David R. Harris
Emeritus Professor of Human Environment, Institute of Archaeology, University College, London
Carl O. Sauer Memorial Lectures
October 1, 2001University of California, Berkeley — UC Berkeley Campus
About the Lecture Carl Ortwin Sauer (1889-1975) is widely regarded as one of the most influential geographers of the twentieth century, admired particularly for his studies in cultural and historical geography. His contribution to the study of prehistory is less … Continued
University of California, Berkeley - UC Berkeley Campus Berkeley Graduate Lectures [email protected] false MM/DD/YYYYAbout the Lecture
Carl Ortwin Sauer (1889-1975) is widely regarded as one of the most influential geographers of the twentieth century, admired particularly for his studies in cultural and historical geography. His contribution to the study of prehistory is less widely acknowledged, and yet, between 1944 and 1962, he published a series of speculative yet scholarly papers that contain many prescient insights into humanity’s remote past and the relationships of our ancestors to the environments they occupied–and modified. In this lecture I reflect on Sauer’s contribution to the science of prehistory by examining, in the light of recent advances in knowledge, two major themes of Sauer’s work: the early dispersal of Homo sapiens in the Old World, and the origins and prehistoric spread of agriculture.