10:22 a.m., Nov. 5, 2009----Princeton University anthropologist Alan Mann will present “The Origins of Art: Is This What Being Human Is All About?” in the University of Delaware's Year of Darwin Celebration lecture on Thursday, Nov. 19, starting at 5 p.m., in Room 100 Kirkbride Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

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Mann is a physical anthropologist whose primary interest is the fossil evidence for human evolution. His current research focuses on the evolution of the Neandertals and their relationships to modern peoples. Of particular interest is the origin of language and its importance in the emergence of the quality of “humanness.”

He has done field work in South and East Africa, Israel, Iran, Australia, Afghanistan, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Germany, and now works primarily in the southwest of France, where he is co-director of the excavation of a Middle Paleolithic site in the Charente Department where numerous Neandertal fossil bones and artifacts have been unearthed.

Mann is the author of Some Paleodemographic Aspects of the South African Australopithecines and is the co-author, with Mark Weiss, of an introductory textbook, Human Biology and Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective, as well as more than 75 articles in professional journals and popular magazines.

He also has written a children's book on human evolution, served as a consultant for the National Geographic Society, and is the anthropology consultant for the World Book Encyclopedia.

Mann has served as a consulting forensic anthropologist to many cities in the Northeast and says that discovering clues that helped to free an innocent young man from imprisonment was the best thing he has ever done.

Mann teaches courses on human evolution, human adaptation, biological anthropology, and the concept of race. He also teaches a summer course held at the University of Bordeaux, where he holds a research appointment.

The lecture is co-sponsored by International Education Week, the Center for International Studies, and the Department of Anthropology, with additional support from the Provost's Office, the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Science, Ethics and Public Policy Program, and the following departments: Biological Sciences, English, Geography, Geological Sciences, Linguistics and Cognitive Science, and Philosophy.

UD's Year of Darwin Celebration launched last May in honor of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his landmark work On the Origin of Species.

Karen Rosenberg, professor and chairperson of the Department of Anthropology, chairs the University committee that is organizing the series.

The series will conclude Dec. 7 with “What Darwin Got Wrong,” by Jerry Fodor from Rutgers University. That lecture will begin at 3:30 p.m. in 120 Smith Hall.