John D. Hawks
| John D. Hawks | |
|---|---|
| Fields | Anthropology |
| Institutions | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| Alma mater | |
| Thesis | The Evolution of Human Population Size: A Synthesis of Paleontological, Archaeological, and Genetic Data. |
| Doctoral advisor | Milford Wolpoff |
| Known for | paleoanthropology |
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Website johnhawks |
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John Hawks is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He also is the author of a widely read paleoanthropology blog.
Hawks graduated from Kansas State University in 1994 with degrees in French, English, and Anthropology. He received both his M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan where he studied under Milford Wolpoff. His doctoral thesis was titled, "The Evolution of Human Population Size: A Synthesis of Paleontological, Archaeological, and Genetic Data." After working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah, he moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he is currently a member of the Anthropology department, teaching courses including Human Evolution, Biological Anthropology, and Hominid Paleoecology. In 2014, Hawks launched an online course on Coursera under the University of Wisconsin–Madison banner, on "Human Evolution: Past and Future".
Hawks believes that human evolution has actually sped up in recent history in contrast to the common assumption that biological evolution has been made insignificant by cultural evolution. He covers recent developments on this topic at his blog.
Hawks has predicted introgression including the Neanderthal admixture hypothesis which gained further evidence by the Neanderthal genome project in May 2010.
Hawks believes that contemporary , including lack of any from Eurasian archaic Homo sapiens may be in part due to natural selection of mtDNA on metabolic or other factors, rather than simple total replacement and genetic drift.
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