John Kingston
Associate Professor
PhD Harvard University 1992
Anthropology 218A
404-712-9507
jkingst@emory.edu
The primary focus of my research is exploring the interrelationships between early humans and their environment. The central question this research addresses is ‘Why did humans evolve?’. Evolution is essentially an ecological process and as we seek adaptive explanations for the many innovations that characterize our lineage, we require detailed reconstruction of the ecological conditions that selected for these characteristics in the past. As the number and types of fossil humans discovered over the last decade has increased dramatically, so have the questions requiring an ecological explanation. How did past environments select for and support such a diversity of early hominid species and their diagnostic morphologies? Did the different (sub)species of early hominids, especially forms that shared a landscape, occupy different ecological niches? Which habitats are most relevant for interpreting human evolution and which are linked with specific evolutionary events? How good were early hominids at ranging through and utilizing resources in different ecosystems? Current models provide fertile ground from which to generate these sorts of questions regarding links between hominid adaptation and selective forces, but we lack the necessary paleoecological data to test these hypotheses.
My goals are to gather more empirical data relevant to reconstructing the landscape of our ancestors and develop alternate or additional models that are more evidentiary based. Specifically, the aim of my research agenda is to develop, refine, and integrate direct or proxy paleoecological evidence to increase our understanding of the co-evolution of community ecology, diet, and life history parameters in hominid evolution. The foundation of my approach is built on a cross-disciplinary background in paleoanthropology, field geology, biogeochemistry, ecology, and evolutionary theory, involving field investigations in Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, South Asia, and North America and biogeochemical laboratory research. Emerging evidence is shifting our perspective of early human ecology away from traditional models, invoking a gradual shift from closed to open ecosystems, towards the view of a much more complex and dynamic interplay of evolutionary and environmental factors in our evolution.
Courses Taught
ANT 140 Evolutionary Anthropology
ANT 190s Human Origins: searching the fossil record (freshman seminar)
ANT 201 Concepts and Methods in Biological Anthropology
ANT 307 Human Evolution
ANT 382/ENVS 382 (previously 385) Ecological Context of Human Evolution
ANT 415 Methods in Biological Anthropology:human paleodiets and paleoecology
ANT 503 Evolutionary Processes (graduate seminar)
ANT 585 Human Evolution (graduate seminar)