The Institute of Human Origins (IHO) at Arizona State University has long focused on the earliest stages of human evolution, particularly between 4 and 2 million years ago. Its flagship research program at Hadar, Ethiopia—the site where the famous 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton known as “Lucy” was discovered—has produced some of the most detailed insights into the biology, behavior, and environment of early human ancestors. Ongoing research examines the evolution and ecological diversity of Australopithecus, the origins of the genus Homo, and the emergence of early stone-tool technology.

In recent years, IHO has expanded its work through innovative projects such as paleolake drilling, which aims to reconstruct ancient climate and environmental conditions at high resolution to better understand how early hominins adapted to changing landscapes. The Hadar project also serves as ASU’s Hadar Field School, providing undergraduate students with hands-on training in paleoanthropological field methods through immersive study-abroad experiences in Ethiopia.

The Hadar region continues to yield remarkable discoveries beyond human ancestors themselves. Researchers recently identified a previously unknown giant crocodile species, Crocodylus lucivenator (“Lucy’s hunter”), which lived alongside Australopithecus afarensis between 3.4 and 3 million years ago. This finding offers new insight into the ecosystems and potential predators that shaped the lives of some of humanity’s earliest ancestors.

About Christopher Campisano, PhD

Campisano’s broad research interests revolve around the chronology and environmental context of fossil sites. Specifically, he is interested in characterizing ancient landscapes and their change across space and through time at varying degrees of resolution by utilizing a variety of environmental proxies. This information provides a temporal-spatial environmental framework within which to test theories of faunal evolution, including that of humans and other primates. He has a strong commitment to field research and experience at 20 different sites in Ethiopia, Kenya, S. Africa, India, the U.S., and Mexico. Campisano's research on the reconstruction of terrestrial paleoenvironments requires a broad-based approach in which he employs his background and skills in sedimentology, stratigraphy, geochronology, paleoclimatology, and paleontology. In this vein, a significant component of his work involves transdisciplinary teams that place a premium on developing synergistic strategies to address key questions in evolutionary anthropology, geology, and paleoecology.

The Pinnacle Point Site Complex in Mossel Bay, South Africa, is a key archaeological site within a UNESCO World Heritage cluster recognized for its importance to understanding human evolution. The coastal caves contain some of the earliest evidence of modern human behavior, including sophisticated toolmaking, dietary adaptations, and survival strategies dating back approximately 160,000 years. Excavations led by Dr. Marean at the Institute of Human Origins have shown that early humans repeatedly occupied these caves during multiple ice ages, successfully adapting to dramatic environmental changes and shifting coastlines.

Among the site's most significant discoveries are the earliest known examples of humans systematically harvesting shellfish and using controlled fire to heat-treat silcrete stone, improving the quality of tools they produced. In 2024, Pinnacle Point was officially inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of “The Emergence of Modern Human Behavior” site group. This designation highlights the region’s exceptional contribution to understanding the origins of modern human cognition, technology, and culture.
 

About Curtis Marean, PhD

Curtis Marean’s research interests focus on the origins of modern humans, the prehistory of Africa, the study of animal bones from archaeological sites and climates and environments of the past. In the area of the origins of modern humans, he is particularly interested in questions about foraging strategies and the evolution of modern human behavior. Marean has a special interest in human occupation of grassland and coastal ecosystems.

Professor Marean conducts a variety of studies using zooarchaeology, the study of animal bones, and taphonomy, the study of how bones become fossils. He also is a dedicated field researcher and has conducted fieldwork in Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia, and since 1991 has focused his field efforts in coastal South Africa. He is the principal investigator for the South African Coast Paleoclimate, Paleoenvironment, Paleoecology, Paleoanthropology (SACP4) project based around Mossel Bay in South Africa at the field locality of Pinnacle Point. This large international project, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Hyde Family Foundation, employs a transdisciplinary approach to modern human origins, climate and environment. Under his directorship, Pinnacle Point has become one of the world’s most important localities for the study of modern human origins.

Marean is the Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and the Environment, in the Institute of Human Origins and a Foundation Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

The Woranso-Mille paleontological site is located in the western part of the central Afar depression and about 35 km north of Hadar, Gona, and Dikika, and shares its southern border with Ledi-Geraru. 

Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie began intensive and systematic field survey in the northern Afar region of Ethiopia and after 3 years of surveying, he found a fossiliferous site and formed the Woranso-Mille paleoanthropological research project (WORMIL) in 2005. Since then, more than 100 vertebrate paleontological localities have been designated with close to 12,000 fossil specimens cataloged, including >200 hominin fossils. 

The faunal assemblage includes more than 85 mammalian species, with most of the specimens recovered from sediments dated to between 3.0 and 3.82 Ma.

About Yohannes Haile-Selassie Ambaye, PhD

Yohannes Haile-Selassie is the Virginia M. Ullman Chair of Human Origins and Director of the Institute of Human Origins (IHO) at Arizona State University. He received his Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley, in 2001. Dr. Haile-Selassie’s primary research interest lies in understanding the paleobiology and paleoecology of early human ancestors through the fossil record. He is the principal investigator of an international multidisciplinary team conducting fieldwork at a site called Woranso-Mille, located in the Afar Region of Ethiopia.

His fossil discoveries have greatly advanced our understanding of human origins by filling critical gaps in the fossil record. He has published numerous papers in leading scientific journals such as Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, as well as in many specialty journals. His discoveries have been recognized globally: Science magazine named Ardipithecus ramidus the “Breakthrough of the Year” in 2009, and Discover magazine listed his naming of Australopithecus deyiremeda among the top 100 science discoveries of 2015.

In 2019, Nature recognized him as one of “Ten People Who Mattered in Science” for his discovery of the first complete cranium of Australopithecus anamensis. Dr. Haile-Selassie is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, and a member of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The Gombe Chimpanzee Research Project, led by ASU researcher Ian Gilby, studies the behavior and ecology of wild chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Researchers at Arizona State University use one of the world’s most extensive long-term wildlife datasets to investigate a wide range of questions about chimpanzee behavior and social life.

In 2022, the Jane Goodall Institute Gombe Chimpanzee Archive was transferred to ASU, bringing together more than 60 years of observations, ecological records, and research materials. Combined with the Gombe Chimpanzee Database—containing hundreds of thousands of digitized records—this unique resource represents the longest-running wild chimpanzee study in the world and has supported hundreds of scientific publications and doctoral dissertations.

About Ian Gilby, PhD

Ian Gilby has studied the behavioral ecology of wild chimpanzees since 1997. His main research interests are cooperative hunting, meat sharing and adult male dominance strategies. He is co-director of the Gombe Chimpanzee Database, which contains over six decades of detailed behavioral, ecological and demographic data from the long-term study of two chimpanzee communities in Gombe National Park, Tanzania.

Before coming to Arizona State University in 2014, he was a postdoctoral research associate in human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, and then a senior research scientist in evolutionary anthropology at Duke University.

Dr. Kathryn Ranhorn, an archaeologist and research scientist at ASU’s Institute of Human Origins, conducts research at Kisese II Rockshelter in central Tanzania, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Kondoa Rock-Art Sites. Spanning approximately 45,000–47,000 years of human activity, the site provides an important record for Ranhorn’s research into how early modern humans developed new technologies, adapted to environmental change, and transmitted cultural knowledge across generations. 

While fossil discoveries help establish the biological history of our ancestors, archaeological research at Kisese II reveals how early humans lived, innovated, communicated cultural knowledge, and adapted to changing environments.

The site's extensive record of stone tools, ornaments, pigments, and human occupation provides an opportunity to investigate the emergence and evolution of behaviors that distinguish our species.

A particularly compelling aspect of Ranhorn's work is its connection to one of the central questions in human evolution: How did our capacity to learn from one another, preserve knowledge, and build upon previous innovations contribute to the success of Homo sapiens?

About Kathryn Ranhorn, PhD

Since 2008, I have led and participated in archaeological fieldwork across Eastern Africa, with a long-term focus on community-based research in Tanzania and Kenya. Fluent in Swahili, I currently direct the Kondoa Deep History Partnership and maintain active collaborations in paleoanthropology, heritage management, and community archaeology. My work aims to steward the deep history of human evolution both as data, and as a living resource for education, sovereignty, and shared knowledge.

At ASU, I direct the Ancient Technology Lab, Deep History Lab, and Archaeological Science Lab, where I use replicative and experimental approaches to investigate how cultural transmission impacts technological change, and how these processes might be studied in the later Quaternary. My lab functions as both a controlled research environment and a makerspace for public engagement, offering students and community partners hands-on experience with past technologies and present-day questions about innovation, knowledge, and human evolution.

The Ngogo Chimpanzee Project’s mission is to conduct scientific research on the Ngogo community of chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda, to conserve animal populations throughout the park, and to support the education of local people of all ages. The Ngogo chimpanzees have been featured in several wildlife documentaries, including Netflix’s Chimp Empire series (2023), the award-winning Rise of the Warrior Apes (2017), and Disney’s Chimpanzee (2012).

Conservation at Ngogo

Garrett is one of the many Ngogo chimpanzees with a snare injury. He stepped in a snare made of nylon, a material that does not degrade over time, over a decade ago and the snare was wrapped around his hand until a veterinary intervention in 2015.

Kibale National Park contains the largest population of chimpanzees in Uganda and one of the largest in East Africa, making it one of the few remaining strongholds for chimpanzees in the wild. The main threat to chimpanzees in Kibale is poaching, which has increased in frequency alongside increases in local human populations. Although there are local taboos against eating chimpanzees, they get caught in the snares set by poachers to catch other wildlife so often that it is estimated that fully one-third of the chimpanzees within the park have snare-related injuries. Those chimpanzees who are able to free themselves usually cannot remove the snares entirely, and over time, the wire or nylon material becomes wrapped tighter and tighter around their fingers, hands, or feet, causing pain and infection, and often leading to the loss of the snared body parts entirely or even death.

In an effort to protect chimpanzees and other animals in Kibale National Park from illegal hunting, the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project employs eight teams of local people, who patrol the park for snares and signs of poaching activity. We work closely with local Uganda Wildlife Authority law enforcement officers, to whom we turn in confiscated snares and GPS coordinates when we encounter signs of poaching activity. Our snare removal teams currently patrol nearly the entirety of Kibale National Park.

Education

Ugandans benefit in many ways when local wildlife is preserved and educating people about these benefits is one of the most effective approaches to conservation. With this in mind, we work closely with U.N.I.T.E. for the Environment, a non-profit organization based in nearby Bigodi that provides conservation education training to teachers in local schools. We provide U.N.I.T.E. with information and educational material related to chimpanzees and our snare removal program, which they then incorporate into their primary and secondary school teacher trainings.

Ngogo Chimpanzee Project researchers also take part in local conservation-focused events that U.N.I.T.E. for the Environment and other local conservation-focused NGOs organize. Events like Bigodi’s annual Earth Day celebration give us a chance to meet with local schoolchildren and teach them about chimpanzees, our work at Ngogo, and why it is so important for local people and researchers alike to work to conserve chimpanzees and other animals in Kibale National Park.

About Kevin Langergraber, PhD

Kevin Langergraber has studied the behavioral and molecular ecology of the Ngogo group of chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda, since 2001. He has served as co-director of the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project, a long-term field project devoted to the research and conservation of Ngogo chimpanzees, since 2011. He held positions at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and at Boston University before joining ASU in 2014.

The Ecology of Mind (EoM) Project is based in the Kunene region of Namibia and Angola in southern Africa. IHO Research Scientist and Assistant Professor, Helen Elizabeth Davis' work explores how the human mind develops in childhood and how it changes as we age. At its core, this research asks a simple but powerful question: Which parts of human thinking are universal, and which are shaped by culture and environment?

By working with Himba and Twa communities on both sides of the Namibia–Angola border, we are able to study a rare “natural experiment.” Differences in political history and geography have shaped daily life in distinct ways, allowing us to better understand how the environment influences the brain — while holding many other factors constant. I began this research in Namibia in 2016 and expanded into Angola in 2019. Since 2023, much of our applied work has been supported by the National Science Foundation. Through this project, we aim to better understand how the brain develops, ages, and adapts — knowledge that can ultimately inform more culturally responsive approaches to education and healthy aging.

About Helen Elizabeth Davis, PhD

Helen Elizabeth Davis, Ph.D., is an evolutionary anthropologist examining how culture, education, ecology, and development shape human cognition across the lifespan, integrating perspectives from evolutionary anthropology, cultural evolution, cognitive science, and public health.

Dr. Davis has published extensively on cultural evolution, cognition, education, and human development in leading scientific journals and collaborates with an international network of researchers studying human evolutionary ecology and behavior. Her research continues to bridge anthropology, psychology, education, and public health to better understand how diverse cultural and ecological environments shape the human mind across the lifespan.

Dr. Davis is internationally recognized for her long-term field research among small-scale societies, particularly the Tsimane of the Bolivian Amazon and the OvaHimba peoples (including Himba, Twa, and Zemba communities) of the Kunene region in northern Namibia. Since beginning fieldwork in Bolivia in 2005 and Namibia in 2016, she has developed cross-cultural, longitudinal research programs that combine natural and quasi-experimental approaches to investigate how schooling, mobility, subsistence practices, and social learning influence cognitive development, spatial reasoning, executive function, and child development. Her work also explores how environmental and behavioral experiences across the life course affect healthy cognitive aging, providing insight into the evolution and diversity of human learning and cognition.

Our current field site is a small village of mixed Sama and Tausug tribal marine foragers living in stilt houses built over the tidal flats of Sarangani Bay, off Mindanao Island in the southern Philippines. 

The village consists of approximately 40 households, with extended nuclear families typically sharing a single bamboo house, meals, and sleeping accommodations. These homes are generally about 4 by 4 meters, constructed from bamboo and other native materials, and raised on wooden poles approximately four feet above the high-tide water level. The community is connected by a pier extending roughly 50 meters from the shoreline and is situated above sandy tidal flats and coral reefs. 

At this site, we collect interview data on daily food production, food sharing, helping behaviors, demographic and anthropometric characteristics, and participation in traditional religious activities and other cultural practices. These data are used to test hypotheses about patterns of human cooperation and contribute to broader questions in human evolutionary ecology, including foraging theory, time allocation, food sharing, life history evolution, parental investment, cooperation, culture and cognition, and the emergence and spread of Homo sapiens and the unique characteristics of our species. 

This work builds on nearly three decades of field research with hunter-gatherers and Indigenous populations, including the Ache of Paraguay, Hiwi of Venezuela, Mashco-Piro, Matsigenka, and Yora of Peru, as well as studies of foraging in coastal South Africa. More recently, this research has focused on cooperation among Sea Nomad communities in southern Mindanao, Philippines. 

In addition to conducting field research, Hill teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on human evolution and related aspects of human evolutionary ecology

About Kim Hill, PhD

Kim Hill's theoretical interests are human evolutionary ecology, including focal areas such as foraging theory, time allocation, food sharing, life history evolution, parental investment, cooperation, culture and cognition, the emergence and spread of Homo sapiens and unique characteristics of our species.

His field experience involves hunter-gatherers and natives of the Neotropics. He has nearly 30 years of fieldwork with Ache (Paraguay), Hiwi (Venezuela), Mashco-Piro, Matsiguenga and Yora (Peru) and has conducted extensive travels to indigenous communities in Latin America. He also worked on foraging problems in Coastal South Africa, and most recently has studied cooperation among Sea Nomads of Southern Mindanao (Philippines).

Hill teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on aspects of human evolution and is a core faculty member of the Institute of Human Origins. Prior to his arrival at ASU, he was a professor at the University of New Mexico. He has additional teaching experience at the University of Michigan, Emory University, and the University of Utah.

Every discovery at IHO follows a cycle of exploration, analysis, education, and outreach—advancing scientific knowledge while preparing future researchers and helping the public understand why our evolutionary past matters today.

Scientists collect fossils, archaeological evidence, genetic samples, and observations from living humans and primates. These discoveries are analyzed in IHO’s state-of-the-art laboratories, explored through interdisciplinary research and student training, and shared with classrooms and communities through innovative public outreach—ensuring that new knowledge about our past benefits future generations.

1. Field Research: Scientists travel to fossil sites and primate research locations around the world to uncover new evidence about human evolution. 
   1. ‘Dig In’ – IHO scientists bring together evidence from field excavations, geological layers, DNA, and archaeological discoveries to reconstruct the past and spark new ideas about how humans evolved.
2. Laboratory Research: State-of-the-art laboratories at IHO allow researchers to analyze fossils, DNA, archaeological materials, and environmental data using advanced technologies in one location.
   1. Critical Thinking – Humans are uniquely able to gather evidence, ask questions, and draw conclusions. At IHO, researchers use advanced technologies to connect clues from scientific discoveries to reveal the story of human change over deep time. 
3. Student Training: Graduate and undergraduate students work alongside world-leading scientists in the field and lab while gaining experience through research, mentorship, and teaching.
   1. Social Learning – Just as humans have passed down knowledge and skills for thousands of years, IHO students learn alongside experienced scientists, building on past discoveries to make the next generation of breakthroughs. 
4. Public Engagement: Discoveries are shared through lectures, exhibits, K–12 programs, museums, digital resources, and community events that connect the human past to the global future.
   1. Cumulative Culture – Just as humans have always shared knowledge to help communities grow and thrive, IHO brings discoveries beyond the lab through lectures, exhibits, museums, classrooms, and digital resources—connecting people to our shared past and inspiring future generations. 

The Institute of Human Origins (IHO) at Arizona State University seeks to answer the question, “What makes us human?”

IHO scientists study how humans evolved over deep time and became who we are today. Researchers combine ideas from many fields, among them­ – biology, anthropology, archaeology, geology, primatology and genetics – to discover scientific evidence of human uniqueness.

Why? IHO fosters a deep understanding of how our evolutionary history informs the challenges and opportunities facing our shared future on Earth. Discovering how our ancestors not only survived, but thrived over deep time and how traits like culture, cooperation, and adaptation played a unique role in our species’ success, can help inform the future we build together.

How? IHO scientists use fossils, DNA, and studies of living primates to uncover new clues about our evolutionary past. Through active fieldwork around the world and cutting-edge laboratory research at IHO's state-of-the-art facilities, they make groundbreaking discoveries that advance our understanding of human origins.

Where do I fit in? Through IHO’s innovative public programming and its guiding message, “Connecting the Human Past to the Global Future,” we invite you to join us in discovering the origins of our past!

IHO Public Outreach Programming: 

• school field trips, public lectures, online resources, contact [email protected] for more information.

Philanthropic Support:

• IHO is generously supported by the IHO board of directors and by people like you!
• Give Securely Online: 

Study Anthropology at ASU: 

• Train with world-class scientists by enrolling in graduate and undergraduate courses in Anthropology at ASU. 

Lucy 

A Discovery That Changed Our Understanding of Human Origins

In 1974, IHO founder Donald Johanson discovered Lucy, a 3.2-million-year-old fossil skeleton in Ethiopia that became one of the most important human ancestor discoveries ever made. Lucy showed that our early ancestors walked upright long before they developed large brains, transforming what scientists knew about human evolution. Today, Lucy remains a symbol of scientific discovery and continues to inspire new research into where we came from and what makes us human. 

Visitors to IHO can view an original cast of Lucy's fossil skeleton alongside a life-sized reconstruction, bringing one of the world's most famous human ancestors to life.

IHO Research Focus Groups:

1. Paleoanthropology: 
   • Paleoanthropology is the science of discovering and studying the fossil evidence of our earliest human ancestors to understand how humans evolved.
2. Evolutionary Genetics and Non-human Primate Behavioral Ecology: 
   • IHO scientists combine genetic research with long-term studies of wild primates to better understand the evolutionary origins of human behavior, cooperation, and adaptation.
3. Human Cultural Evolution and Behavioral Ecology

• This research explores how our ability to learn from one another, cooperate, and build cultures helped humans become one of the most adaptable and successful species on Earth.

IHO Mission:

IHO brings together leading researchers from around the world, trains future scientists, and shares new discoveries with the public. By connecting what we know about human evolution to the challenges we face today, IHO helps people understand how our shared past can shape a better future.

1. Research and Discovery
   • Through fieldwork, laboratory research, and collaboration across disciplines, IHO scientists uncover new evidence that reshapes our understanding of human origins and evolution.
2. Graduate and Undergraduate Student Training
   • IHO trains the next generation of scientists through hands-on fieldwork, cutting-edge laboratory research, mentorship, and opportunities to share their discoveries with others.
3. Public Outreach
   • By sharing discoveries through innovative public programs and outreach, IHO inspires curiosity about our shared past and its relevance to our future.