Humanity’s Origins? Anthropology Professor Alison Brooks is on the Case!

To call Alison Brooks “busy” is an understatement. The professor of anthropology at GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences is involved in the debut of the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History; fielding calls and messages from people who saw her on the highly acclaimed PBS series The Human Spark; and working with graduate students on several research projects, one of which is exploring how the use of stone tools shaped the evolution of the human hand. Brooks’ high profile in the anthropology arena stems in part from her energy and relentless curiosity—and not a tiny bit from her daring.

A decade ago, Brooks and Dr. Sally McBrearty (from the University of Connecticut) surprised colleagues with groundbreaking research challenging a long-held assumption that modern human behavior—including cognitive advances, human networking and inventiveness—had emerged suddenly among early humans in Europe. Brooks and her colleague presented extensive evidence that such behavior evolved over a long time frame in Africa, not Europe, and appeared tens of thousands of years earlier than generally believed.

For some time, their controversial paper was one of the most cited in the prestigious Journal of Human Evolution. The evidence cited for African priority was based not only on new African excavations by herself and others but also by the development of new methods for dating objects that were too old for radiocarbon dating. One new technique, developed by Brooks with colleagues and students at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, determined the rates of protein decay in fragmentary shells of ostrich eggs at archaeological sites in arid areas of Africa and Asia.

The expanded ability to date materials led to new evidence about how and when humans organized, formed social and trade networks, and used language. Even as skeptics pushed back, Brooks found evidence in Botswana, Ethiopia, the Congo, and Kenya for her conclusions that human networks emerged earlier than believed and were first in Africa.

“I would say there are still people who feel that we had a sudden revolution in human behavior that was first developed in Europe, but a lot of opinion has definitely swung in our direction,” Brooks said.

Africa’s role as fertile ground for modern human behavior will be acknowledged in the new Hall of Human Origins exhibit at the Smithsonian. In no small way, the March 17 launch of the $20.7 million exhibit brings Brooks full circle: Thirty-seven years ago—a year after she joined Columbian College—she was a consultant on the Smithsonian’s first Hall of Human Origins, which featured a reconstructed Neanderthal burial site. In the 1990s, her efforts helped GW obtain funding for a doctoral program in hominid paleobiology in collaboration with the Smithsonian. Brooks currently holds a research associate position and is working with other Smithsonian scientists on an excavation project in Kenya.

But it is the PBS series The Human Spark— hosted by Alan Alda—that directly introduced her groundbreaking work to a broad public audience. The producers of the show, which also detailed Brooks’ research on ancient dental plaque, said her research is what gave them the idea for the program.

“The important thing to take away from The Human Spark is that there isn’t one single thing that creates the capability for modern behavior,” said Brooks. “There’s a whole complexity of things going on in the world and in people’s brains and in their relationships to each other. It all comes together, but it takes a very long time.”