Affiliation: SAPIENS
Chip Colwell is an associate research professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, and the editor-in-chief of SAPIENS, a digital magazine of the Wenner-Gren Foundation about anthropological thinking and discoveries. He is the author and editor of 13 books including Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture, which received six major book awards.
Over three million years ago, our ancient ancestors realized that rocks could be broken into sharp-edged objects for slicing meat, making the first knives. This discovery resulted in a good meal—and eventually changed the fate of our species and our planet. In this talk, Chip Colwell shares his thrilling and accessible new book, So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything published by the University of Chicago Press. An archaeologist, public anthropologist, and former museum curator, Colwell traveled the world to investigate how humanity took three leaps that led to stuff becoming inseparable from our lives—inspiring a love affair with things that made humans who we are and may also lead us to our downfall.
