In Search of the First Human Home - Issue 8: Home - Nautilus

Illustration by Chris Buzelli

What is home? This is a deceptively simple question. Is it the place where you were born? Is it where you happen to live right now? Does it have to be a dwelling, or can it be a spot on the landscape, or even a state of mind?

For archaeologists tracing human origins, these are challenging questions. Yet answering them provides key insights into our evolution from hominids at the mercy of our surroundings to humans in control of them. Having a sense of home, as we understand it today, is a product of symbolic thinking, a capacity that makes us unique among animals, including our own ancestors... By Ian Tattersall / nautil.us

Related: Ingenious: Ian Tattersall - Issue 8: Home - Nautilus
In his essay, “In Search of the First Human Home,” in this issue of Nautilus, Ian Tattersall calls humans’ modern notion of home “revolutionary.” In our video interview (above), the paleontologist and former chairman of the department of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History explains why...

What would 3-million-year-old Lucy’s home have looked like?

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