About Us

At the Instiut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, our mission is to investigate human evolution through an highly interdisciplinary program that bridges primatology, physical and behavioural anthropology, cognitive biology and genetics. We combine fieldwork and experimental approaches on humans, non-human primates, and marine mammals across Africa, Asia, South America and Australia to test how culture, cognition, communication, and cooperation emerged and evolved. By mapping cross-species similarities in the 4Cs using comparative methods, we can identify the evolutionary pathways that have contributed to shaping our species into the way we are.