Holiday Lecture – Advancing Together: Cooperation and Creativity in Human Evolution

In this presentation, University of Notre Dame anthropologist Agustín Fuentes suggested that human advances stemmed from a unique cocktail of creativity and collaboration that is distinctive to our species.

Fuentes explored the ways in which the human lineage acquired a distinctive set of neurological, physiological and social skills that enabled us to work together and think together in order to imagine, create, collaborate and compete at increasing levels of complexity. He demonstrated ways that this combination of attributes has propelled the development of our bodies, minds and cultures, both for good and for bad. The discussion offered a brief glimpse into this emerging new synthesis of the human evolutionary story. Pittsburgh Theological Seminary theologian Ron Cole-Turner responded.

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