Associate Professor Kathryn Demps of the Department of Anthropology recently published her paper, “Adaptive Responses to Adversity Drive Innovation in Human Evolutionary History,” in the prestigious journal Evolutionary Anthropology. Nicole Herzog, a former lecturer in the department is a co-author.
Demps and Herzog explore how humans developed the cognitive capabilities to come up with novel solutions to problems. They conclude that the origins of innovation had to occur millions of years before stone tools and grew out of the desperation of our ancestors to make a living in difficult circumstances.