What to Expect: Week 2 (Monday, 28 June -- Sunday 4 July)

This week we will first discuss Humans: Separate From or a Part of Nature? Creation, Evolution, and the Debate Over Humans in the Natural World. The question will be are humans a part of nature -- or apart from it? Even more than religion, the closeness between humans and the natural world seems to be sticking point for many regarding Darwin's ideas. In this lecture, we will look at the development of modern humans and what that tells us about race and culture; then we will look at the history of ideas of human origins from Creation to Darwin to DNA.

On Wednesday, we will then look at the peopling of the British Isles and the ecological changes and adaptations that brought about. We will also compare these early Britons with ideas and images of the "Ecological Indian." In recent years there's been much discussion about Native Americans: Were they environmentalists? Or did they, too, cause ecological changes?

Our field trip this week will be to Charles Darwin's home, Down House, in Downe, England just south of London. It was here that Darwin developed his ideas of natural selection (especially through experimentation in the gardens here) as well where he wrote his book, On the Origin of Species. There may also be a voluntary trip to Stonehenge and Avebury, two world famous prehistoric stone circle sites.