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- [narrator] We are the paradoxical aid,
bipedal, naked, large brained, long the master of
fire, tools and language but still trying to understand ourselves. Aware that death
is inevitable yet filled with optimism. We grow up slowly. We hand down knowledge.
We empathize and deceive. We shape the future from our shared understanding of
the past. CARTA brings together experts from diverse disciplines to exchange
insights on who we are and how we got here. An exploration made possible by the
generosity of humans like you.
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It's my pleasure to welcome you to this CARTA symposium on How Language Evolves.
I'd like to welcome you and we know that among the oldest questions that humans
have ever asked these included "Who are we? What are we doing here? Where
did we come from? How did we get here?" and "Where are we going?"
At CARTA we believe that two of these questions are now eminently study able
with evidence based research namely "Where did we come from?" and
"How did we get here?"
Anthropogeny is the term referring to explaining the origin of humans and it's a
very old term that was forgotten and we try to resuscitate to indicate that to
explain human origins we really need to use all avenues of science. The social
sciences and the biological sciences alike.
CARTA is a official research unit at UCSD. The three co-directors of CARTA are Ajit
Varki, Fred Gage and Margaret Schoeninger. Part of the team are also Linda Nelson,
our Management Service Officer and Ingrid Benirschke-Perkins who is our Community
Relations Director. And we've got very important support by Kate Kaya and John
Moreland our Computer Systems Programmers and Analyst. And also Jesse Robie and
John Spotts who have all contributed to making this event possible.
So pursuing Anthropogeny involves most academic disciplines ranging from the
social to the molecular and it's been a great challenge trying to get scientists
from all these disciplines to talk together willing to learn each other's
terminologies and avoid jargon whenever possible or at least translate jargon.
The CARTA Mission Statement is as follows: We want to use all rational and ethical
approaches to seek all verifiable facts from all relevant disciplines to explore
and explain the origins of the human phenomenon while minimizing complex
organizational structures and hierarchies, which we find quite difficult. And
avoiding unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy which is equally difficult.
In the process of course, we want to raise awareness and understanding of the
study of human origins within the academic community and the public at large. And I'm
very happy to see many faces that I know from around here not necessarily just the
university. Of course, we want to give special thanks to our major sponsors The
G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation of New York, and its Executive
Director Jim Handelman.
We've been very lucky to have a lot of supporters over the years. Many of them
are here in this room and I'd like to specially mention Annette Merle-Smith and
Rita Atkinson. And thank you all for this important support that continues to make
these public symposia an important exchanges of information possible. Also
special thanks to the UCSD-TV crew Rich Wargo, Matt Alioto, Marci Bretts, Ken
Kebow and Jacob Parker. As well as voice and video Mike Guymon and Josh Stolze.
And our ASL Interpreters Dan Fisher and Amber Graves who you see very busily
translate up here on stage. I thank you very much and without further ado, I will
introduce one of our two chairpersons, Roger Levy, please.
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