The Human Origins, Migration, and Evolution Research Project (HOMER) has sites in South Africa, Malawi, and Italy, spanning the Middle and Late Pleistocene. 

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An unparalleled sequence of events launched the global spread of humanity and culminated in the complex societies we live in today. These events were the result of adaptations that evolved in unique African environments beginning about 200,000 years ago. These human ancestors had evolved cognitive skills that enabled them to visualize and creatively solve problems, leading to a sophisticated understanding of causal processes. They eventually evolved novel forms of cooperation that allowed them to build complex social networks, to swarm and kill prey with relative safety, and to destroy their enemies with lethal efficiency. A new form of social learning evolved, grounded in the precise copying of behavior that produced children who expected to be taught and were focused on the processes of tasks.

These three evolved characteristics – advanced cognition, extensive cooperation, and intensive social learning – combined to make possible the unique modern human cultural adaptation.

For the last twenty years, scientists in Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins (IHO) have focused on the first of these evolved characteristics – our advanced cognition. It is time to address the other two key elements. Addressing these “big” questions requires a new research model – a multi-project, trans-continental consortium of field projects. To that end, we have created HOMER: the Human Origins and Migrations Evolutionary Research consortium. This consortium is headed by Dr. Curtis Marean, a scientist with a long track record of publishing in Science and Nature, but led by a group of mostly female project directors.

It is the goal of the consortium to train students in fieldwork-based archaeological methods from the time they are undergraduates to the doctoral level. Students will be able to rotate through each of the projects utilizing the same methods but gaining experiences in different parts of the world. This system of training is unique. Paleoanthropology projects usually operate as closed systems with students learning from one university and one director. Student training ACROSS projects is designed to disrupt this old model. 

This project is funded by the Hyde Family Foundation.