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CHES Members and Biographies
Robert Blumenschine received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985. He is interested in the evolution of human diet and subsistence strategies, and has conducted archaeological and wildlife research in India, and in parts of East and southern Africa. His work on carnivore feeding behavior in the Serengeti of Tanzania has provided insights on the long-debated hunting and scavenging issue in human evolution. Blumenschine has co-directed human origins research at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, since 1989, expanding upon the important archaeological and fossil finds made by Louis and Mary Leakey.
Susan Cachel holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. She is a physical anthropologist with interests in human and non-human primate evolution, particularly the biomechanics of the face of early hominids and the nature of the animal communities in which early hominids and their ape-like ancestors evolved. Her current research focuses on the origins of anatomically modern humans and the development of ecological models to explain the origin of human intelligence.
Lee Cronk, who taught at Texas A&M University for ten years after he received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1989, follows in the long Rutgers tradition of bridging the gap between anthropology’s cultural and biological subdisciplines. His dissertation and many of his subsequent publications have focused on the behavioral ecology of the Maasai-speaking Mukogodo of Kenya, particularly their reproductive strategies. His discovery that Mukogodo parents tend to favor daughters over sons is widely seen as an illustration of a theoretical model developed by Rutgers anthropologist Robert Trivers and his colleague Dan Willard, who predicted that if the reproductive prospects of sons and daughters vary systematically, natural selection should favor parents that invest more heavily in the sex of offspring that is likely to reproduce more.
Craig Feibel holds a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Utah, awarded in 1988. With interests in the environmental influences on human evolution, he has conducted research throughout East Africa and in the Middle East. He has documented the evolution of Kenya's Lake Turkana over the last five million years, providing a temporal and environmental framework for the magnificent fossil and archaeological finds made here by Richard Leakey and others. He has conducted a geological study of the hominid footprint trails discovered by Mary Leakey at Laetoli, Tanzania. His current research includes work in the southern Turkana Basin, where a new species of early hominid was discovered in 1994. His laboratory studies range from the dating of volcanic ash, to the evolution of molluscs and fishes, and the climatic records preserved in ancient soils.
Helen Fisher received her Ph.D. in Physical Anthropology from the University of Colorado in 1975. Among her publications is The Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery and Divorce. In 1985, Fisher received The Distinguished Service Award of the American Anthropological Association for her work in communicating anthropological data to the lay public. She is currently preparing a book on the evolution of gender differences in the brain and in behavior. Fisher is also engaged in research on neural activity associated with romantic attraction in infatuated couples. She is examining the biological basis of the basic mating emotions, lust, attraction and attachment. Ms Fisher believes that the brain circuitry for these emotion systems evolved among hominid ancestors living of the grasslands of East Africa millennia ago. With fMRI brain scanning, she is trying to isolate the specific brain regions associated with romantic attraction. Using the data collected by other CHES members, she is trying to trace the evolution of these human emotion systems.
John W.K. Harris received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California in 1978. His interests in the technological behavior of early hominids led to his discovery with Sileshi Semaw of the world's oldest stone tools in Ethiopia. He has conducted archaeological research throughout East and Central Africa on the world's oldest archaeological sites. His current research includes projects in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Mozambique designed to understand the behavior of the earliest stone-tool-makers. In cooperation with the National Museums of Kenya, he also co-directs the international paleoanthropological field school at Koobi Fora, East Lake Turkana, Kenya, the site of most of Richard Leakey's fossil discoveries.
Ryne Palombit received his Ph.D from the University of California, Davis. His interests concern the ecology and evolution of social behavior in living nonhuman primates, particularly the adaptive significance of male-female social relationships. His previous research examined interspecific differences in monogamous pair bonds in two species of Sumatran gibbons. His current research is a comparative study of the causal and functional bases of differences in male-male competition, sexually selected infanticide, and female anti-infanticide counterstrategies (male-female "friendships") in two populations of savanna baboons: chacma baboons in the Okavango Delta, Botswana and olive baboons in Kenya.
Horst Steklis holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. He maintains interests in the evolution of the brain, the origin of language, and the behavior and ecology of non-human primates. As the Research Officer for the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund, Steklis is studying communication among mountain gorillas in Rwanda. He is also carrying on Diane Fossey's vigorous efforts to preserve this highly endangered species.
Lionel Tiger earned a Ph.D. at the University of London in 1962. As a pioneer of human sociobiology in the 1960s, he holds the Charles Darwin Chair of Anthropology. He applies Darwinian theory to diverse aspects of human sociality, including political structures, sociosexual roles, aggression, social uses of food, and industrial society. He has written many books on these topics, including The Imperial Animal, The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution and the Industrial System, and Optimism: The Biology of Hope.
Robert Trivers received a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University in 1972. His research interests lie in understanding natural selection and social behavior, and the evolution of selfish elements. He is known best for his work on reciprocal altruism, parental investment and sexual selection, parent-offspring conflict, the sex ratio, and deceit and self-deception. As a leading social evolution theorist, he is currently co-authoring a book, "Genes in Conflict", and is engaged in research on Jamaican school children studying the relationship between bilateral asymmetry in the body and a variety of social behaviors.
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