Talk

Dr. Saunders, curator of "Counter Cultures:  The Secret Lives of Games", will talk informally on the history of games, their place in the study of humankind, and how collecting them can be more than the trivial matter it seems to be.  On display will be dozens of games from Dr. Saunder's private collection.  All questions will be enthusiastically entertained. Dr. Saunders helped charter the Association of Game & Puzzle collectors, for which he has written regularly for the last 18 years.  Lecture takes place in the Gill Auditorium 4-5 p.m. FREE

Presented by Mark Van Stone, Ph.D., the Museum of Man is wondering if you are ready for 2012! December 21, 2012, is the end-date of the Mayan Long Count calendar, causing some speculation that the date may signal a cataclysmic event. What is the truth? Join us for an entertaining, authoritative and visually rich presentaiton on the Ancient Maya. Learn about the Mayan concepts of Truth, History, Myth, Math, Astronomy, Astrology and their Calendar. Find out what we actually know about the "End of the Mayan Calendar" and how they themselves viewed it. Lecture takes place in the Gill Auditorium, 4-5 p.m. FREE

In 1887 U.S. Army Scout “Apache Kid” killed the man who had murdered Togoduchez, his grandfather. On his return to his duty station at San Carlos, an incident led to a court-martial for mutiny and desertion. He was convicted and sentenced to death by the Army, then released on appeal.  Later, Kid was arrested and convicted by a civil court for assault to murder. While being transported to Yuma Prison, Kid escaped and was never captured or killed. “Apache Kid” became the renegade of renegades. Presented by Clare (Bud) V. McKanna, Lecturer in the Department of History at San Diego State University.

 Lecture takes place in the Gill Auditorium, July 6, 2010, 4-5pm. FREE.

Mummy Whispers: Listening to Ancient Secrets through Paleoimaging
Speaker: Ronald G. Beckett, Ph.D., FAARC

Christopher Wills, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, San Diego, will preview his new book, The Darwinian Tourist. The book will be published later this year by Oxford University Press, and will include 150 of the author’s photographs from around the world, above and under water.

Each part of the lecture will begin with an adventure in some remote part of the world. Each of these stories, illustrated with photographs that Dr. Wills has taken during his travels, will show how even more vivid and exciting the world’s wild places can be when they are seen through evolutionary eyes.

Some of these adventures, such as SCUBA dives in the incredibly diverse Lembeh Strait or an encounter with a wild wolf cub in western Mongolia, are the kind of thing that could happen to any reasonably adventurous traveler, including many in the audience. Others, like the experience of being hammered by a severe earthquake off the island of Yap while sixty feet down in the ocean filming manta rays, might be judged to be rather outside the ordinary!  

As Dr. Wills explores the evolutionary implications of each of these stories, the audience will accompany him on surveys of billions of years of evolutionary time, the collision of entire continents, and the sweep of the evolution of our own species. The world will never be the same after you explore it through evolutionary eyes! Lecture takes place in the Gill Auditorium, 6:30-8:00pm. FREE.

On the first Tuesday of each month, from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m., the Museum hosts Culture, Coffee & Conversation, a discussion about an anthropological article or film, or recent research by guest scholars. Enjoy coffee, baked goods, and discussion about timely topics in contemporary anthropology.

See our events calendar for updated schedule.

Change is constant: How bacteria sense and adapt to their surroundings
Speaker: Terry Bird, Ph.D

Steve Holmes “Dawngreeter”: Inspiration of the Native American Flute, discussion and performance.

 Alyssa Crittenden, PhD: Cooperative child rearing among the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania Dr. Crittenden is currently a post-doctoral researcher and program representative for the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA), an Organized Research Unit exploring human origins at the University of California, San Diego. She spent a year living with the Hazda hunter-gatherers of Northern Tanzania and her current research project explores the evolution of cooperation by analyzing various types of allomaternal care among the Hazda. She will be discussing her research on the behavioral and nutritional ecology of human foraging societies, particularly allomaternal care, children’s foraging patterns, and the evolution of the human diet.

Come to the Museum of Man for our lecture series! Enjoy some coffee and learn something new. This month’s lecture: Elaine Michaels will be presenting "Backcountry Identity and the Proposed Sunrise Powerlink Project." Lectures take place in the Gill Auditorium in the administration building west of the Museum. Call (619) 239-2001 for more information. Free.