Digital publication of the opening lecture in English by Pr Jean-Jacques Hublin

Jean-Jacques Hublin

The Biology of Culture. Palaeoanthropology of the genus Homo

How can the extraordinary fate of hominins be explained? Humanity's close kinship with African great apes has been soundly established today, but our species stands out due to its highly original adaptive features - in terms of locomotion, nutrition, and reproduction - which have enabled its unequalled expansion among vertebrates. The increasingly advanced encephalization of hominins has enabled them to have an ever greater degree of social and technical complexity, which in turn has directly influenced their biological evolution. Understanding human evolution therefore consists in understanding the constant interaction between the biological and the cultural.

Jean-Jacques Hublin, The Biology of Culture. Palaeoanthropology of the genus Homo, translation by Liz Libbrecht, Paris, Collège de France, Inaugural Lectures, 2025.

This book was published with the support of the Collège de France Foundation.

Jean-Jacques Hublin is a palaeo-anthropologist, author of numerous works on the evolution of Neanderthals and on the African origins of modern humans. First a researcher at the CNRS and later professor at the Université de Bordeaux 1, he founded the Department of Human Evolution at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, which he has headed since 2004. In 2011, he became the first president of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution. Visiting professor on the International Chair from 2014 to 2021, he now holds the Chair of Palaeoanthropology.