we are much more than genes. The old phrase we are what we eat is more actual and valid than ever and the secret of our brain increase, a real energy consumer, seems to have been balanced by a concomitant decrease of our guts which, in turn, was possible because of a change in diet. The Expensive Tissue hypothesis- ETH is here crossed with the growing gestational period, with the prematurity/precociality of human newborns and with the increasing on parental investment. This is viewed as a plausible explanation for our large brain, which is 3 times larger than what was expected in a primate of the same body size. But brain is not our only distinctive trait. Bipedalism and language have been crucial to arrive where we now are. The key is in the crossing over of all these distinctive features, of the related genes within a correct ecological contextualization. Knowing that evolution is not free of costs and that only when the benefits are larger than the costs, the process is apt to go through, it is a challenge to identify the key pieces of this intricate human being that we are. One thing is sure, some of the questions will have to wait years to find an adequate answer, who knows maybe until the next big Darwin anniversary who, I believe, would still say Light will be thrown on the origin of man and history.