Next year’s Calpe Conference, which will be its 13th year, will focus on the theme "Human Evolution – 150 years after Darwin".

It will be held from the 16th to the 20th September 2009 and promises to be a very special event with the leading world speakers on show.

The Gibraltar Museum has been working for over a year to ensure an impressive line-up of speakers and the event will be a highlight of the international year of Darwin events.
In addition to the main speakers there will be a programme of short communications by other speakers.

Registration for this conference is now open via the Gibraltar Museum’s web site at Gibraltar Calpe Conference 2009

As in previous years, Gibraltarians may register free of charge and are encouraged to do so early.

Calpe Conference 2009

‘Human evolution – 150 years after Darwin’

Key Note Speakers

SESSION 1 - Before Homo

David Begun Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Canada Europe and the origin of the African ape and human clade

Tim White Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of California at Berkeley, USA Before Australopithecus: approaching the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans

Michel Brunet College de France, Paris, France and Mission Paleoanthropologique Franco-Tchadienne In Sahelo-Saharan Africa (Chad, Egypt, Libya)…on the track of a new cradle of mankind

Christoph Zollikofer and Marcia Ponce de León Anthropological Institute, University of Zurich, Switzerland The first Europeans: beyond African borders – beyond species borders?

SESSION 2 - Origins and Evolutionary History of the Genus Homo

Bernard Wood Anthropology Department, George Washington University, Washington DC, USA The origin of the genus Homo - what are we looking for?

Milford Wolpoff Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA In the beginning

Ian Tattersall Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA How many lineages of Homo in the Middle Pleistocene of Europe

Juan Luis Arsuaga Departamento de Paleontologia, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain The origin of the Neanderthals

Chris B. Stringer Department of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum, London, UK The origins and evolution of the Neanderthal and modern human clades

SESSION 3: Biogeography, Behaviour and Ecology of Hominins

Robin W. Dennell Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK Migrations on the grandest of scales

Rob Foley and Marta Lahr Department of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK Evolutionary Geography of Pleistocene hominins in Africa

Curtis Marean Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA The Cape Floral Region, Shellfish, and Modern Human Origins

John Shea Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook, State University of New York, USA Why did it take so long for Homo sapiens to get out of Africa? A tale of two dispersals Gordon Orians Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Human Habitat Selection: Our Savanna Heritage

Clive Finlayson The Gibraltar Museum, Gibraltar and Department of Social Sciences, University of Toronto, Scarborough, Canada The Problem of Scale in Human Evolution